If you enjoyed the recent Dark Horse edition of H.P. Lovecraft’s The Colour Out of Space (reviewed here at BF by Edward Picot) then you’ll no doubt be very interested to hear of more Tanabe/Lovecraft material coming from that direction in the future. Check out the press release below for more on The Shadow Out of Time.
DO NOT BE DRIVEN MAD BY “THE SHADOW OUT OF TIME”
In the latest of Gou Tanabe’s manga adaptations of H.P. Lovecraft’s stories, one professor’s mental sabbatical becomes a literal descent into the occult!
Dark Horse Manga continues the English translations of masterful manga artist Gou Tanabe! Winner of the 2025 Bram Stoker Award from the Horror Writers of America, Tanabe’s adaptations of H.P. Lovecraft have also been nominated for the Eisner, Harvey, and American Manga Awards. His latest work to appear from Dark Horse, H.P. Lovecraft’s The Shadow out of Time, is adapted into English by Zack Davisson, translator of the two-time Eisner Award-winning Showa: A History of Japan by Shigeru Mizuki, and lettered by the Eisner-nominated Steve Dutro. This next terrifying tale will arrive just in time for Halloween 2025.
In H.P. Lovecraft’s The Shadow out of Time:
Nathaniel Wingate Peaslee was once a respectable professor of political economy. Though he taught at Miskatonic University in Arkham, his temper was of a reasonable sort, not at all interested in the occult. That has changed. In 1908, standing in the lecture hall, Professor Peaslee saw his classroom suddenly twist into an uncanny, alien vista, and he collapsed unconscious.
What awoke was not the Nathaniel Peaslee his colleagues knew—at least, not his mind. Now associating with strange people, and speaking oddly of time, distant lands, and concepts of existence, his travels and research disturbed those who knew him, including his friends, wife and even children. It was not until 1913 that Professor Peaslee came back to his right mind, with no memory of his strange sabbatical. His search for understanding of those five missing years leads him—and readers—on a journey across the globe to a place where a long-vanished race still casts their shadow out of time.
Are you out of your mind? Don’t miss H.P. Lovecraft’s The Shadow out of Time when the 370-page (5.125” x 7.25”) tankobon-sized paperback arrives in bookstores on October 28, 2025 and comic shops on October 29, 2025, for $21.99. Pre-order now from Barnes and Noble, or your local bookstore or comic shop. Visit Comic Shop Locator or Bookshop.org for more details and stores near you.
Praise for Gou Tanabe’s H.P. Lovecraft adaptations:
“That said, Tanabe’s main achievement is making Lovecraft’s monsters look suitably awesome. Even if you’re not particularly impressed by the idea of 15-foot spheroids, much less starfish-headed ridgy things with tentacles (always the tentacles!), Tanabe’s renderings still prompt a certain wonderment. It’s kind of amazing how effectively he manages to modulate Lovecraft’s histrionics over the course of the story, beckoning even less-than-susceptible readers to contemplate the author’s themes.”—NPR on At The Mountains of Madness
“At the Mountains of Madness seems sure to make a star out of Tanabe. Dark Horse is positioning Madness as a crossover title to appeal to horror and science fiction fans who wouldn’t normally read manga, promoting the fact that the book is closer to Western-style graphic novels in format and style. On the flip side, that also makes it a perfect title for manga readers looking for something out of the ordinary. ”—Otaku USA magazine
“Ultimately, what this work does best is deliver the shock and awe that a visual adaptation of Call of Cthulhu must do. If someone else had drawn it, I’m not sure it would’ve been successful. But in what Tanabe delivers, is everything I ever dreamt of, and much more at where it counts.”—Otaku No Culture
“Tanabe’s art really works well with these three stories. He does a fantastic job of emphasizing the claustrophobia of the submarine in “The Temple” and the titular “Nameless City”, along with the oppressive shadows of “The Hound”. The art and the selectively sparse captions also help to mitigate some of Lovecraft’s more excessively florid and purple prose. There is no excessive use of “cyclopean” or “non-Euclidian” here.”—Breaking It All Down
