Edgar Allan Poe

Derek Parker Royal Sequential Poe-try: Recent Graphic Narrative Adaptations of Poe It would be difficult to find an American author adaptation of his work in curious new directions. whose work has seen more multimedia adapta- Earlier comic book versions were more-or-less tions than Edgar Allan Poe. From video games straightforward and static representations of the to cartoons, from CDs to action figures—Poe’s material. Their fidelity to the original texts was of stories, poems, and general persona have found central concern; the writers followed the storylines expression in a variety of popular forms. In film closely and left little room for narrative variation. and television alone, according to The Internet Movie However, since the late 1990s, several comics have Database, there have been well over 150 adaptations given a new twist to Poe’s stories and poetry by of Poe’s work and/or life, including Sherlock Holmes opting for nonliteral translations through differ- in the Great Murder Mystery (1908), a string of 1960s entiated contexts, ahistorical settings, unresolved B movies by Roger Corman , and a Poe-inspired endings, iconic or even cartoony illustrations, and episode in the recent Showtime television series ambiguous tones that leave open the possibilities Masters of Horror.1 In comic books, another visual for comic irony. These recent adaptations betray medium and the focus of this essay, examples have what could be called a more postmodern distanc- ranged from the reverential to the parodic. Clas- ing technique that not only pays homage to the sics Illustrated, a series of comic books based on content of Poe’s narratives but, perhaps more canonical works of world literature, has devoted significantly, translates the complexform of the nar- no fewer than five issues to the poetry and tales ration. In other words, instead of being primarily of Poe. Their adaptations of such works as “The concerned with “getting the story right,” several Pit and the Pendulum,” “The Fall of the House contemporary comic-book writers and illustrators of Usher,” and “The Tell-Tale Heart” are more or have attempted to capture the romantically ironic less true to the original storylines without much spirit of Poe’s aesthetics. graphic flourish or narrative ambiguity.2 And be- The comics discussed here are limited to those fore it became a magazine, Mad comics published that strike some kind of balance between word and a parody of “The Raven” that included the poem image—interdependent combinations where text in full accompanied by absurdly exaggerated il- and picture create meaning in ways that neither lustrations.3 In fact, according to comics scholar could alone—or in some cases comics that give M. Thomas Inge, there have been well over two primacy to pictures. Of particular significance hundred instances of Poe’s work appearing in the to my analysis is Linda Hutcheon’s recent work medium, making him the American writer most on adaptation theory, which addresses issues of often adapted to comic-book form. creative reception and appropriation—or how Such an abundance of material is indeed stag- individuals deliberatively translate, manipulate, gering, giving pause to almost any popular-culture and critically revisit a particular text. One way in critic. As Inge scrupulously documented, comic- which Hutcheon approaches adaptation is through book translations of Poe’s work have appeared un- a “reception continuum,” determining the extent der a variety of series titles from the 1940s and into to which authors, at one end of the spectrum, aim the 1990s.4 But recently there have been several no- to be theoretically “true” in their translations of table examples of Poe-related comics that take the an original text (even though such fidelity is real- 56 Poe Studies/Dark Romanticism istically impossible) or, on the other end, loosely Marvel Comics’ Haunt of Horror: Edgar Allan Poe contextualize the prior text through expansive ad- (2006).11 All three contain stories that use the denda or diffuse “spin-offs.”5 In the latter category, medium of comics to enhance the storyline and we find three recent comic book series that adapt accentuate many of the gothic elements found in the work of Edgar Allan Poe with great liberty: Ja- Poe’s writings. For instance, in their adaptation of son Asala’s Poe, Roman Dirge’s Lenore, and the DC “The Premature Burial,” Tom Pomplun and Joe Comics miniseries Batman: Nevermore.6 Two other Ollmann use panel framing to heighten the sense “spin-offs” of Poe’s life and work take the form of confinement that thematically underlies the of graphic novels, In the Shadow of Edgar Allan Poe story. During the tale’s climactic scene, where the (2002) and Ravenous (2005).7 The first is a fumetti narrator awakens and believes himself to be buried (a novel in sequential photographs) and considers alive, Ollmann (the illustrator) shifts from the the possibility that Poe’s bizarre art may have been comic’s dominant pattern of four- and five-panel inspired not by alcoholism or depression but by pages—where the panels are laid out in square or supernatural demons. The latter is a modern-day broad rectangular boxes—to a series of shallow detective story (à la The X-Files) inspired by such sto- and elongated panels that visually “entomb” the ries as “The Tell-Tale Heart,” “The Masque of the protagonist (see fig. 1). After a sequence of eight Red Death,” and “William Wilson.”8 Although all coffin-shaped panels, all of which show a panicky five of these narrative offshoots—the three comic narrator pounding on the upper inside of the book series as well as the two graphic novels—are comic panel—as if he were desperate to break out intriguing extensions of Poe and his works, none of the frame border itself, thereby blurring the directly engages or “faithfully” adapts Poe’s origi- boundaries between the graphic fiction and its nal texts. As such, they are of marginal interest to outer surroundings—Ollmann resumes his previ- the project at hand and serve merely as illustra- ous square-panel style for the story’s denouement. tive contrasts to the more “accurate” adaptations. Such shifts in paneling style not only underscore Furthermore, I will ignore those graphic narratives the story’s morbid focus but also enhance the arc that drastically privilege the word over the picture, of Poe’s original plot.12 or what Scott McCloud has called “word specific” Perhaps more importantly, and as the “Pre- combinations.9 This kind of comic-art adaptation mature Burial” adaptation clearly demonstrates, usually includes Poe’s poetry or tales in full and the stories in these recent collections attempt uses illustrations sparingly and only as a means to to capture the aesthetics of Poe’s writings. They compliment the original texts.10 Since I am inter- approximate, at least when compared to earlier ested in the ways comic book writers and illustra- comic-book adaptations, the kind of ironic stance tors have translated not only Poe’s storylines but G. R. Thompson explores in his foundational his manner of narrating them as well, I concentrate writings on Poe’s work. Thompson holds out for on those recent works that more closely resemble, a more complicated reading of the author than rather than are merely inspired by, Poe’s actual had previously been allowed. Instead of seeing poetry and fiction. Poe as a flawed and inconsistent gothic writer, as The focus of the present study will be on many prior critics had done, he argues that the flat recent comics closer to the other end of Hutch- or straightforward character of Poe’s narrative is eon’s continuum, those that retell or reenvision merely a facade, one whose surface masks a more the actual tales and poetry, yet without the strict sophisticated vision: adherence to narrative fidelity attempted by ear- Almost everything that Poe wrote is qualified by, indeed lier renditions. These are contained largely in controlled by, a prevailing duplicity or irony in which three graphic novels: two collections released by the artist presents us with slyly insinuated mockery of Eureka Productions—Horror Classics, volume 10 both ourselves as readers and himself as writer. Irony of Graphic Classics (2004); and Edgar Allan Poe (3rd was the device that allowed him both to contemplate edition, 2006), volume 1 of Graphic Classics—and his obsession with death, murder, torture, insanity, guilt, Sequential Poe-try 57 Fig. 1. Two panels from Tom Pomplun and Joe Ollmann’s adaptation of “The Premature Burial,” in Edgar Allan Poe, vol. 1 of Graphic Classics ed. Tom Pomplun, 3rd ed. (Mount Horeb, WI: Eureka Productions, 2006), 45. © Joe Ollmann. loss, and fear of total annihilation in a meaningless a negotiation of opposite possibilities explains universe, and also to detach and protect himself from how the comic burlesque voice in Poe’s fiction the obsession.13 can stand alongside the darker and more gothic Thompson places this duplicitous style, this images of death and despair without any definitive elevation of contradictions, onto a higher plane resolution in terms of narrative tone. of artistic consciousness, within the tradition of Many of the most recent graphic adaptations German romanticism as practiced in the late of Poe’s work are able to capture, or at least ap- eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries (and proximate, the author’s ironic tone through a kind as specifically found in the aesthetic philosophy of of poetic license that does not strictly adhere to Friedrich Schlegel).14 In what could be called his the letter of the original poems and stories. Earlier “romantic-irony thesis,” especially as it applies to comic book translations of his work tended to be Poe and other early American authors, Thompson more realistic in style, not only in terms of visual defines this narrative posturing as a deliberate verisimilitude—where the illustrations reflected breaking of dramatic illusion, frequently through the physical world as we know it—but also in terms humorous or absurd commentary; a simultaneous of Poe’s narrative contexts.

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