^The changes have been slow, over many months. As the latest chapter puts it, "familiarity had dulled them".

Lovecraft isn't something I'm expecting to read here, but this pretty intriguing. I do like the art too!

prior to reading the chapters posted on Dynasty, i had never read anything by Lovecraft. I have to admit that not only are the stories (at least the portions of the stories that have been posted here) are amazingly disturbing, but they are also addictive. i was an Asimov fan growing up. there are some stories that bored me or i just couldn't get into. so far, i have not been bored. disturbed, yes. bored, no.

last edited at Jan 21, 2020 12:35AM

Is it appropriate or ironic that a story about an unknown color is in black and white? I've never actually read any Lovecraft, but I do like lovecraftian-inspired things so I'm enjoying this. Thanks for the translation!

So he‘s a farmers who‘s animals turn mad and the soil of his land got currupted to a degree where it can‘t be used anymore. Wildlife in his area has abnormal growth and seems more dangerous while his family get‘s currupted one after another...

One might ask why the heck he won‘t move...

Unexplainable, the fool stays on his land without a thought of abandonment. Maybe the coins it would take to move the livestock that no longer return a cent was too much for the farmer who had to watch his once luscious and profitable land crumble to grey ash. Or perhaps the weight of his family tree burdens his shoulders so that his feet would take root into the land of his forefathers. Worst still, maybe the once pious man is already corrupted by the tiny shard of alien malignity that came from the space between worlds. Was it cruel fate, or was it astronomical probability that such a man would encounter an unfathomable ordeal.
The poor farmer, his tenebrous past obscured by fogged narrative, accused of acting the fool and taking the steps of a madman. Have some clemency.

to stop being an ass for a minute, i'm sure there's a reason the farmer doesn't want to leave, it's not big enough a deal to dispel any immersion. worst case scenario, lovecraft just didnt thought of it.

other than that, this is really cool, the art is amazing. a shame that at the time of writing it wont be long before the finale is up.

So he‘s a farmers who‘s animals turn mad and the soil of his land got currupted to a degree where it can‘t be used anymore. Wildlife in his area has abnormal growth and seems more dangerous while his family get‘s currupted one after another...

One might ask why the heck he won‘t move...

Isn't it implied that the colour already has its hooks in him and the family, just in a more subtle way than the plants and animals?

Didn't know there was a movie of this

Ah, always one of my fave Lovecraft stories. And the artist does a smashing job with the atmosphere of growing wrongness, Daylight Horror and creeping despair.

So he‘s a farmers who‘s animals turn mad and the soil of his land got currupted to a degree where it can‘t be used anymore. Wildlife in his area has abnormal growth and seems more dangerous while his family get‘s currupted one after another...

One might ask why the heck he won‘t move...

Isn't it implied that the colour already has its hooks in him and the family, just in a more subtle way than the plants and animals?

IIRC the original story as much is more or less explicitly stated later on. And the baseline universal peasant farmer fixation on "my very own plot of land" would have made the psychological threshold of packing up and leaving plenty high to begin with before the influence of the Colours started really kicking in.

Blockbuster movie adaptation on the way! No not of the manga, a modernization of the original story:

https://youtu.be/uEX8vtCMqQE

I find it highly amusing that one of the series I'm heavily anticipating here in Dynasty Reader is a non yuri, cosmic horror story by Lovecraft :D

Now this is how you properly illustrate some Lovecraft.

Yeah, they should've moved, but like... with what money? Their harvest became useless and inedible before anything creepy really happened, and that's a pretty big blow to a small family farm. At that point, hoping that the worst was over and banking on the next harvest being better was all they could really do. By the time things got really bad, they couldn't exactly sell the land that everyone knows is cursed and evil. They would've had to abandon it all and rely on the charity of their neighbours to survive. Maybe that would've been the right choice, but it's definitely an unappealing one, and by that point, the colour had its hooks in them.

Ah, I see this site was govern by the People of Cthulhyuri too... nope, it's one of a kind.
Never heard of this manga before.
This is so amazing! Thanks!

I find it highly amusing that one of the series I'm heavily anticipating here in Dynasty Reader is a non yuri, cosmic horror story by Lovecraft :D

I know, I'm delighted!

Oh man, I love the slow pacing of this chapter. And the Colour is easily one of the better Lovecraft monsters. We never even get close to figuring out what it wants, if there is anything it wants. Is it feeding on the farm and its inhabitants? Is it malicious? Or is it just some unthinking force that reshapes things it comes into contact with? It's so eerie, not as crude as Lovecraft monsters can be.

last edited at Jan 24, 2020 12:53PM

Ah, queer plants. There's your yuri connection.

The art really is stellar.
I do think black and white is incredibly fitting for this story- there's no better way to depict a color that can't be described.
It really is one of HP's best works. There's a sense of mystery that it never even hints at the answer to. There's no ruins, tomes written by madmen, or odd statues, just something outright alien that really just can't be understood. It feels reminiscent of A Roadside Picnic's Zone, now that I think of it.
I'd love to see this author's take on the Dream Cycle, though I suppose his style seems more suited to realism.

last edited at Jan 26, 2020 4:15AM

I know, right? The combination of supernatural horror and psychological horror is great. Lovecraft usually did the former, rarely the latter. In this story, the balance is perfect. Nahum is forced to witness the slow degeneration of his family, and there's nothing he can do to stop it. The land is poisoned, the water is poisoned, the animals, the crops, everything is "pizened" as he says himself... and yet they cannot leave: they are dirt poor, they have nothing else, they would be doomed in the big city (he would be probably jobless, they would have to beg and eventually starve). And, at the same time, Ammi (who is an external witness, unlike Nahum) has to face a horror that only reveals itself little by little: the manifestation of an alienness beyond our reality, something the human mind cannot grasp, typified by an impossible color outside the spectrum that he is completely unable to define or describe.

The adaptation is great, awesome art and pace. Tanabe is an extraordinarily talented author. And yes, really, it's as you say: only in a comic in black and white could you actually "show" the color out of space to the readers.

last edited at Jan 26, 2020 1:30PM

^ Actually... there are those who tried to put it in color. It gives stuff like this:

Since you can't paint a color that doesn't exist, these artists usually depict it as a swirl of iridescent everchanging hues of various other colors, lol. Such as, in this case, shades of green, magenta, ocher, etc. (All colors traditionally associated in sci-fi with alien planets and peoples...)

That land's been tainted by that meteorite, definitely not drinking that water.

Wow, I really enjoyed this story. The manga is very well made, I love the highly detailed art.

Here's another example:

This guy decided to depict the impossible Color as pure white. White is supposed to be a mix of absolutely all other colors, so... technically, not that wrong.

^ Actually... there are those who tried to put it in color. It gives stuff like this:

(https://i.imgur.com/oqzStbs.png)

Since you can't paint a color that doesn't exist, these artists usually depict it as a swirl of iridescent everchanging hues of various other colors, lol. Such as, in this case, shades of green, magenta, ocher, etc. (All colors traditionally associated in sci-fi with alien planets and peoples...)

I would say this is very much what the swirl in the manga also makes it look like.

Didn't know there was a movie of this

There's a movie?

This guy decided to depict the impossible Color as pure white. White is supposed to be a mix of absolutely all other colors, so... technically, not that wrong.

I mean... technically, it's not like the human eye and brain even register electromagnetic radiation past a relatively narrow range of wavelengths to begin with, so barring some psychic fuckery acting directly on your mind you wouldn't even as-such see an "impossible" colour anyway.

Probably better interpret it as "a colour outside the range of experience of an uneducated late-1800s New England hick" which in practice would be rather a wide variety of them. :v