Kraken: A Lovecraft-Lite Adventure

Kraken’s opening pages possess the spirit of an unreleased Indiana Jones movie. Captain Kraken and his lovely woman companion run toward a seaplane and away from a group of pirates. There is a bit of humor in the dialogue, but for the most part it’s played straight for this type of story. It’s an entertaining beginning.

Hartman’s art plays into that impression right away. He doesn’t aim for any kind of realism in physique or color and shading. At the same time, his style isn’t cartoonish. The hero characters are tall. The men have longer faces with strong jaws. The appearance of the women characters come in two varieties. Action oriented characters’ appearance is not unlike Captain Kraken with longer faces. Women not given to action have rounder faces, seeming softer by comparison.

That adventure story almost immediately adds a Lovecraftian flare. Captain Kraken gets lost in a supernatural world for three years. Shannon Denton doesn’t milk Captain Kraken’s experience for emotional depth, but it does result in a serious change in his character. Captain Kraken isn’t a lighthearted character in the opening pages, but he does possess a positive, heroic attitude appropriate for an adventure story that has the soul of an old serial. He’s a much harder character afterward, and Kraken takes on a very different feel. Shannon Denton doesn’t lean so much into the Lovecraftian elements that it becomes a straight horror story, though.

The art in Kraken doesn’t try to emphasize the terror so often associated with the Lovecraft style. They’re exciting to see and dynamic. But at the same time, the classic heroic appearance of the good guys feels overwhelming visually. The fight sequences between humans and monsters are fun enough, but light on tension.

Goldy and her Girls are introduced roughly halfway through the book. With Captain Kraken having become a darker character, this group of women brings back the serial style adventure soul from Kraken’s early pages. This ongoing blend of genres is where Kraken really succeeds. Shannon Denton doesn’t deliver the deepest story or the most rip roaring exciting one. But the good story construction makes it a successful page turner.

Coloring is rich but, for the most part, muted. Hartman reserves truly vivid colors for magical phenomena such as the portal that transports Captain Kraken to the supernatural world he spends three years in. The otherwise muted color palette works well enough. Night scenes are the most effective because the dark blue sky contrasts well with characters and backgrounds. Unfortunately this is not the case during daytime scenes where Hartman uses a pale blush for the sky. The result is art that largely blends together, not emphasizing the importance of anything.

Kristen Denton uses a slightly dark blush color for the book’s few caption boxes which leaves them as deprioritized on the page during daytime scenes as everything else. More successful is the standard bright white for the dialogue bubbles. They pop off the page and direct the reader’s attention to the speaking characters who then become more important on the page.