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Post by profh0011 on May 1, 2019 15:43:43 GMT -5
Here's an unusual one... (more or less) WIN A PRIZE 1Cover by JACK KIRBY (Charlton / February 1955) Check THIS out! The creator of CAPTAIN AMERICA teams up with one of the early creators of the BATMAN series!! "TELLTALE HEART" / Version 6 Adaptation & Layouts by JACK KIRBY / Art by JERRY ROBINSON
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Post by profh0011 on May 2, 2019 21:41:26 GMT -5
A rather obscure publisher does Poe... DARK MYSTERIES 23cover by ?? (Master Comics / May 1955) The artist involved is John P. D'Agostino Sr. ("Jon D'Agostino"), best known for his work for Archie Comics., who also did some lettering for Marvel under the psudonym "Johnny Dee". As a penciller, inker, letterer and colorist, he probably did the entire job you're about to see. He also started his career as a colorist, and actually "mentored" Stan Goldberg in that capacity, a detail that really grabs my attention, as I consider Goldberg a huge influence on my own coloring work! He also did a lot of work for Charlton & Gold Key. "THE MARDENBURG CURSE" (based on "METZENGERSTEIN") / Version 2 Adaptation by ?? / Art by JON D'AGOSTINO (??) final page REPRINTS STRANGE MYSTERIES 15cover by Ross Andru & Mike Esposito (I.W. Publishing / Super Comics / 1964)
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Post by profh0011 on May 3, 2019 18:00:29 GMT -5
In the wake of the 1950s comics witch-hunt that saw the formation of the corrupt "Comics Code Authority"-- allegedly a self-policing body designed to avoid government censorship, but in reality, a tool for the biggest (and most crooked) publishers to drive their competitors OUT of business... EC stopped publishing comic-books. Their biggest hit, MAD, was transformed into a B&W magazine, on sale beside TIME and PLAYBOY. The rest of the line was reinvented as a set of "illustrated" story mazazines. The same high level of quality was maintained, simply by using the same hugely-talented writers & artists. " But it didn't sell". TERROR ILLUSTRATED 1cover by REED CRANDALL (EC / November-December 1955) Now... this will probably look uncannily familiar to anybody, like me, who's been reading this POE blog project with interest. There's a reason for that. Jack Oleck, I have discovered, was a writer who was often in the habit of RE-using his stories from one publisher to another. After all, how would THEY know? Not long after discovering the existence of this story, one of my friends and fellow comic-fans, "Pappy", came through with a set of GORGEOUS, STUNNING, HI-RES scans of the story. Now, imagine my surprise when, simply glancing through the pages quickly, I realized... I'd READ this story before! Oh, sure, the words were different... the names of the characters were different... and the art was different. That's besides this being an "illustrated story" and what it reminded me of was a "comic". But the events in the story were IDENTICAL. And NOT just because they were both adaptations of the same Poe story. That's right. This is an almost EXACT redo of " BURIED ALIVE". The one with Steve Ditko art! The one that I strongly believe had a direct influence on no less than 3 of Roger Corman's POE films!! Man, that was SOME comic. Not only did elements in it that were original to the comic (NOT from Poe) turn up VERBATIM in the later movies, it was also REDONE twice in the comics. Once here, and then again, later, as a comic with Cirilo Munoz art... and not one single word of the original comic changed. The artist is once again, one of the true GREATS in the business, George Evans. This was his 2nd of 3 POE adaptations. "REST IN PEACE" (adapted from "THE FALL OF THE HOUSE OF USHER") / Version 5 (including elements of "THE PREMATURE BURIAL") / Version 2 Adaptation by Jack Oleck / Art by GEORGE EVANS final page REPRINTS EC PICTO-FICTION LIBRARYcover by REED CRANDALL (Russ Cochran / November 2006)
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Post by profh0011 on May 4, 2019 12:30:32 GMT -5
Mondial Aventures was an entirely separate French version of Classics Illustrated. The series ran 30 issues from 1954 to 1959, including the works of such notable writers as Fenimore Cooper, Victor Hugo, Alexandre Dumas and Robert Louis Stevenson; oddly enough, especially given it was a French company, they didn't include Jules Verne in their run. However, they did one story by Edgar Allan Poe-- his ONLY full-length novel! MONDIAL AVENTURES 29cover by YVES & WILLY GROUX (Société Parisienne d'Édition / France / 1959) Oddly enough, several issues late in the run were delayed by several years. As a result, ironically, this story was published in Brazil before it came out in France! ALBUM GIGANTE 39cover by ANTONIO EUZEBIO NETO (Editora Brasil America Limitada / Brazil / January 1958) A friend of mine who's really into "Classics" found a website that had relatively poor scans of the Brazillian version posted. I was able to use those. As a result, this became the earliest foreign POE comic where I added COLOR, as well as did an English translation. This was not without challenges, as I was actually working with the Portuguese translation of a French adaptation. For as much of the comic as possible, I tried to use the original, authentic 1840s POE text, and I wound up reading the ENTIRE NOVEL online to do so, one bit at a time, as I worked through one page of the comic at a time. "A NARRATIVA DE SIR ARTHUR GORDON PYM" ( "THE NARRATIVE OF ARTHUR GORDON PYM OF NANTUCKET") / Version 1 / Adaptation by William Groux / Art by WILLY & YVES GROUX Augustus shows Arthur his hiding place for the voyage. The MUTINY. The comic had actually toned this down quite a bit, but by re-arranging the position of 2 panels on this page, and adding ONE line of text from the novel that was not originally in the adaptation-- " A scene of the most horrible butchery ensued"-- I restored the bit where HALF of the crew was MASSACRED. Here you can compare the before and after versions of the splash page. Using their fear of the dead, the tide is turned. Unfortunately, a hurricane almost sinks the ship. The French comic made a few changes. In the novel, Augustus dies of his injuries, and Arthur & Dick Peters actually resort fo CANNIBALISM to survive! The comic toned it down for the kiddies... At the last moment, they're finally rescued by another ship...
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Post by profh0011 on May 5, 2019 12:21:17 GMT -5
Any other writer would have ended the book there. And if the story continued, they might have split it up between 2 books. Jules Verne did it plenty of times. Not in this case. What follows after that feels as if it belongs in an entirely separate story, giving one the feeling that Poe was improvising and making this up as he went, perhaps with no clear idea in mind of where this story was supposed to be going. Arthur, Augustus & Dick are rescued by "The Jane Guy", which is on an exploratory voyage. This 2012 map I found online by "Violet Blast" shows the course of their journey. After recovering from their horrific ordeal, the trio settle in as part of the crew. In a spooky parallel of Edgar Rice Burrough's much-later " THE LAND THAT TIME FORGOT", the ship discovers much-warmer climates beyond the southern ice. (I suspect ERB borrowed this concent from EAP.) Following a period of friendly exchanges, the natives suddenly and inexplicably turn on the explorers and slaughter the entire crew, with only the trio escaping. From a hiding place atop a hill, they watch the savages unintentionally BLOW UP the ship, killing many of their own in the process. The single most interesting part of the novel-- the discovery of an underground cave with ancient heiroglyphics was completely left out of the French comic. Instead, the story continues as the trio barely manage to make their escape in a canoe, accompanied by a captive savage. Heading further south, the temperatures CONTINUE to rise as the air is also filled with a strange dusty mist. What does it all mean? It's been suggested they entered an opening into the center of the Earth... another concept later used by Burroughs in "AT THE EARTH'S CORE". But Poe's novel ends ABRUPTLY... which was apparently so frustrating, that no less than 3 later writers each decided to do their own separate unofficial sequels, trying to make sense of it all.
This includes Jules Verne's "THE SPHINX OF THE ICE FIELDS" (1897), Charles Romyn Dake's "A STRANGE DISCOVERY" (1898), and H.P. Lovecraft's "AT THE MOUNTAINS OF MADNESS" (1936).
The French comic, however, tacks on a new ending, explaining (somewhat) how the trio made it back to civilization. The discovery of the ancient underground chamber that predated known civilization-- in Antarctica-- seems to me like it may well have influenced a far more recent sci-fi movie-- " ALIENS VS. PREDATORS" (2004).
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Post by profh0011 on May 6, 2019 14:34:11 GMT -5
EC did " The Raven" MULTIPLE times. Well, to be more precise... " MAD" did. Here's the 2nd time... MAD 46cover by KELLY FREAS (EC / April 1959) "THE RAVEN" / Version 8 Adaptation by Frank Jacobs / Art by WALLACE WOOD REPRINTS: MAD SUPER SPECIAL 36cover by KELLY FREAS (EC / Fall 1981)
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Post by profh0011 on May 7, 2019 22:05:52 GMT -5
MAD tackled " The Raven" for the 3rd time already... MAD 55Poe-Etic Injustice Dept: "THE RAVEN"So like, everybody remember that Harvey Kurtzman dude? He split at one point, and Albert B. Feldstein stepped into the breach. This was shortly after William Gaines decided to give the entire rest of the comic-book industry, who had corrupted the Comics Code to put him out of business, THE FINGER. He transformed his highly-successful color comic, MAD, into an EVEN MORE highly-successful B&W magazine. Excempt from the Code, it sold among the magazines. And like, MAN-- it SOLD. So it was that 6 years after MAD (the color comic) tackled Poe's... "THE RAVEN"... MAD (the B&W magazine) decided to do it... AGAIN. Wow. But while Harvey Kurtzman kept every word of Poe's poem intact, and simply went wild with the pictures, writer Paul Laikin went completely off his head with the wordage. Can you dig it? Well, you'll have to... and groove on Mort Drucker's art while you're at it. Mmm. Hey. Special thanks right now to "Pappy", without whom I might never have had a chance to read this myself. What a guy! Finally, a special note to the purists out there. When published in the magazine, the first 4 pages were presented as 2-page spreads, requiring you to read across the top and then the bottom of both pages in sequence. Obliviously, this would not work on this blog. The pages, therefore, have been RE-FORMATTED to fit my screen. If you have problems with your screen, well, that's not my problem. ENJOY! P.S.: I really like the mouse! MAD 55cover by KELLY FREAS (EC / June 1960) "THE RAVEN" / Version 9 Adaptation by Paul Laikin / Art by MORT DRUCKER like, final page
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Post by profh0011 on May 8, 2019 13:41:09 GMT -5
We've had one from France, now here comes the 1st one from Portugal! CAVALEIRO ANDANTE ("Knight Errant"), the work of Adolfo Simões Muller, was a weekly comics magazine from Portugal. It ran 556 issues from January 5, 1952 to August 25, 1962. While the concurrent ADVENTURE WORLD focused mostly on American reprints, CA was mostly of European origin. There were several Portuguese authors who have published their work in this magazine, especially Fernando Bento , Ruy Jose , Eduardo Teixeira Coelho , José Garcês and José Manuel Soares . Among its contents were many adaptations of "classic" stories, in the tradition of Gilberton's CLASSICS ILLUSTRATED. CAVALEIRO ANDANTE 453photo cover (Empresa Nacional de Publicidade (ENP) / Portugal / September 3, 1960) Fernando Bento was mostly known for work on " ZORRO" "O ESCARAVELHO DE OURO" (" THE GOLD BUG") / Version 4 Adaptation & Art by FERNANDO BENTO Some pages were in limited color. Those I translated. Some were in black and white. Those I translated, and added COLOR to! How Legrand found what he was looking for... I wonder how many other classic stories this magazine did? And if any of the others were Poe adaptations? This was one of my earliest translations.
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Post by profh0011 on May 9, 2019 16:12:21 GMT -5
Here's the beginning of a gigantic project-within-a-project... Editora Continental / Outubro / Taika were 3 names used by the same small publisher in Brazil. The work of artists Jayme Cortez & Miguel Penteado, they decided to form the company in 1959 after working several years for Editora De Selva, and getting tired of taking the bus to work while their bosses kept buying new cars. Both Continental and Outubro turned out to be registered by other companies, causing years of legal hassles, before someone finally decided to rename it after their niece. (You can't make up stuff like this.) Sadly, around that time, Cortez & Penteado had a major falling-out, which saw Cortez going into advertising, while Penteado also left to form a new company of his own, Graphic Editora Penteado (GEP). But while they were together, they produced some wonderful comics, many of them in the horror genre, each doing many gorgeous, stunning cover paintings! After the 2 founders left, Taika continued for several years, though the quality of their printing dropped, the number of reprints increased, and a general sense of chaos prevailed. I admit-- I've really become fascinated with this publisher, perhaps in part due to the aura of mystery surrounding them. Which is to say, it's been extremely challenging compiling information about them, not to mention getting my hands on scans of their stories. I have discovered, between my own researches and the IMMENSE help of artist and fellow fan Toni Rodrigues, that Continental / Outubro / Taika during their run produced at least 25 POE adaptations-- MORE than Skywald or Warren !! It's my intention to compile, clean up, TRANSLATE and COLOR every one of these for my POE blog project!! Toni Rodrigues supplied with me with HIGH-RES scans made off of several of the original comics, allowing me to work with MUCH-BETTER scans than could usually be found posted online for free by fans in Brazil. CLASSICOS DE TERROR 1cover by JAYME CORTEZ MARTINS (Editora Continental / Brazil / 1960) The story is the work of Gedeone Malagola. He is mainly known as one of the most important comics writers of Brazil (alongside R.F. Lucchetti), who was responsible for creating many popular characters, while also occasionally doing art, tending to imitate the styles of several Amercian cartoonists when he did, including Joe Kubert, Carmine Infantino & John Prentice. He also worked as a policeman and did comics on the side (not unlike Peter Morisi here in the States). This is his 1st of 3 POE adaptations. "BARRIL DE AMONTILLADO" ( "A CASK OF AMONTILLADO") / Version 4 Adaptation & Art by GEDEONE MALAGOLA
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Post by profh0011 on May 10, 2019 16:01:44 GMT -5
The 2nd Continental POE adaptation... this has one of the few POE-related covers from the publisher. CLASSICOS DE TERROR 9cover by JAYME CORTEZ MARTINS (Editora Continental / Brazil / 1960) Artist Manoel Ferreira was very active between 1950-1960, and was a "civil servant" who did comics on the side! "A MASCARA DA MORTE RUBRA" ( "THE MASQUE OF THE RED DEATH") / Version 3 Adaptation & Art by MANOEL FERREIRA REPRINTS ALBUM CLASSICOS DE TERROR 11cover by NICO ROSSO (Editora Taika / Brazil / February 1974) SPEKTRO 6cover by OFELIANO DE ALMEIDA (Editora Vecchi / Brazil / July 1978) Now this is maddening. Jayme Cortez' stunning cover is reprinted here with the colors totally distorted. But that's not the worst of it. Although this book contains 100 pages and 14 reprinted stories, NONE of them are by Poe, despite what it says right there on the cover. This really shows how chaotic Taika had become by this point. ALMANAQUE CLASSICOS DE TERROR 5-Acover by JAYME CORTEZ MARTINS (Editora Taika / Brazil / 1976)
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Post by profh0011 on May 11, 2019 12:03:16 GMT -5
While nobody down in Brazil (that I could find) had ever posted the previous story online, the other POE story from the same issue was reprinted at least twice-- and both of those wound up on blogs. The quality of the scans of the 1966 reprint was HORRIBLE. The 1973 reprint was EVEN WORSE! So what a delightful shock when Toni Rodrigues e-mailed his high-res scans of the original 1960 comic... The 3rd Continental adaptation was another favorite... "O POCO E O PENDULO" ( "THE PIT AND THE PENDULUM") / Version 6 Adaptation & Art by GEDEONE MALAGOLA final page REPRINTS I can't figure this total lack of style in this issue's logo... ALBUM CLASSICOS DE TERROR 1cover by NICO ROSSO (Editora Taika / Brazil / December 1966) CLASSICOS DE TERROR 5cover by JOSE EVALDO (Editora Taika / Brazil / June 1973) SELECOES DE TERROR 29cover by JAYME CORTEZ (Editora Taika / Brazil / 1975)
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Post by profh0011 on May 12, 2019 14:26:13 GMT -5
Back in the realm of really "loose" adaptations here... STRANGE TALES 83cover by Jack Kirby & Dick Ayers (Marvel / April 1961) "MASQUERADE PARTY" (adapted from "The Masque Of The Red Death") / Version 4 Story & Art by STEVE DITKO As I read this and studied the art, I became convinced that "Cara Frost" was modelled on a real person. She reminds me either of a young Bette Davis, or perhaps an "evil" Lucille Ball. REPRINTS: ALMANAQUE FANTASTIC AVENTURAS 1cover by SERGIO LIMA (Editora Taika / Brazil / January 1973) CHAMBER OF CHILLS 16cover by Gil Kane & Tom Palmer (Marvel / May 1975) SINISTER TALES 203cover by BILL EVERETT (Alan Cass / England / 1984)
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Post by profh0011 on May 13, 2019 15:06:06 GMT -5
The 4th Continental Poe is not really a Poe adaptation... but it sure seems like it. CLASSICOS DE TERROR 12cover by JAYME CORTEZ MARTINS (as "M. PENTEADO" / Editora Outubro / Brazil / 1961) " ESTOU VIVO!", or " I'M ALIVE!", is a brief 4-pager that, astonishingly, has a climax that is almost IDENTICAL to a sequence in the 3rd Roger Corman POE film, " THE PREMATURE BURIAL". And would you believe? It's a sequence that, while vaguely similar, does NOT actually appear in the original POE story. This suggests that either someone involved in the Corman film saw this comic from Brazil (unlikely), or, that the scene ALSO appeared in the early adaptation of the SAME story that appeared on the THRILLER tv series, with Boris Karloff-- and that the tv version may have inspired this comic! "ESTOU VIVO!" ( "I'M ALIVE!") (inspired by "THE PREMATURE BURIAL" / Version 3) Story & Art by GEDEONE MALAGOLA As I said, this story isn't exactly based on Poe... but the final sequence is amazingly similar to the climax of the 1962 Roger Corman film with Ray Milland. Witness... Throughout the entire sequence, Guy Carrell (Ray Milland) is awake and fully aware of what is happening... but unable to speak or move. Over and over he keeps thinking to himself, "I'm alive! I'M ALIVE!"
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Post by tarkintino on May 14, 2019 19:11:43 GMT -5
In the wake of the 1950s comics witch-hunt that saw the formation of the corrupt "Comics Code Authority"-- allegedly a self-policing body designed to avoid government censorship, but in reality, a tool for the biggest (and most crooked) publishers to drive their competitors OUT of business... EC stopped publishing comic-books. Their biggest hit, MAD, was transformed into a B&W magazine, on sale beside TIME and PLAYBOY. The rest of the line was reinvented as a set of "illustrated" story mazazines. The same high level of quality was maintained, simply by using the same hugely-talented writers & artists. " But it didn't sell". ...and that's just a strange turn of events, as EC was one of the few publishers in that period with high quality across the board. Then again, high quality does not necessarily mean the reading public will find any interest in it. Such are the tastes of a fickle public. Beautiful, vibrant cover. Interesting. Fascinating. Corman may have adapted the comic stories, but I would argue that the movies failed to capture the mood and sinister feel of the comics, despite the medium of film granting a larger canvass to fully explore a story. This is the kind of art that effortlessly pulls you into the mood and heart of a story--arguably better than a great deal of superhero art.
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Post by tarkintino on May 14, 2019 19:20:24 GMT -5
Back in the realm of really "loose" adaptations here... STRANGE TALES 83cover by Jack Kirby & Dick Ayers (Marvel / April 1961) "MASQUERADE PARTY" (adapted from "The Masque Of The Red Death") / Version 4 Story & Art by STEVE DITKO As I read this and studied the art, I became convinced that "Cara Frost" was modelled on a real person. She reminds me either of a young Bette Davis, or perhaps an "evil" Lucille Ball. CHAMBER OF CHILLS 16cover by Gil Kane & Tom Palmer (Marvel / May 1975) Not a big revelation, but it shows the recycler's nature of the bottom-line comic industry when you see Marvel revisit the same story in the span of a few years, whether in reprints or new versions--just bothering to modify the work to meet then-modern standards of art.
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