Lovecraft style photo of a Quebec City residence near the Cap-Blanc stairway.
The Cap-Blanc Staircase, built in 1868 and the longest in Quebec City, has 398 steps leading to the Plains of Abraham. Many athletes use it every day to stay in shape. But tonight, I’m using a photography technique that makes the scene look a little less pleasant.
The camera’s tilt exaggerates the slanted lines of the old stone building near the staircase. This gives it a slightly more unsettling appearance while allowing us to see a not so inviting patch of sky.
The staircase itself, normally in very good condition, appears distorted due to the excessive use of the wide-angle lens. The result lends an even more sinister air to the scene.
To top it all off, as luck would have it, light streams from a few windows, just like in certain horror movies. Will the surprise come from the top floor or the dark rooms in the basement? Lovecraft’s versions , reimagined by François Baranger, spark the imagination.
For comparison, the photo below shows the staircase and the neighboring house as they appeared during the day, without any photographic effects.
Cover page of the manga “Les montagnes hallucinées”, by Gou Tanabe.
Gou Tanabe presents H.P. Lovecraft’s masterpiece “Les montagnes hallucinées” (the French version of “At the Mountains of Madness”) as a two-volume manga. Leafing through Lovecraft is in itself a journey into the strange, but to do so by starting at the end of a book and reading from right to left adds to the weirdness of the experience.
This transposition of Lovecraft into manga is a success. And the statistics prove it. The 382 reviews left on Amazon show clear customer satisfaction, with a total of 4.9/5 stars at the time of writing.
I normally prefer color comics and graphic novels, but the black-and-white interpretation of Lovecraft’s work is a perfect match for the fantasy world into which Tanabe plunges us.
A page from the manga “Les montagnes hallucinées” from Lovecraft, by Gou Tanabe.
Lovecraft makes a phantasmagorical work credible by integrating a well-balanced mix of real and fictional elements into the plot. Unless you’re an archaeologist and paleontologist yourself, it’s hard to tell which data really belong to science. This helps to frame the reader. You recognize moments of pure imagination, but you’re still hooked.
I put myself in the shoes of someone who lived in Lovecraft’s time, when Antarctica was still a mysterious continent, unexplored in its entirety. A story filled with elements of fiction would gain in credibility, while no one could really confirm or deny some of the author’s statements.
A page from the graphic novel “Les montagnes hallucinées”.
In “Les montagnes hallucinées”, we read about sailing, aviation, extreme weather and survival in icy, isolated spaces. Readers witness the problems experienced by the various crews exploring Antarctica. The scientists’ increasingly startling discoveries force them to make risky decisions that plunge them into an unknown world. In short, themes that still appeal to most people today.
The two volumes total around 650 pages, which can be flipped through with interest in a single day, since many plates include no text at all.
