Andrew Cosby

Very interesting tale of a master sword-smith who decides to destroy all his hand-made blades after he loses his family to a man wielding sword of his own making.

It is a well paced story (some might say it is a little bit slow) about the man who reaches the great riches and fame and then comes down to earth in a very bad way. Haunted by loss of his family he tries to redeem himself but more than anything he wishes to end his life and join his family once more in after-life. We follow him as show more he wanders through the world seeking people that bought his blades. He buys the swords back (sometimes at greatly inflated prices) and even fights to get them back.

As I said story is very interesting but what deducted one star from my rating is quality of art. Some parts are good but some are not to my liking. Art is sometimes very cartoonish, but in parts it is over stiff and sometimes it looks like a sketch made in haste.

If it had more consistent art this would be full 5 star story.

In any case give it a shot, art might not be the greatest but story is very good. show less

This movie does a lot of stuff right, and yet it somehow doesn't quite come together. It always feels a bit... shallow, as a viewer I _want_ to care about what's happening, but I don't, quite. It's too bad, because in a lot of ways, this is much more faithful to the source material than the Del Toro films, but those never had this problem. Oh well. It's still good fun.

A short but funny take on the stock story of suddenly finding out about a rich (and now dead) uncle. In order to collect the inheritance, a down-on-his-luck young adult must simply find Excalibur, the sword of King Arthur. The supporting cast is hilarious, including a librarian who helps move the plot along (the book is written by Andrew Cosby, who did the very funny Mr Stuffins which I read a few months ago). I found the book looking for Phil Noto art -- he did the covers -- but the show more internal art is good too.

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LT Haiku:

If asked to quest for
Old sword for inheritance,
Bring librarian. show less

A couple of stories aside, I found I wasn't very impressed with this collection. I feel it might have to do with a greater expectation of Lovecraftian material. Much of it felt like standard horror with Cthulhu involved, rather than the cosmic horror and madness I was looking for. In fairness though, Lovecraft doesn't do much with Cthulhu so I can't say there's anything wrong with the portrayals, and a couple of the stories were still very good.

Lovecraft based a fair amount of horror of of show more things unseen and indescribable, so to expect something like that in a graphic novel is probably asking for the wrong thing. If you're interested in horror and gore and a good dose of madness, this would probably come off better to you. show less