Gou Tanabe and the Missing Adaptations: 5 Untranslated Lovecraft Manga Still Hiding Out

While organizing my collection of untranslated Lovecraft manga and graphic adaptations, I couldn’t shake the feeling that something essential was missing. There’s a handful of Gou Tanabe’s works that exist in French or Italian editions, yet still haven’t seen print in North America. When Zack Davisson mentioned they’ve remained untouched, it felt less like an if and more like a slow, deliberate waiting game. He translated the recent releases and is clearly eager to tackle what’s missing. That comment dates back over a year to Emerald City Comic Con, and as fans of this series, all we can do is wait, and hope it doesn’t drive us mad.

To keep track, I’ve put together a checklist of what’s currently available from Dark Horse Comics, and what’s still waiting in the wings. In part two, I’ll look at what other publishers have scheduled for 2026.

One long-desired treatment that still hasn’t seen full completion in English publishing, despite clearly existing, is the Dream Cycle starring Randolph Carter. This journey into the subconscious is less cosmic horror and more rich, unstable fantasy, threaded with moments of dread. What makes it so compelling is that it reads as a portrait of a vivid, inward-turned mind. Although Lovecraft never openly framed it as autobiography, what emerges circles his worldview unmistakably, including its uglier, xenophobic edges.

Carter is a character into whom Lovecraft pours both fear and longing. He prefers to live in his own bubble and, if he could, never wake at all. At times he must, at others he seems entirely lost. His desire is to leave waking reality behind. Within the Dreamlands, he searches for answers his ancestors once sought, claiming descent from a namesake who lived in the 16th century as a mage. He is no John Dee, but the comparison matters. Whether this lineage is literal or self-mythologized is never clear, and that ambiguity shapes how Carter functions in the 1930s, present in the world, yet emotionally distant from it.

In the Dreamlands, Carter resembles Bastian from Neverending Story, swept into a vast realm of adventure, though one far more sinister than childhood fantasy. The landscapes are darker, stranger, and ruled by a lingering presence that spans past, present, and future. Nyarlathotep is more than a threat. Some have likened him to Akhenaten, a figure of disruption and enforced revelation. To defy such a being is to court annihilation. For Carter to seek Kadath again means forging new alliances, risking identity itself, or submitting to the exchange of minds. In this world, names carry a scent, something that can be caught on the wind, and should the Crawling Chaos catch it, the consequences are left deliberately unspoken.

The Dream Cycle may not have been fully mapped when Lovecraft was writing, but in the hands of the right artist, writer, or filmmaker, it remains adaptable. The real challenge is commitment. Randolph Carter must remain the spine across every story he inhabits. Any screen version would likely require a trilogy to chart his full arc. The larger obstacle lies in structure. Dreams are fragmented. They resist coherence. A faithful adaptation would need to embrace that instability, even if it disrupts expectations of a clean beginning, middle, and end.

Another challenge lies in distilling its archetypes without sanding down the sharp edges that make it unsettling in the first place.

The Untranslated Lovecraft Manga Dream Cycle series consists of:

Author: Ed Sum

I'm a freelance videographer and entertainment journalist (Absolute Underground Magazine, Two Hungry Blokes, and Otaku no Culture) with a wide range of interests. From archaeology to popular culture to paranormal studies, there's no stone unturned. Digging for the past and embracing "The Future" is my mantra. View all posts by Ed Sum