Customer Reviews

Haunt of Horror: Edgar Allan Poe

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Messing with the classics is dicey business. Sure, a lot of good stuff has come from taking the greats and adding news twists and ideas, but obviously any new versions are going to be judged against the originals and, to stand up, they'll have to offer something worthwhile.

Edgar Allan Poe's Haunt of Horror is, unfortunately, a failed attempt at reinventing the classic works of Poe. Rich Margopoulos handles the scripting, and I can't say I enjoyed his interpretations very much.

His prose version of "The Raven," for instance, takes the story in an entirely new direction than Poe had intended and adds a little more violence to the climax, but it sullies the memory of sainted Lenore. "The Tell-Tale Heart" abbreviates the original and adds a twist that, while ironic, cheapens the original effect of the narrator's madness. "The Conqueror Worm" now involves aliens.

Fortunately, these versions all have the original poem or short story included, so you can compare and decide for yourself.

Of course, artist Richard Corben is actually the star of this book, so fans of his artwork should rush to get it. I have never been a fan, however, so his black-and-white illustrations here did nothing to enhance my enjoyment -- even as "Izrafel" becomes a gang war and "Eulalie" becomes a mail-order romance.

Corben and Margopoulos have their fans, and more power to them. But even combined, they're no Poe.

by Tom Knapp, Rambles.(net) editor

Richard Corben is in my humble opinion, the greatest comic artist of all time. I have been a fan since the late seventies, when he was doing airbrush work that is still unparalelled in the comic field. Viewing one of Mr Corbens' airbrushed comics compared to some other comics, is like finding a michaelangelo amoung a pile of scribbled doodles. No offense to other artists, I just think that Corben is something of an anomaly. The work in this book is some of his black and white pen drawings. What he can do with a sharpie is amazing.He can be rather intense in his depiction of graphic horror, definately not for the faint of heart, or young children. Thank you richard, for many years of amazing art.

It has been a delightfull experience to read this comic book. The ilustrations are creepy but well achieved, and the storys are just as I rembember from the original books.

Haunt of Horror: Edgar Allen Poe collects Haunt of Horror: Edgar Allen Poe #1-3 . Richard Corben, with some plot and script assistance from Richard Margopoulos, adapts and illustrates poems and short stories by Edgar Allen Poe. This volume also includes the source material.

Haunt of Horror opens with a truly awful prose rendition of "The Raven." Many of Poe's other poems are retold here, and nearly as badly. The liberties taken with the original texts are always for the poorer, a fact which is made all the more clear by the presence of each original work following the "adapted" stories. "Spirits of the Dead" is one of the few pieces that isn't awful.

Corben's black and white artwork is one of Haunt of Horror's few pluses. He clearly has some stylistic range (although a few of his cartoonier pieces are questionable choices), and he does a fine job with light and shadow, allowing him to set tone and mood appropriately in spite of the literary travesty taking place all around.

Turning the works of Poe into little more than tired EC Comics-style poetic justice gory schlock shorts does the original author a great disservice. Fans of intelligent horror should look elsewhere.

While I appreciated what the authors are trying to do with this volume, I don't feel that they have suceeded in reinterpreting Poe to a degree that satisfies the reader. There isn't enough thoughtfulness in these stories.

The collection opens with a horrible prose translation of the Raven, which seems very odd in light of later stories in the collection which follow the text of other poems word for word.

Frankly, some of the interpretations are a stretch, and the images that the authors create don't always align nicely with the original text.

I do offer a thumbs-up for including the original text from Poe after each interpretation. The authors offer a fair chance for the master to speak.

Finally, the racial content of this book is odd. Whenever black characters are presented, they never have a speaking role. It is as if a white narrator is necessary to detail their lives, because the characters themselves aren't intelligent enough to do so.