Before Stephen King, H.P. Lovecraft was the 20th century’s master of the macabre. But Poe and Dunsany did not alone begat Lovecraft. In fact, the opinionated New England gentleman is on record stating that his favorite short story was none other than Algernon Blackwood’s The Willows. Blackwood was a prolific English ghost story writer and a grandfather of today’s Weird Fiction scene; The Willows is remembered as one of his greatest contributions to dark, atmospheric literature.
This immortal novella of extra-dimensional weirdness on the Danube comes to vivid life in graphic comic form thanks to the incredibly detailed black-and-white linework of Sam Ford. Writer Nathan Carson’s thoughtful retelling reverently preserves the plot while breathing character-driven depth into this all-time classic. Two adventurous women, one British, one Swedish, encounter strange horrors in the Hungarian wilderness of 1907. What they discover on that crumbling sandbar makes them question their sanity, fear for their lives, and revel in otherworldly strangeness. Readers familiar with the story will delight in seeing it depicted in such painstaking, quality illustrations. And those for whom it is new will want to leave a light on for many nights after.
