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— Edgar Allan Poe (1829)
It was on this day, two hundred and ten years ago, that the great writer, poet and posthumous master of all media Edgar Poe (Jan. 19, 1809 – Oct. 7, 1849) was born in Boston, Massachusetts. I’ll spare you the usual biographical details, widely available elsewhere, and we’ll concentrate on his unflagging ubiquity in the medium of comics.
Poe’s literary reputation was in tatters in America, thanks to a rash of hatchet jobs and dismissals, some of the most vicious from the pen of one Rufus Griswold, the very worm he’d named his literary executor (!), as well as such notables as Ralph Waldo Emerson and T.S. Eliot… while his renown was undimmed in Europe, particularly in France (in no small part owing to Charles Beaudelaire’s legendary translations), rehabilitation at home slowly came as the 20th century crept along, but it was likely the publication of Arthur Hobson Quinn’s definitive Poe biography, in 1941, that sealed the deal and opened the floodgates.
Classics Illustrated publisher Gilberton was first out of the gate with Poe adaptations, at first tentatively with a pair of poems (Annabel Lee, then The Bells)**, then more substantially with The Murders in the Rue Morgue, in Classic Comicsno. 21 – 3 Famous Mysteries (July, 1944), sharing the stage with Arthur Conan Doyle and Guy de Maupassant. Read it here. Pictured below is Classics Illustratedno. 84 (June 1951, Gilberton), cover by Alex A. Blum. Read the issue here.
Whew — that’s it for now. In closing, I must bow and salute before the gargantuan endeavour accomplished by Mr. Henry R. Kujawa on his truly indispensable blog, Professor H’s Wayback Machine. Thanks for all the heavy lifting, Henry. I get exhausted just thinking about it.
One person I’ve been sending out e-mail links to, they were somehow getting corrupted (I suspect Verizon is involved). While doing research into it, I suddenly ran across THIS blog, and discovered not only the 1949 Poe bio comic story, but also the 1948 SPIRIT story. DAMMIT!! Anyone who does blogs knows the only way to keep them organized is to post things chronologically, but older stuff KEEPS turning up. Basically, I wish I’d found this before I moved all the 1940s pages around.
Luck is with me a bit. Of the 87 issues of the post-war SPIRIT series from Kitchen Sink Press, I’m only missing one, but I DO have #34 (from 1987), it is now OUT and IN MY HANDS, and I will be scanning it in tomorrow. And since it’s in crisp BLACK AND WHITE… this gives me the option of adding my own color.
If you’re not on my list and would like to receive updates, let me know. You certainly deserve it for this.
It’s wonderful to hear from you, Henry! I feel your pain re: chronology. It’s a perilous endeavour, a downright Sisyphean one… and very much subject to the whims of Murphy’s Law.
As for The Spirit, I’m glad to hear you’ve got the right issue on hand; the custom colouring notion is intriguing… I’ll keep an eye out. Thanks again for dropping in *and* dropping us a line, and best of luck in 2020 and beyond!
RE-posted on twitter @trefology
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One person I’ve been sending out e-mail links to, they were somehow getting corrupted (I suspect Verizon is involved). While doing research into it, I suddenly ran across THIS blog, and discovered not only the 1949 Poe bio comic story, but also the 1948 SPIRIT story. DAMMIT!! Anyone who does blogs knows the only way to keep them organized is to post things chronologically, but older stuff KEEPS turning up. Basically, I wish I’d found this before I moved all the 1940s pages around.
Luck is with me a bit. Of the 87 issues of the post-war SPIRIT series from Kitchen Sink Press, I’m only missing one, but I DO have #34 (from 1987), it is now OUT and IN MY HANDS, and I will be scanning it in tomorrow. And since it’s in crisp BLACK AND WHITE… this gives me the option of adding my own color.
If you’re not on my list and would like to receive updates, let me know. You certainly deserve it for this.
LikeLike
It’s wonderful to hear from you, Henry! I feel your pain re: chronology. It’s a perilous endeavour, a downright Sisyphean one… and very much subject to the whims of Murphy’s Law.
As for The Spirit, I’m glad to hear you’ve got the right issue on hand; the custom colouring notion is intriguing… I’ll keep an eye out. Thanks again for dropping in *and* dropping us a line, and best of luck in 2020 and beyond!
LikeLike