Dread Island

Cover art by Menton Matthews III. Published by IDW Publishing.

Dread Island is one of the strangest (and best) novellas of Joe R. Lansdale’s career, a “Classics Mutilated” that takes its place among notable tales as “On the Far Side of the Cadillac Desert with Dead Folks”, and “The Events Concerning a Nude Fold-out Found in a Harlequin Romance”.

We’re pleased to be able to offer the IDW Exclusive signed edition of Dread Island, a mashup of Huck Finn, Jim, Tom Sawyer, and stranger parts of American folklore, printed in two colors throughout, in a style that makes the book’s pages appear to be naturally aged and worn.

First, here is Joe R. Lansdale writing about the novella:

“I wrote Dread Island based on my love for Mark Twain, which collided with my interest in Lovecraft, and the fact that the Uncle Remus tales may have been the first stories I ever read. And then there were comics. I always saw Dread Island as a kind of comic book in prose, the old Classics Illustrated look, that’s how it played out in my head.”

And a taste of the novella’s narrative voice:

“This here story is a good’n, and just about every word of it is true. It’s tempting to just jump to the part about where we seen them horrible things, and heads was pulled off and we was in a flying machine and such. But I ain’t gonna do it, cause Jim says that ain’t the way to tell a proper yarn.”