If you missed the last one…
Edgar Allan Poe brings good news and bad ones for the Horror comic fan. On the plus side, he is in the public domain so publishers have no problem using his stories. On the minus side, his tales are “psychological” rather than monster-fileld Horror fests. (There are no werewolves or vampires but a few exceptions exist like “Metzengerstein” with its phantom horse.) Thinky Horror usually translates into talking heads. And you will see that but all these comic artists and writers were aware that a Poe story usually has one good “reveal”, whether it is the black cat on the dead woman’s head or the swinging of the pendulum across the bound victim. The artists of the 1970s and later would repeat many of these reveals but they happened here first.
Most of the writers who adapted the stories are unknown. I have indicated the writer where known.
Golden Age
“Murders in the Rue Morgue” (Classics Illustrated #21, July 1944) was adapted by Dan Levin. It’s no surprise the Gilberton’s Classics Illustrated was first. They would do three different issues with Poe material. This first outing teamed Poe up with Arthur Conan Doyle and Guy de Maupassant. “Murders in the Rue Morgue” deserves to be collected with Sherlock Holmes. Poe created many of the tropes that Doyle would make famous.
“The Black Cat” (Yellowjacket Comics #1, September 1944) is the first of many versions of “The Black Cat”, taking third place as the most rendered story.
“The Fall of the House of Usher” (Yellowjacket Comics #4, December 1944) is another perennial favorite, coming in at Number Two.
“The Oblong Box” (Crown Comics #1, 1945) is an unusual choice of story, appearing only this once during the Golden Age.
“The Pit and the Pendulum” (Classics Illustrated #40, August 1947) was adapted by Samuel Willinsky. This is the first version of “The Pit”. This is the most often rendered tale. The lone man trapped in a dungeon with rats and a swinging blade must have been irresistible to comic makers.
“The Adventure of Hans Pfall” (Classics Illustrated #40, August 1947) was adapted by Samuel Willinsky. This is another one-off, a pseudo-Science Fiction story that would influence Jules Verne.
“The Fall of the House of Usher” (Classics Illustrated #40, August 1947) was adapted by Samuel Willinsky.
“The Fall of the House of Usher” (The Spirit, 8/22/1948) was adapted by Will Eisner. Eisner is well-known as a comics innovator. He usually had the Spirit running around having adventures but for this one he read a Poe classic to us. (Eisner needed to stretch his legs, I think.)
“The Killer Walked Like a Man” (Lawbreakers Always Lose #10, October 1949) was loosely based on “The Murder in the Rue Morgue”. Unlike the Poe story, the ape starts wearing clothes and goes on a crime spree before being shot.
“Blood Red Wine!” (Crime SuspenStories #3, February-March 1951) was adapted by Bill Gained and Al Feldstein from “The Cask of Amontillado”. The EC Boys change the ending by having their Montresor character also getting trapped in the basement.
“The Gold Bug” (Classics Illustrated #84, June 1951) follows the story but unlike the original the cipher clue is not as important as pirates.
“The Tell-tale Heart” (Classics Illustrated #84, June 1951)
“The Cask of Amontillado” (Classics Illustrated #84, June 1951)
“The Living Death!” (Tales From the Crypt #24, June-July 1951) was adapted by Bill Gained and Al Feldstein from “The Facts in the Case of M. Valdemar”. EC is beloved for their own brand of gruesome and funny. Those last frames remind me of all the “Cool Air” adaptations of H. P. Lovecraft’s. Lovecraft took a page from Poe’s book, just as Berni Wrightson will from Graham Ingels.
“Girl of Baltimore” (Romantic Confessions v2#3, August-September 1951) was included because it is was based on “Annabel Lee”. The artist did no research into what Poe looked like. (Unlike Gus Schrotter for Yellowjacket Comics, who had the narrator look like Poe for his “House of Usher”.) This 1950s suburban remix is hilariously bad.
“The End!” (Spellbound #2, April 1952) is based on “The Pit and the Pendulum” and is not the most faithful version. I like it best of them all, because it really is as creepy as Poe would have liked. I quite like the Heath art, too.
“The Pit and the Pendulum” (Beware #10, June 1952)
“The Pit and the Pendulum” (Nightmare #2, Fall 1952) is probably the best drawn of the faithful versions of this story. Everett Raymond Kinstler, like Harry Kiefer and Vincent Napoli, drew illustrations for the Pulps before working in comics.
“The Curse of Metzengerstein” (Chilling Tales #16, June 1953) is another one-0ff with great artwork by Vincent Napoli.
“Death Tolls the Bells!” (The Unseen #13, February 1954) is another story based on a poem, “The Bells”. There’s not much Poe here but Gene Fawcette is good.
“Hop Frog” (Nightmare #11, February 1954) is another single adaptation story until the black & white magazines of the 1960s and 1970s.
“The Raven” (Mad Comics #9, February-March 1954) was adapted by Harvey Kurtzman. This is humor, of course. People have been poking fun at”The Raven” since it appeared in London Journal, January 1845.
“The Black Cat” (Nightmare #12, April 1954)
“The Tell-Tale Heart” (Win a Prize Comics #1, February 1955)
Conclusion
The Golden Age of comics embraced Poe’s stories first as “classics” then later as Horror material. You would think that the Silver Age would have done the same since the stories could be rendered within the confines of the Comics’ Code but there are few of them. It would take the Horror Renaissance of the Warren comics and later DC Horror anthology comics to really bring Poe back. It may be that the Silver Agers found the material well-worked. Let’s be honest, they were more interested in superheroes.
Poe has had a second renaissance in more modern comics. Richard Corben and then others gave us newer and more extreme versions of EAP. I think this was part of a wave of Lovecraft comics that happened at the same time. I know I found Poe unreadable until I had read almost everything Lovecraft had written. They are both the masters of Horror of their respective centuries. For me anyway, they will always be linked.
