The Art Of H.P. Lovecraft's Cthulhu Mythos

by Pat Harrigan (Editor), Brian Wood (Editor), Jeremy McHugh

This full-color volume collects the best art from Fantasy Flight's acclaimed Call of Cthulhu collectible card game, as well as from 25 years of Chaosium's legendary line of Call of Cthulhu role-playing game products. In these pages are glimpses of the most terrible beings ever to exist, whose very names are spoken of in whispers, if at all: Mighty Cthulhu, Yog-Sothoth the Crawling Chaos Nyarlathotep and He Who Shall Not Be Named. Strange and alien races swarm here: the Fungi From Yuggoth, the star-headed Elder Things, the slithering Formless Spawn and awful chthonians. The Art of H.P. Lovecraft's The Cthulhu Mythos contains hundreds of full-color pieces of art, from fan favorites such as Patrick McEnvoy, Michael Komarck, Jean Tay, Thomas Denmark, John Gravato, Aaron Acevedo, James Ryman, Felicia Cano, Linda Bergkvist and dozens more. Once you see these blasphemous visions, you will never forget them.

Genres: Art, Horror, Lovecraftian, Cthulhu Mythos, Science Fiction, Fiction

192 pages, Hardcover

First published November 1, 2006

Reviews

[Harris · Rating 1 out of 5]

This book isn’t quite what I expected. While it does contain works of art depicting scenes and characters from the work of H.P. Lovecraft and other contributors to the pop culture world known as the “Cthulhu Mythos” (i.e., August Derleth, Robert W. Chambers, etc.), this is really the art of Fantasy Flight Games’ various Cthulhu Mythos themed board games like Arkham Horror. A few pieces from Chaosium’s venerable RPG Call of Cthulhu, upon which most of the thematic elements of FFG’s products are drawn from, also appear.

Because of this, all of the artwork included is explicitly “game art,” in that they are meant to illustrate the actions of playing a board or card game rather than a mysterious atmosphere befitting the cosmic and “indescribable” entities from Lovecraft’s fiction. Here, they are all very describable, usually with plenty of tentacles and teeth that they enjoy using on hapless humans. To be honest, none of them really do anything for me. They might serve their purpose as background on an item card or rule book or creature token, but in a standalone coffee table book billing itself as the “Art of H.P. Lovecraft’s Cthulhu Mythos,” I’d want more.

The works included are never subtle in their interpretations of Lovecraftian themes and take a very pulpy, action orientated approach with plenty of cult sacrifices, tommy guns, “exotic” locales, and magical glyphs flying everywhere. A handful of pieces do have a little atmosphere, but for the most part they are rather ugly, managing to appear both muddy and glossy at the same time. While some of the pieces are shown in large, one or two page spreads showing off some interesting details, far more often they are cramped, garish squares depicting cheesy monsters, illustrations obviously intended for one of Arkham Horror’s millions of tiny fiddly bits. There is a definite lack of the eerie, inexplicable feelings that I would expect from works inspired by Lovecraft’s work. It is always disappointing how often there is nothing really surprising or novel in visual approaches to the “Lovecraftian” material in the collection, and there are definitely more interesting collections of gamer art out there as well.

[Malcolm · Rating 5 out of 5]

Published by Fantasy Flight and primarily composed of art from their Arkham Files series of games, it also includes a few illustrations from other sources. But not many. FFG is leading the show here.

Images previously only seen on relatively small Arkham Horror cards are given fantastic presentation here. Some of the best Lovecraftian gross-out creature art is featured here. Call of Cthulhu, Arkham Horror's progenitor, at this time was still doing black and white line drawings for its interior illustration work. FFG proved that bringing the Cthulhu mythos to life in full-blazing color was not only possible but could be done as a resounding success. Arkham Horror is a slick-looking game and many of the pieces in the book are beautiful and hideous all at the same time.

It would be another ten years before Call of Cthulhu would release its 7th edition with art of equal intensity and I wouldn't be surprised to find several of FFG's stable of artists found their way into doing illustration for Chaosium. The colorful and breath-taking work for FFG just puts the line art to shame. I look forward to thumbing through the updated version of this book released just a few years ago.

[Ninja · Rating 4 out of 5]

A large selection of Lovecraftian artwork, though (almost?) all is taken from a game. I quite liked the variety on offer, such that it's not all just Cthulhu and co, but also of the more mundane aspects, from professors and detectives to libraries and strange locations. Quality is variable, being from many artists, and some does look like half-baked 3d models, but there are plenty of fantastic murky images that really bring you into that nightmare world, both large (up to double page spread) and small.
It's sectioned up into themes with good descriptive intros, though sometimes the art barely fits the section. Artist bios are all at the back.

[Scott Frank · Rating 3 out of 5]

Whew, the art here is...a mixed bag. I guess it's from a range of RPG products, some of which had higher art budgets than others. And a lot of them are great, but some make you wonder about the curation and selection of pieces for the book.

[The Smoog · Rating 5 out of 5]

I’ve always had a soft spot for the artwork that Fantasy Flight uses in their games, and this excellent collection provides it in spades.

[Trike · Rating 2 out of 5]

There are only a few pieces of art in here that actually live up to the horror of Lovecraft’s creation, which is due almost entirely to the fact these are mostly small illustrations for a card game.

[Doug Bolden · Rating 3 out of 5]

Saying I "read" this is a little weird, since it is mostly a series of paintings/etc dedicated to what you might call the extended-by-way-of-gaming Mythos, roughly grouped by theme [some better than others] and then given a few puffs of flavor text and captions to declare the [official] titles and artists [an index by artist/title would have been nice, by the way]. I did like it and have no regrets purchasing it, but there are a few quibbles.

First, except for a couple of pieces I recognized from Chaosium, this book is largely a collection of "stock art" that Fantasy Flight Games uses in their various Mythos related board/computer games: Arkham Horror, Elder Signs, Elder Signs: Omens, Eldritch Horror. If you play the games, then you will have seen a good deal of the artwork already—though this is also, it must be said, an appeal of this book. You just wouldn't know it from the cover since it fails, or I overlooked, any hint of this fact in the description outside of who published it.

Second, the book seems kind of arbitrary about which pictures get a full-page, a half-page, a little quarter- or sixth-page, or a double-page spread. Some meh images will take up over half a page while you get these tiny little slots for great images with lots of little details, such as "The Tomb-Herd" and "The Sound of Whippoorwills". I feel almost like I'm nitpicking, but really, the book would have gotten a 4-star rating but for these two things.

Taken as what it is, a collection of game-related Cthulhu-mythos artwork, and all that implies—some incongruous action shots, a bit heavy on the squamous and tentacled, a few "glamour" shots—it is a great little coffee-table book of Old Ones and their servitors. For those into Fantasy Flight Games's Mythos line, it makes an excellent collection of the artwork [though a few recent pieces are missing since this book was written in 2006]. For those who need a little inspiration—"Lost Generation" is the kind of mood piece that could help inspire me in games—then this is a nice little catalog of nightmares to thumb through on a rainy afternoon. It is not perfect, but I enjoyed it and would recommend it with the caveats as laid in this review.

[Monty Circus · Rating 2 out of 5]

Man, I was so amped to get into Lovecraft. I love the subject matter. Then I started into a collection of his stories (Library of America's "Tales"). I liked them at first, but the more I read, the more I lost interest. His endings are often abrupt in a "...that's it?" sort of way. And sometimes it's not smooth sailing to arrive at that point, I don't like his olde-timey writing style and he fills up his stories with so many details that I found uninteresting, as if they were there to fill in space for a write-by-the-word commission. As an example, in one story he droned on and on about all of the buildings in a certain town, that the library was across the street from such-and-such building and the architecture and on and on.

"Call of Cthulhu"? One of his can't miss classics? I didn't like it, and I abandoned my collection a tale or two afterwards. If you read a bunch back-to-back they begin to sort of blend together and it all feels a bit "samey".

Maybe I'll revisit it again some day, but for now, the thrill is gone.

That said, if you DO like Lovecraft, then this is an excellent collection of neato art.

[Holden Attradies · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a pretty good collection of art inspired by H.P. Lovecraft's Cthulhu Mythos (I suppose one can't go wrong with a title that simply describes it's content). I enjoyed all of the art in it, and am happy to have this on book shelf.

There a few things about the book that were kind of disappointing. The book seems to be a collection that is almost entirely the art that Fantasy Flight Games (the publisher) had used in it's various Cthulhu Mythos themed games. Being a big player of those games I couldn't help but feel this was just a collection of the art they just happened to have the rights to thrown together. And it does feel rather thrown together. There seems to be little rhyme or reason as to which pictures are squished down to three on a page or taking up two whole pages. And the odd layout leads to a lot of white space on teh pages, something that is painful to see in a big art book.

[Luis Del Aguila · Rating 4 out of 5]

Es un libro de ilustraciones, y casi todas son muy buenas, la da rostros a las criaturas descritas por Lovecraft, es muy buen referente visual a la par que se leen los mitos de Cthulhu o los otros dioses.

[Gary · Rating 4 out of 5]

I playtested for Fantasy Flight Games, and I got this as a thank you.

[Eddie · Rating 3 out of 5]

Suitably creepy/disturbing illustrations.