H.P. Lovecraft, if he was still among the living, would have turned one hundred and thirty-four today. I’ve written several blog entries concerning the Eldritch Titan of Cosmic Horror for the DMR Books Blog. Here are two that I’m fairly proud of:

Forefathers of Sword and Sorcery: H.P. Lovecraft — DMR Books

The Savage Swords of Lovecraft — DMR Books

However, today I'm going to take a quick look at a Lovecraft work slightly off the trail of cosmic horror: The Dream Quest of Unknown Kadath. Like Poe's The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym, I consider 'Dream-Quest' to be a flawed, but imaginatively powerful, novella/short novel of fantasy adventure with elements of cosmic horror.

I have a fair amount to say regarding 'Dream-Quest' (and the Dreamlands tales in general), but that is for another day. Tonight, I want to look at an artistic tribute to HPL's novel: Tom Sutton's 1978 portfolio, "The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath".

Tom Sutton was fairly ubiquitous--on a minor scale--when I started reading comics in the '70s and '80s. He was one of those artists who was better suited to some genres than others. I remember really liking some of his work and feeling pretty *meh* about other stuff from him.

One thing that Sutton was definitely known for was his horror/occult art. That was mostly what he did for Warren Publications and Charlton Comics. For that type of story, his style had a certain 'European' feel to it, somewhat along the lines of James Cawthorn and Ian Miller. Sutton could definitely do tendrils, tentacles and swirling vistas of eldritch dread. Thus, it's not much of a surprise that he chose to do The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath as his debut portfolio in 1978.

1978 was the year when the "Portfolio Boom" got rolling. Artists like Wrightson, Kaluta and Hickman had gotten portfolios published a year or two earlier and many more would follow up through the very early 1980s. A good time for lovers of SFF/horror art.

It should be noted that while basically every online listing drops the hyphen in 'Dream-Quest' and makes it two words, ‘Dream-Quest’ is plainly hyphenated on the actual cover of the portfolio. Sutton got it right. The portfolio consisted of an illustrated envelope and six signed and numbered plates with a printing run of one thousand. Thanks to info from the commenter, “Gilgamesh”, I was finally able to find scans of all six plates online in order. Many thanks to him. I was able to revise this post and improve it by more than one hundred percent. When I make a mistake, I try to correct it.

The envelope/cover illustration for the portfolio. It looks to me like Sutton based his rendition of Randolph Carter on Lovecraft himself. That would be entirely appropriate, since Carter is an obvious HPL self-insert.

In Plate One, Randolph Carter dreams of a “marvellous city” (…) with walls, temples, colonnades, and arched bridges of veined marble, silver-basined fountains of prismatic spray in broad squares and perfumed gardens…”

Carter in the midst of the darksome Enchanted Wood, drinking moon-wine with zoogs

Plate Three appears to be depicting Carter aboard the ship of the Men of Leng. Truly a phantasmagoric saraband of Dreamlandish-ness.

Randolph Carter versus the gugs in the Vaults of Zin.

Plate Five appears to show Randolph Carter aboard a galleon bound for Celephais.

This is Plate Six. Randolph flies away from Kadath astride a shantak.

I hope this has given you a taste of Tom Sutton at his best. Once again, thanks to “Gilgamesh”. It’s a pity that Tom didn’t illustrate one or more volumes of Lovecraft tales while in his prime. In the process of researching this post, I saw that a portfolio in Near Fine condition sold for, like, fifteen dollars recently on Ebay, so I might buy one myself.