Today, as you may know, is the 161st anniversary of the mysterious death of Edgar Allan Poe. I've babbled about this before, in ...Wearing Clothes That Were Not His Own and in This Time the Burial ISN'T Premature! (where you can see Sarah J. and me paying special tribute to Edgar at the Poe Museum here in Richmond, VA), so I won't belabor the point. What I will say is, long before the Intarwebs decided H. P. Lovecraft and Great Cthulhu were über-memes, cultural poachers focused their attention upon Poe.
And who better? While Lovecraft grappled with dark, unspeakable cosmic forces infesting the universe with malign intent with humans merely inconsequential window dressing, Poe dealt with what were essentially personal tragedies, albeit deeply macabre ones. Nothing wrong with either approach, but there's something more... personal... in Poe's stories.
Which makes them that much more unnerving.
And perfect for late-night October reading.
"The Black Cat" from Creepy #62 (May 1974), adaptation and art by Bernie Wrightson
"The Tell-Tale Heart" from Creepy #3 (June 1965), art by Reed Crandall
(see the complete illustrated versions from Warren Publishing at Golden Age Comic Book Stories)
(and for an amusing comic strip, check out "It's A Laugh A Minute With Edgar Allan Poe")
2 comments:
Oh Eddie,we hardly knew ye!
Don't make me come over there!
Oh, wait. I already did.
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