Allen Koszowski is in A Lovecraftian Retrospective, but a couple years ago Centipede Press devoted an entire volume to his art, Dreams from the Dark Side (2022), as part of their Artist Series, and I thought it would be fun to cover it.

I met Allen K. (as I think of him, because that’s how he signs most of his work) at the 1993 NecronomiCon. He had a table covered with binders, each full of clear plastic sleeves containing prints, some standard sizes, some small, some large. He had stuff for all dollar amounts. In my memory, I spent hours poring through those binders. I bought at least three prints. One is very small and remains in a box of similarly odd-sized prints. The other two — a family portrait from Innsmouth and a view of Cthulhu — have been framed and on one of my walls ever since.

Looking through this book is a bit like reliving that time at that table at Necronomicon. There is so much. Rather than chronologically, pieces are grouped thematically, giant spiders with giant spiders, eyeball monsters with eyeball monsters. It’s neat to see Allen’s approach to similar subjects change across the years. It’s all stippled, which is impressively methodical. He works in a style I associate primarily with ’70s fanzines, developed in the wake of Virgil Finlay, King Stipple. A lot of Allen’s work reminds me of Stephen Fabian.

Another cool thing? Perhaps because of his origins in the fanzine scene, I get the distinct impression that Allen K. draws whatever the heck he wants. I recognize quite a few pieces that wound up on book covers — A Place Called Dagon leaps out, as do a couple Necronomicon Press catalog covers — but they mingle with super heroes, Star Trek characters, Harryhausen monsters, endless Lovecraftian entities. This book collects Allen K.’s art, but I think it is also a collection of the things he loves.