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Post by profh0011 on Mar 7, 2020 10:52:48 GMT -5
The 2nd story in the book... would you believe, as of this post, I've found 46 different comics version of " THE FALL OF THE HOUSE OF USHER"? "LA CHUTE DE LA MAISON USHER" / Version 8 "Extracts of Texts by Charles Baudelaire chosen by Robert Cottereau" / Art by ALEXIS-THOMAS HINSBERGER Page 57 / I had a lot of fun fitting the new text into the space allotted in the art. Page 58 Page 66 / Madeline is place in the crypt. Page 71 / I had to add an extra block of text, because I didn't want to translate the text seen in the artwork. Final page / I got very creative with the text placement on this, as originally there was no room at all for the large word " END".
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Post by profh0011 on Mar 8, 2020 10:45:24 GMT -5
The 3rd story in the book is the one about the horse. So far, there's "only" 10 comics versions of this one. "METZENGERSTEIN" / Version 3 Adaptation by Claude Moliterni / Art by ALEXIS-THOMAS HINSBERGER Page 81 / it was a bit cramped fitting the English text into this one... Page 83 / I was able to use the original Poe text verbatim for most of the dialogue. Page 87 / the horse goes wild... Final page.
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Post by profh0011 on Mar 10, 2020 12:50:36 GMT -5
The next one is about 5-1/2 years overdue. I had it since it was reprinted in 1987, but somehow, it didn't turn up on ANYONE's list of Poe comics adaptations... until I ran across it on Richard Gagnon's " Who's Out There?" blog back in January... a piece he posted a year earlier. Since I had the B&W reprint, I got to color it! THE SPIRITcover by WILL EISNER (Register & Tribune Syndicate / August 22, 1948) from the GCD: MY version: "THE FALL OF THE HOUSE OF USHER" / Version 3 Adaptation & Layouts by Will Eisner / Art by JERRY GRANDENETTI The painting Roderick does is the first glimpse of BRIGHT colors in this thing... Will Eisner complained about the perspective in the panel where Madeline comes thru the door, saying the bottom two-thirds of the narrator's body couldn't possibly fit behind that door. However, lookng at it after I was done posting it, I noticed something else entirely. "Funny enough... the panel on page 6 that Eisner complains about, does NOT look like a doorway at all to me. Instead, it appears as if one is looking DOWN at the lid of a coffin being opened! What doorway would be so deep? And it certainly isn't, in the following panel. Without even being aware of the perspective issue, I wound up using some expressionistic color that has NOTHING to do with reality! (I had previously done the same, at the same point of the story, in Gino Dauro's adaptation.)" Final page. I couldn't shake the feeling that Jerry Grandenetti based the un-named narrator on actor Hans Conreid. REPRINTS. THE SPIRIT 34cover by WILL EISNER (Kitchen Sink Press / August 1987) THE SPIRIT ARCHIVES Volume 17cover by WILL EISNER (DC Comics / [January] 2006)
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Post by profh0011 on Mar 15, 2020 16:54:07 GMT -5
The earliest POE biography comic just turned up... from ENCHANTING LOVE 2(Kirby Publishing / November 1949) "THE BEAUTIFUL ANNABEL LEE" Art by Bill Draut & Bruno Premiani Final page. It was taking too much time to clean up the word balloons, and when I saw the last page had 18 word balloons, I threw up my hands and decided to just replace the lettering in the computer.
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Post by MWGallaher on Mar 15, 2020 17:20:45 GMT -5
Henry, while this thread has been mostly your solo act, garnering few comments, I just wanted to chime in and let you know I'm enjoying the heck out of seeing this astounding trove of Poe adaptations you've gathered, translated and re-scripted and colored. I'm surprised at how many foreign comics publishers have turned to the American Poe, far outnumbering domestic adaptations, apparently, and how deep into Poe's catalog they've gone. I'd sure love to see a faithful, contemporary adaptation of Arthur Gordon Pym myself some day...
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Post by profh0011 on Mar 16, 2020 22:34:05 GMT -5
Thanks! I've been saying, if I had any idea how many of these things there were, I probably never would have gotten started. I've been trying to move back on to the 70s and beyond for several YEARS now, but, more and more older stuff keeps turning up! Just last month, a friend of mine in Mexico found ANOTHER version of " USHER" from 1969, which he plans to send me scans of as soon as he gets it... while this weekend, I ordered a book from France from 1948!!! Frankly, I don't like the art style in it at all... but it takes up about 90% of the pages, so, for the purposes of this project, I felt it was "essential". I've found 7 comics versions of " ARTHUR GORDON PYM", the most recent being by Enrique Alcatena in Argentina (which is available in an English edition). I have the ones from 1955 and 1963 up on the blog (NO idea who did the 1963 Mexican version). The 20th & final Skywald POE adaptation was intended to be " AGP" with art by Cesar Lopez Vera, but Skywald went belly-up JUST before it was published! I have not been able to find even a single image of the art from that version. I also got the early-80s Mexican digest. That's one gonna be a "problem", if I ever get that far, as while most of the digests I've been getting are pretty beat up, the copy I bought looks to be in MINT condition... and I'm gonna feel terrible if I wind up having to damage the spine in order to scan in the pages properly. All this is a way, ironically, to help me stay busy and keep my sanity, as the last 6 years or so, I haven't been able to focus on MY OWN work. It's like some part of my brain shut off, and I haven't been able to turn it back on yet. I suppose that's why I'm putting MORE work and effort into this project that I probably should... I can't stand to do anything halfway.
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Post by profh0011 on Mar 22, 2020 17:03:31 GMT -5
Both Marvel & EC did a number of very-LOOSE adaptations of Poe's stories ("inspired by" might be a more appropriate description). Marvel's 3rd tackled one of his nastiest... SPELLBOUND 2cover by BILL EVERETT (Marvel / April 1952) "THE END!" (based on "THE PIT AND THE PENDULUM") / Version 3 Adaptation by ?? / Art by RUSS HEATH In this story, the eventual victim is an actor auditioning for a job on a TV show adapting Poe's story... Things get a little too real for his liking, once they're on the air... The SICK punchline... NEVER reprinted, and hard to come by. This was YEARS overdue setting up on my blog.
Would you believe? THE DAY!!!-- after I finished this, Richard Gagnon pointed me at the "Read Comics Online" blog, which had VASTLY-better scans of this story. So I no sooner finished cleaning up the wretchedly-awful scans... then I started in on it AGAIN-- cleaning up MUCH-better scans. Replacing them here as I go... (done!)
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Post by profh0011 on Aug 1, 2020 12:03:17 GMT -5
The single longest story in this entire project so far: LE AVENTURES DE GORDON PYM(Collection LeRuban Rouge / Librairie Arthème Fayard / France / 1948) art by BERNARD LAMOTTE I ran across this book on 11-6-2019 while browsing the entire online catalog of the La Bergerie bookstore in Switzerland. Now I have to admit, I wasn't crazy about the art style in this book. But there is a LOT of it. Which made it, in my eyes, essential. The problem, as of 3-7-2020, was that this would have been the single most expensive book I would ever have bought... and I'm kinda strapped for cash. But then... incredibly... just 3 days later (3-10-2020), Canadian fan Richard Gagnon pointed me at a seller on Amazon France, who had the book for HALF what the store in Switzerland was selling it for (that includes the shipping). HALF!!! So suddenly, I didn't have to wait to buy it. I did wind up having to call my bank, as, for the 3rd time in 2 years, a transaction with France somehow set off their security alert, but next thing, I received word the book had shipped... and I got my hands on it on 3-27-2020. Just 3 days later, I started processing it. WOW!!! Incidentally, the moment I laid eyes on page 10 (the 2nd story page), I instantly fell in love with the delightfully "cartoony" drawing style, and suddenly, couldn't wait to clean up the pages and add COLOR! The 1st chapter of the novel took so many pages of this adaptation, I knew they were going to wind up CRAMMING the rest into relatively few pages. All the same, the adaptation took about 110 pages. Here's the beginning of the 2nd chapter, on page 28. Jumping past Arthur being stowed onboard by Augustus... the pirate mutiny and mass murder... taking back the ship... the hurricane... near-starvation and an act of cannibalism... here's the scene where they're FINALLY rescued by another ship, on page 82. Page 87 / One of several delightful depictions of the 2nd ship's voyage... Page 94 / the ill-advised meeting with the savage tribe... Page 112 / escape from the island after the massacre and complete destruction of their ship... Page 117 / the ABRUPT non-ending, as they approach a waterfall... The abrupt, inexplicable, and clearly quite unfinished "ending" of this story, has be one of the biggest and most infamous " WHAT THE F***?" moments in all of literature. Did Poe ever intend to finish the story, and deal with the various unseen later things mentioned by Pym in his earlier passages? Did Poe's recurring real-life misfortunes interfere with his doing so-- or was what we got entirely deliberate-- one big JOKE foisted on his reading public? No one will probably ever know. One thing is certain. This story-- unfinished as it was-- perhaps because it was unfinished-- inspired numerous later writers with their own stories of Antarctic exploration. In fact, no less than 3 of them wrote actual if unofficial (and unrelated) sequels! " THE SPHINX OF THE ICE FIELDS" (Jules Verne / 1897), " A STRANGE DISCOVERY" (Charles Romyn Dake / 1898), and " AT THE MOUNTAINS OF MADNESS" (H.P. Lovecraft / 1936). At least 2 of these have been adapted as comics. As I type this (7-31-2020), I'm considering including them at some point as part of this project. In addition, at least 2 Edgar Rice Burroughs stories may also have been inspired by Poe's story: " AT THE EARTH'S CORE" (1914) and " THE LAND THAT TIME FORGOT" (1924). In turn, the Lovecraft story, it has been strongly suggested, was one of the inspirations for the movie " ALIEN" (1979), and even moreso, " ALIENS VS. PREDATORS" (2004). By extension, this means that " AGP" may well well have led to " AVP".
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Post by profh0011 on Oct 6, 2020 16:12:21 GMT -5
Possibly the single most time-consuming "upgrade" I've ever done... from YELLOWJACKET COMICS #4(Charlton / December 1944) comes the 1st comics version of Poe's "THE FALL OF THE HOUSE OF USHER" Art by Gus Schrotter This is currently the single-OLDEST comic-book in my entire collection! Final page...
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Post by tarkintino on Oct 6, 2020 20:41:55 GMT -5
Possibly the single most time-consuming "upgrade" I've ever done... from YELLOWJACKET COMICS #4(Charlton / December 1944) comes the 1st comics version of Poe's "THE FALL OF THE HOUSE OF USHER" Art by Gus Schrotter This is currently the single-OLDEST comic-book in my entire collection! Final page... A short-lived superhero comic ( Yellowjacket Comics lasted until #10, then he was swapped out with comedy and westerns) is not the kind of title one first thinks of as hosting Poe adaptations. That, and the very crude art is off-putting. I wonder why E. Levy decided to adapt Poe in this kind of comic..unless they jumped on the "try-out" model used over 20 years later on DC titles such as Showcase and The Brave and the Bold.
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Post by profh0011 on Oct 7, 2020 17:09:47 GMT -5
A short-lived superhero comic ( Yellowjacket Comics lasted until #10, then he was swapped out with comedy and westerns) is not the kind of title one first thinks of as hosting Poe adaptations. That, and the very crude art is off-putting. I wonder why E. Levy decided to adapt Poe in this kind of comic..unless they jumped on the "try-out" model used over 20 years later on DC titles such as Showcase and The Brave and the Bold. Could be.
YC featured "The Black Cat" by Bill Allison (#1), "The Pit And The Pendulum" by Gus Shrotter (#3), "The Fall of the House Of Usher" by Gus Shrotter (#4) and "The Tell-Tale Heart" by Rudy Palais (#6).
Gilberton did 3 of those after, all 3 much better than the Charlton versions.
This one had some of the worst-looking scans I grabbed off the Comic Book Plus site 6 years ago. I felt really lucky to find a coverless copy on Ebay for around $13.00 ! Being able to do my own high-res scans right off the actual comic made the EXCESSIVE clean-up work worth it.
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Post by profh0011 on Oct 11, 2020 12:43:27 GMT -5
Okay, a week late on scanning & processing, but... MY LATEST ACQUISITION (and minor cover clean-up)... PANICO #3(Safari Editorial, S.A. / Mexico / 2000 ?) " Enterrado Vivo" (" The Premature Burial") Adaptation & Art by Ruben Jaimes This publisher is a real mystery. Apart from ads on a variety of sites (including Ebay) by ONE seller who got his hands on a number of titles from them, I have not been able to find ANY info about them ANYWHERE online. I have to make a wild guess that the book came out sometime between 1990 - 2000, based entirely on a photo of a cell-phone in a PHONE SEX advert on the back cover. (Yes, that's what I said.) I just happened to see the cover on Ebay by dumb luck. I couldn't miss the title " Enterrado Vivo", or the cover painting obviously based on the poster for " X-- THE MAN WITH X-RAY EYES" with Ray Milland, made the same year as Corman's " THE PREMATURE BURIAL". Yes, the story is very loosely based on Poe's story (though his name is not mentioned anywhere in the book), it seems slightly inspired by the Corman film, but it's also partly... a WESTERN. Go figure. I couldn't get the sticker off, I wasn't even going to try, and while it looks a bit beat-up, I decided the best thing was to just adjust the brightness & contrast slightly, and leave the rest of it AS-IS. This book is, oddly, 4" wide x 5-5/8" high. So, bigger than a "mini-comic", but smaller than a "digest".
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Post by Prince Hal on Oct 12, 2020 15:05:53 GMT -5
Henry, while this thread has been mostly your solo act, garnering few comments, I just wanted to chime in and let you know I'm enjoying the heck out of seeing this astounding trove of Poe adaptations you've gathered, translated and re-scripted and colored. I'm surprised at how many foreign comics publishers have turned to the American Poe, far outnumbering domestic adaptations, apparently, and how deep into Poe's catalog they've gone. I'd sure love to see a faithful, contemporary adaptation of Arthur Gordon Pym myself some day... The French loved Poe tout de suite, led by Baudelaire, who took inspiration from him and saw much of Poe reflected in himself, thus incarnating in his own life one of Poe's favorite tropes, the doppelganger. Poe is often acknowledged as having had an enormous influence on the French symbolists and surrealists. A hundred-plus years ago, the Spanish critic Angel Guerra wrote, "Edgar Poe's native land is America: ... his elevation to immortality, with justice due to his merits, is the gift of generous France." So, he and Jerry Lewis. There's a team-up comic there somewhere.
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Post by MWGallaher on Oct 12, 2020 15:31:05 GMT -5
It's not at all hard to imagine DC doing a string of Poe adaptations in their Adventures of Jerry Lewis back in the 60's during Roger Corman's film heyday. I can imagine Oksner covers with Jerry relaxing under the pendulum (remember the cover of his Batman team-up?) or being bricked up in the wine cellar or being driven nuts by a black cat in the wall...
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Post by Prince Hal on Oct 12, 2020 15:58:34 GMT -5
It's not at all hard to imagine DC doing a string of Poe adaptations in their Adventures of Jerry Lewis back in the 60's during Roger Corman's film heyday. I can imagine Oksner covers with Jerry relaxing under the pendulum (remember the cover of his Batman team-up?) or being bricked up in the wine cellar or being driven nuts by a black cat in the wall... YES!! That you can imagine these stories and the covers actually being published is further proof of the wonderfulness of the Silver Age at DC. Coming next in Stanley and his Monster: "This Monster, This Monster." In which Spot reveals he's actually Cthulhu.
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