Edgar Allan Poe’s Spirits of the Dead Review: Awesome For All

Richard Corben has been adapting Edgar Allan Poe’s tales for quite some time now with varying degrees of success. Dark Horse has decided to make Poe and Corben fans excited by releasing “Edgar Allan Poe’s Spirits of the Dead,” a collection of comics that are adaptations of Edgar Allan Poe tales by Richard Corben. The collection of tales herein is quite remarkable.

The comics range from Poe wrote this himself awesome (“The Raven,” “The Fall of the House of Usher”) OK (“The Sleeper”) to not worth the paper it’s drawn on. The worst of the bunch is “Shadow.” This story is nothing more than for Corben to give Mag the Hag something to do and seem important. It is a total failure. Mag is still as uninteresting as ever even with the little characterization presented here. The ending is pretty typical messed up Poe, though.

What this collection shows is Corben’s art progression. You can tell from the older tales that the art, though excellent, holds no candle to his newer ones. The newer stories seem to be more polished, detailed and bring out Poe’s work much better.

As with any collection, one thing that’ll seal the deal with readers is the extra content. This collection features an introduction by M. Thomas Inge that details Corben’s history of adapting Poe’s tales. It’s the typical academic writing that will only interest people who are Corben fans. There are also covers for certain comics at the end of the book which will interest those who want to know what they look like.

“Edgar Allan Poe’s Spirits of the Dead” is an awesome collection of Poe comics that will appease both Poe enthusiasts and Corben fans. While some tales fall short, the good one more than make up for it. Along with Corben’s art and some nice extras this is one of the must have collections that has come out this year.