Comics goes into Lovecraft Country for a "reverse X-Files" called Miskatonic

(Image credit: AfterShock Comics)

After the success of the prose-novel-turned-TV-series Lovecraft Country, comics are joining in on the H.P. Lovecraft craze with a new series titled Miskatonic.

(Image credit: AfterShock Comics)

"Miskatonic is a '20s horror/crime book that's H.P. Lovecraft meets James Ellroy," writer Mark Sable says in the announcement. "It's the story of Miranda Keller, one of the first female agents in what would eventually become The Bureau of Investigation, and Tom Malone, one of the few protagonists to survive H.P. Lovecraft's fiction."

In the new series debuting this November, the duo is sent by J. Edgar Hoover to the Miskatonic Valley - the setting of many of Lovecraft's stories - to investigate a series of bombings.

"At first the terror seems to be to the work of radicals, immigrants and other 'undesirables' that Hoover wants rounded up, just as he did after a similar series of real-life bombings 10 years earlier when he conducted the infamous 'Palmer Raids,'" Sable explains. "In reality, it's a white supremacist occult conspiracy, and can only be stopped by the very people that Hoover detests."

Described as "a kind of reverse X-Files," Miskatonic aims to celebrate Lovecraft's iconic cosmic horror while "turning some of his backwards thinking on its head."

(Image credit: AfterShock Comics)

Sable is working with artist Giorgio Pontrelli, whom he describes as "a master of blending crime and horror..."

Joining Sable and Pontrelli on this creator-owned series is colorist Pippa Bowland, letterer Thomas Mauer, and cover artists Jeremy Haun (with Nick Filardi) and Tyler Crook.

Miskatonic #1 goes on sale on November 11 from AfterShock Comics.

Chris Arrant

Chris Arrant covered comic book news for Newsarama from 2003 to 2022 (and as editor/senior editor from 2015 to 2022) and has also written for USA Today, Life, Entertainment Weekly, Publisher's Weekly, Marvel Entertainment, TOKYOPOP, AdHouse Books, Cartoon Brew, Bleeding Cool, Comic Shop News, and CBR. He is the author of the book Modern: Masters Cliff Chiang, co-authored Art of Spider-Man Classic, and contributed to Dark Horse/Bedside Press' anthology Pros and (Comic) Cons. He has acted as a judge for the Will Eisner Comic Industry Awards, the Harvey Awards, and the Stan Lee Awards. Chris is a member of the American Library Association's Graphic Novel & Comics Round Table. (He/him)