The Stories Of Edgar Allan Poe: Manga Classics
Five of Edgar Allan Poe’s works have been illustrated into this new manga collection:
The Tell-Tale Heart (art by Virginia Nitouhei)
As a young gentleman’s extreme nervousness gets the better of him, he plots the murder of the old man with whom he lives. The old man’s eye which is blue and clouded is the cause of out narrator’s distress and he schemes against the evil eye, eventually striking on the eighth night. His success seems certain as he dismembers the old man’s body and hides him beneath the floor boards in his bedroom, but neighbours heard the screams and the police come to investigate.
The Cask Of Amontillado (art by Chagen)
Montresor plans to murder an acquaintance after numerous insults and injuries. He lures him away from Carnival to a private wine tasting by appealing to his ego. Keeping him inebriated, he leads him down to the catacombs where he will leave him to his death.
The Mask Of The Red death (art by Uka Nagao)
The Red Death has swept over the land and Prince Prospero and a thousand nobles have protected themselves in the walled abbey. The gathered guests attend a masquerade ball, and as the clock chimes midnight a hideous figure appears.
The Raven (art by pikomaro)
Sitting in his study trying to forget the death of his love, Lenore, our narrator is distracted by a tapping at his chamber door. The raven appears and sits itself on a bust above the door. He engages in a conversation with his new friend about his future and his lost love.
The Fall Of The House Of Usher (art by Linus Liu, Man Yiu, Shougo, Ron and Stoon)
Our narrator arrives at his friend’s home after receiving a letter requesting his help. Roderick Usher is suffering from many ailments and his friend attempts to lift his spirits with various activities. After some time Roderick’s sister dies and is interred in the vault below the house, but over the next week things become more agitated and all may not be quite as it seems.
The traditional manga style in this edition is excellent. The problem you encounter with the stories is that a lot of the elements are quite dark in nature, both setting and tone, but the illustration manages to capture it well.
In The Tell-Tale Heart, a lot of the scenes take place in the old man’s room which is supposed to be pitch black in the dead of night. The artist has done an amazing job to convey that without losing the detail on the pages. Strategic white highlighting is used to great effect to emphasise the key part of the frames. The Fall Of The House Of Usher also featured some particularly effective images that showed Roderick’s changing physical and mental state.
Between the pieces there are some interesting little extras, including Curious Facts About “The Raven” and some background on Edgar Allan Poe. Sometimes extras in books can feel a little rehashed from what you’ve already read in its pages or from previous knowledge, but these all add to the book as a whole.
Obviously when you switch the format of an original text there has to be a certain amount of abridging and tweaking. I compared the scenes where they inter Madeline’s body in the vault, from The Fall Of The House Of Usher, with the original text, and very little is changed. While I commend the decision to keep very close to the original (I have read some truly terrible abridged books that really changed the tone of the writing), I feel like it would have benefited from a slight modernisation of the text.
The images in manga and graphic novels quicken the pace of reading to a certain degree, and I found myself torn between them and the writing. The artists are there to get across the atmosphere of a scene, and they’ve done it really well, so it seems a shame not to use the opportunity to make the text accessible to a wider range of readers. While I understand the idea behind each story and what it’s trying to portray, unless you’re a very proficient and widely read reader you’re going to struggle to deal with some of the language.
That being said, I really loved reading The Tell-Tale Heart, and The Masque Of The Red Death (but only on the second reading, I really couldn’t follow it the first time and forced myself to go back). I have a feeling that The Fall Of The House Of Usher is an acquired taste though.
The Stories Of Edgar Allan Poe: Manga Classics, adapted by Stacy King is published by Udon Entertainment and is due for publication at the beginning of November.
Happy reading.
