The Monstrous Dreams of Mr. Providence - Daria Schmitt

There have been few writers of the supernatural who have made such a lasting impression on how we view the world - or the world outside the reality we know it - as Howard Phillips Lovecraft. Other than Mike Mignola, it's hard to think of any writer/artist who would be adventurous enough and of sufficient ability to put that vision into images and truly do justice to it. Daria Schmitt however boldly places Lovecraft at the centre of this beautifully crafted 120-page graphic novel and finds a way of putting her own stamp on that vision. It might not be based on any real or biographical detail that we know about the writer from Providence, Rhode Island, but it finds a way to delve into the extraordinary mind of the writer who seems to have inhabited a far less tangible reality.

The Monstrous Dreams of Mr. Providence is perhaps not quite as dark a journey into the esoteric, the hidden and the occult as Lovecraft's creations, but it's just as ambitious and imaginative in its attempt to find a lighter view of a troubled mind. Seen later in life, Lovecraft - or Providence as he is known here - has become the Caretaker of a phantasmagorical park, a bestiary for the bizarre that welcomes visitors who arrive there perhaps in their dreams. Is the park a creation of his own mind or some kind of collective unconscious? Encouraged by his cat Maldoror he explores the park, feeling responsibility for it, curating it, wondering at the impact of unleashing it onto the public.

Inevitably, we have to look on Lovecraft now in the context of the modern day and in this 'reality' there is a Manager who feels they have a duty of responsibility to the general public or the consumer. She wants to modernise and make the park more accessible and pleasant but finds that it is not something that is easily controlled. She sees its Caretaker too preoccupied by his own obsessions, too caught up in  his fascination with "frivolous, antiquated fantasies". Others in the park have noticed that that the Caretaker is if anything becoming even more detached from his job.

Those dangerous dark fantasies are becoming more pronounced since Providence discovered a mysterious blank book and a castle at the bottom of a pond. Ever since then his dreams are filled with extraordinary colours, huge tentacled creatures and giant floating carp. Although they only come out at night, some of these visions appear to be dangerous to the other workers in the park and perhaps even for visitors. For Providence the greater danger seems to come from the Mental Health Services pursuing him.

Some might find subjecting Lovecraft's visions to a more politically correct worldview where such ideas and imagery are seen as unhealthy and likely have trigger warnings applied as inappropriate, but that is perhaps the point being made. Daria Schmitt finds a way of acknowledging that this is the unfortunate reality we live in today, where imagination is stifled and where too many are forced to play safe. Rather, she shows that Lovecraft - and indeed the imagination - cannot or at least should not be tamed, that it will always find its own way of expression. Even Providence has his doubts about what he has unleashed, but has no option but to follow the path that he is drawn towards.

I had been hoping the interior art would do justice to the cover, but it turns out that the interior artwork is actually even more impressive. This has to be quite simply the most beautiful book of graphic art this year. The fine line black and white figures and characters reminded me somewhat of James A Owen's Starchild - a probably now obscure US indie comic from a few decades ago, so that reference might not be meaningful - but in a European comic-book context, the dark tone of surrealism and fantasy with the playfulness of use of colour is closer to some of the more adventurous experiments with the artform seen in Les Cités obscures by François Schuiten and Benoît Peeters. Essentially however, Schmitt's art is fully capable of conveying the mood, the imagination of its main character, but also stunning in it own right.

Reading notes: The Monstrous Dreams of Mr. Providence by Daria Schmitt was originally published in album format in France and Belgium as Le bestiaire du crépuscule. It's available in English translation in eBook format from Europe Comics. Thanks to the publisher and NetGalley for the review copy.