Description

Edgar Allan Poe                                                            Magazine-Sized Soft Cover
Cover by: Richard Corben

Long before Stephen King and H.P. Lovecraft, Edgar Allan Poe was a master of the macabre. His work has become legendary and inspired writers, artists, and readers for more than a century. In this volume by Richard Corben and Richard Margopoulos, four of Poe’s most famous works come alive. “The Raven,” “The Oval Portrait,” “Shadow,” and “Usher” are painstakingly rendered for maximum effect.

The art by Corben jumps out at the reader, whether in black and white or airbrushed color. His use of heightened expressions and image juxtapositions is masterful and clearly conveys the suspense Poe’s words suggest. Images like the haunting Lenore from “The Raven,” the youthful beauty from “Oval Portrait,” the death imagery on pages 22 and 24, and the hauntingly, lonely House of Usher linger in memory. The work of Poe is legendary; Corben’s art is lush, evocative, and tantalizing. Combined, their work evokes a standard by which horror should be judged. Fans of Poe should not be without this one!

Edgar Allan Poe contains:

“The Oval Portrait”
Writer: Richard Margopoulos
Artist: Richard Corben

The tale begins with an injured narrator (the story offers no further explanation of his impairment) seeking refuge in an abandoned mansion in the Apennines. The narrator spends his time admiring the paintings that decorate the strangely shaped room and perusing a volume, found upon a pillow, that describes them.

Upon moving the candle closer to the book, the narrator immediately discovers a before-unnoticed painting depicting the head and shoulders of a young girl. The picture inexplicably enthralls the narrator “for an hour perhaps”. After steady reflection, he realizes that the painting’s “absolute life-likeliness” of expression is the captivating feature. The narrator eagerly consults the book for an explanation of the picture. The remainder of the story henceforth is a quote from this book – a story within a story.

The book describes a tragic story involving a young maiden of “the rarest beauty”. She loved and wedded an eccentric painter who cared more about his work than anything else in the world, including his wife. The painter eventually asked his wife to sit for him, and she obediently consented, sitting “meekly for many weeks” in his turret chamber. The painter worked so diligently at his task that he did not recognize his wife’s fading health, as she, being a loving wife, continually “smiled on and still on, uncomplainingly”. As the painter neared the end of his work, he let no one enter the turret chamber and rarely took his eyes off the canvas, even to watch his wife. After many weeks had passed, he finally finished his work. As he looked at the completed image, however, he felt appalled, as he exclaimed, “This is indeed Life itself!” Thereafter, he turned suddenly to regard his bride and discovered that she had died.
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“The Raven”
Writer: Richard Margopoulos
Artist: Richard Corben

“The Raven” follows an unnamed narrator on a dreary night in December who sits reading “forgotten lore” by a dying fire as a way to forget the death of his beloved Lenore. A “tapping at [his] chamber door” reveals nothing, but excites his soul to “burning”. The tapping is repeated, slightly louder, and he realizes it is coming from his window. When he goes to investigate, a raven flutters into his chamber. Paying no attention to the man, the raven perches on a bust of Pallas above the door.

Amused by the raven’s comically serious disposition, the man asks that the bird tell him its name. The raven’s only answer is “Nevermore”. The narrator is surprised that the raven can talk, though at this point it has said nothing further. The narrator remarks to himself that his “friend” the raven will soon fly out of his life, just as “other friends have flown before” along with his previous hopes. As if answering, the raven responds again with “Nevermore”. The narrator reasons that the bird learned the word “Nevermore” from some “unhappy master” and that it is the only word it knows.

Even so, the narrator pulls his chair directly in front of the raven, determined to learn more about it. He thinks for a moment in silence, and his mind wanders back to his lost Lenore. He thinks the air grows denser and feels the presence of angels, and wonders if God is sending him a sign that he is to forget Lenore. The bird again replies in the negative, suggesting that he can never be free of his memories. The narrator becomes angry, calling the raven a “thing of evil” and a “prophet”. Finally, he asks the raven whether he will be reunited with Lenore in Heaven. When the raven responds with its typical “Nevermore”, he is enraged, and, calling the bird a liar, commands it to return to the “Plutonian shore” —but it does not move. At the time of the poem’s narration, the raven “still is sitting” on the bust of Pallas. The raven casts a shadow on the chamber floor and the despondent narrator laments that out of this shadow his soul shall be “lifted ‘nevermore'”.
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“Shadow”
Writer: Richard Margopoulos
Artist: Richard Corben

A young Greek man, Oinos, with six others, is sitting in an historic setting, a “noble hall”, in the city of Ptolemais (Canaanite) with the body of a friend (Zoilus) who has died of the plague.

They are drinking (Chian/Chios Island) and singing the songs of Anacreon, a Greek lyric poet. A shadow passes through the draperies of the room towards a very specially crafted door (Corrinos) and settles near the dead man’s feet.

The shadow raises the men’s awareness of their lives and those of people who have already died. Civilizations and previous lives are evoked by associations to the memorials and relics of the past, in Egypt, Greece and Chaldaea.

Rather frighteningly, like the horrible bodily destruction caused by the contagious bacterial disease that has just passed by, the shadow seems to be speaking to them from a world of the dead…
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“Fall of the House of Usher”
Writer: Richard Coben
Artist: Richard Corben
Colorists: Herb & Diana Arnold

The story begins with the unnamed narrator arriving at the house of his friend, Roderick Usher, having received a letter from him in a distant part of the country complaining of an illness and asking for his help. As he arrives, the narrator notices a thin crack extending from the roof, down the front of the house and into the adjacent tarn, or lake.

It is revealed that Roderick’s sister, Madeline, is also ill and falls into cataleptic, deathlike trances. Roderick and Madeline are the only remaining members of the Usher family.

The narrator is impressed with Roderick’s paintings and attempts to cheer him by reading with him and listening to his improvised musical compositions on the guitar. Roderick sings “The Haunted Palace”, then tells the narrator that he believes the house he lives in to be alive, and that this sentience arises from the arrangement of the masonry and vegetation surrounding it. Further, Roderick believes that his fate is connected to the family mansion.

Roderick later informs the narrator that Madeline has died. Fearing that her body will be exhumed for medical study, Roderick insists that she be entombed for two weeks in the family tomb located in the house before being permanently buried. The narrator helps Roderick put Madeline’s body in the tomb, whereupon the narrator realizes that Madeline and Roderick are twins. The narrator also notes that Madeline’s body has rosy cheeks, which sometimes happens after death. Over the next week, both Roderick and the narrator find themselves increasingly agitated.

A storm begins, and Roderick comes to the narrator’s bedroom (which is situated directly above the house’s vault) in an almost hysterical state. Throwing the windows open to the storm, Roderick points out that the lake surrounding the house seems to glow in the dark, just as Roderick depicted in his paintings, but there is no lightning or other explainable source for the glow.

The narrator attempts to calm Roderick down by reading aloud from a medieval romance entitled The Mad Trist, a novel involving a knight named Ethelred who breaks into a hermit’s dwelling in an attempt to escape an approaching storm, only to find a palace of gold guarded by a dragon. Ethelred also finds a shining brass shield hanging on a wall. Upon the shield is inscribed:

Who entereth herein, a conqueror hath bin;

Who slayeth the dragon, the shield he shall win;

Ethelred swings his mace at the dragon, which dies with a piercing shriek. When he attempts to take the shield from the wall, it falls to the floor with an unnerving clatter.

As the narrator reads of the knight’s forcible entry into the dwelling, he and Roderick hear cracking and ripping sounds from somewhere in the house. When the dragon’s death cries are described, a real shriek is heard, again within the house. As he relates the shield falling from off the wall, a hollow metallic reverberation can be heard throughout the house. At first, the narrator ignores the noises, but Roderick becomes increasingly hysterical. Roderick eventually declares that he has been hearing these sounds for days, and that they are being made by his sister, who was in fact alive when she was entombed.

The bedroom door is then blown open to reveal Madeline, bloodied from her arduous escape from the tomb. In a final fit of rage, she attacks her brother, scaring him to death as she herself expires. The narrator then runs from the house, and, as he does, he notices a flash of moonlight behind him. He turns back in time to see the moon shining through the suddenly widened crack in the house. As he watches, the House of Usher splits in two and the fragments sink away into the lake.
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Magazine-Sized Soft Cover is bagged & boarded and will be carefully / securely packaged then shipped via USPS Priority Mail to ensure that it arrives to you perfectly and quickly.

First Printing
Publisher: Catalan Communications
Publication Date: September 1985
Format: FC, 84 pages, TPB, 11.20″ x 8.10″
ISBN-10: 0874160138
ISBN-13: 9780874160130

Collectible Entertainment note: Magazine-Sized Soft Cover is in Fine + condition.  Very Nice!  Please See Scans!!  A must have for any serious Horror, Richard Corben and/or Edgar Allen Poe collector / enthusiast.  A fun & entertaining read.  Highly Recommended.

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