The House on the Borderland

May 7, 2001
William Hope Hodgson's visionary 1908 novel The House on the Borderland
proves fertile ground for legendary underground comix artist Richard Corben. It's the haunting tale of an accursed mansion teetering metaphorically between hallucinatory human visions and the dark bottomless pit of the human subconscious. In Revelstroke's adaptation, two young backpackers discover a decaying manuscript among the ancient ruins of a manor house in the remote Irish countryside. They read aloud from the moldy tome, invoking the horrible story of Hodgson's fictional narrator, Byron Gault, who tells a harrowing tale of inexplicable evil and violent struggle against terrors. In the winding cellar corridors of the decrepit house, Gault, his sister and their dog fight off savage attacks by cloven-hoofed half-humans erupting from the depths of the mansion's foundations. Or do they? Hodgson's hair-raising story brings into question the very sanity and reliability of the narrator himself. The nearly 40 pages of mystical descriptions from the original novel (i.e., an exploding sun and the notion of traveling the breadth of the universe in an instant) are judiciously adapted to the graphic novel format. Corben's moody color and dramatically illustrated panel sequences make this eerie book potent reading and a captivating tribute to the original novel. There is an introduction by noted comics writer Alan Moore.

September 7, 2020
The Horror Writers Association continues its Haunted Library of Horror Classics series with this reprint of Hodgson’s eerie 1908 novel, a pioneering work in the weird fiction canon. Two travelers in Ireland come across a large house that has half-fallen into an immense pit surrounded by brambles and overgrowth. Within the house, they discover a tattered diary written by an unnamed man, referred to in footnotes as the Recluse, who lived in the house with his sister turned housekeeper, Mary, and canine companion, Pepper, his only friend. The Recluse writes of the unimaginable horrors he’s experienced while living in the house, encountering demons he calls the “swine-things” and descending into madness as he visits otherworldly dimensions and sees visions of the end of the world. Even seasoned horror readers will be taken in by the atmosphere of existential dread Hodgson evokes in the Recluse’s descriptions of his torment. An introduction by contemporary horror titan Ramsey Campbell, a brief account of Hodgson’s life, and footnotes throughout add helpful context that will ease readers into Hodgson’s uncanny world. Weird fiction fans should snap this up.