Writers: Many – this issue Tim Sparveros
Publisher: Saturna Ink
Sadly, this magazine only had 4 issues, with a very short run from January 2008 to July 2009. Being a print magazine in this day and age is horrible, but the Planet Lovecraft Magazine was probably one of the best examples of an independently produced magazine for horror comic books. Usually this magazine had not just comics, but short stories, and a ton of other very cool maker faire examples of how to make cool stuff. While it was only four issues, this was a magazine worth paying attention to, especially if you were into horror, Lovecraft, and all sorts of other grizzly bits that make modern horror comics so very interesting.
So of course this is another one of those hard to find comic books, that will take some real searching to find it anywhere. The primary web site is down, the Comic Space site is down, and just about everything associated with the magazine no longer exists on the internet. There isn’t even anything in Archive.org to help someone find anything. Fortunately we have the hard copies, and this might be the only place that you will find out anything about the magazine. Let’s hope that the thing isn’t cursed, but then we are talking about Lovecraft here, and that is what makes this interesting.
Planet Lovecraft Magazine obviously loved what they were doing. The magazine is well constructed, the art work is well done, and there are almost no duds in the entire issue. There is an interesting interview, but realistically this is all about horror comics. Heavy black and white imagery, clean writing, lettering and very few grey tones throughout makes this a fun comic book. This is one of the few times that heavy black and white works in a comic book magazine. Generally I tend to dislike the heavy feel of solid black and white, but this time it works. We wish that they could publish more stuff like this, but in the end, this might end up being better as an IPAD app than a physical printed magazine.
We are rating this magazine four out of five stars, the only reason for the four is that I would like to see more copies of this out there, and wish they had been able to print more than four copies in a year. This would be one of those things that would be impossible to get enough subscriptions for to make it a viable business, but would make an awesome e-reader or IPAD application. Maybe they will come back as one.
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