Amusing with wonderful artwork. (Some nice nods to both pop culture and various Lovecraftian eleemnts).

(There's also excellent art from a variety of artists in the back. ( )

Srs Jose Oliver and Bartolo Torres have released a second volume of their comic strip Young Lovecraft through Kettledrummer Books, which is a reason for all fans of Lovecraftian comics to rejoice.

For those not yet fortunate enough to know Young Lovecraft, this strip tells the story of HPL as a boy living with his two aunts. He has a pet ghoul, Glenn, masquerading as a dog and a little girl friend Siouxie. Howard attends grade school, while struggling with Siouxie's attentions, Glenn's misbehavior and his own attempts to harness unspeakable powers through spell casting. What can I say, I think this is just about a perfect comic. The writing is acutely observant and the art is wonderful. It is so obvious the creators are quite familiar with HPL's works and exploit situations from his stories to showcase young Howard's childhood frustrations. Other authors make appearance as ghosts leading to silly situations, including Poe, Baudelaire and Rimbaud. In his mind Howard acts out stories from James and Hodgson, while Siouxie wonders what the heck he is doing.

Also included are sketches by Sr Torres as he was drawing the strip, and a very cool art gallery of other talented guest artists showing how they would depict Young Lovecraft. I am in awe that neither of the strip's creators is a native English speaker; they just wanted Young Lovecraft to be in HPL's native tongue. I can't choose favorites, but I really enjoyed the strip taken from Cool Air and the various ones about Howard's nightmares, and also the ones about the Hounds of Tindalos. OK, I liked it all. Did I have frustrations? Yes, the book is way too short! I want more! Fortunately, the end says these strips came from 2009 so I can only hope another album will be in the works later. If this is not enough for you, go ahead and order the first volume in this series.

Bravo, Srs Oliver and Torres. Encore! Mas, por favor. ( )

Correcto cómic sobre las divagaciones del Joven Lovecraft. Por lo que he leído en el blog del autor, la historia mejora en siguientes volúmenes ( )