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Graphic Classics #10
Graphic Classics, Volume 10: Horror Classics
Horror Classics is an anthology of great fiction adapted in comics form for readers of all ages. This tenth volume of the Graphic Classics series presents stories by eleven of the original creators of the horror genre, including H.P. Lovecraft's "The Thing on the Doorstep," Edgar Allan Poe's "Some Words with a Mummy," and W.W. Jacobs' "The Monkey's Paw." Plus Saki, Balzac, Jack London, Olive Schreiner, Bret Harte, Howard Garis, Fitz-James O'Brien and Clark Ashton Smith. With art by Michael Manning, Richard Jenkins, Gabrielle Bell, Ryan Inzana and nine more great illustrators.
144 pages, Paperback
First published September 1, 2004
2 people are currently reading
77 people want to read
About the author
Edgar Allan Poe
9,891 books28.6k followersThe name Poe brings to mind images of murderers and madmen, premature burials, and mysterious women who return from the dead. His works have been in print since 1827 and include such literary classics as The Tell-Tale Heart, The Raven, and The Fall of the House of Usher. This versatile writer’s oeuvre includes short stories, poetry, a novel, a textbook, a book of scientific theory, and hundreds of essays and book reviews. He is widely acknowledged as the inventor of the modern detective story and an innovator in the science fiction genre, but he made his living as America’s first great literary critic and theoretician. Poe’s reputation today rests primarily on his tales of terror as well as on his haunting lyric poetry.
Just as the bizarre characters in Poe’s stories have captured the public imagination so too has Poe himself. He is seen as a morbid, mysterious figure lurking in the shadows of moonlit cemeteries or crumbling castles. This is the Poe of legend. But much of what we know about Poe is wrong, the product of a biography written by one of his enemies in an attempt to defame the author’s name.
The real Poe was born to traveling actors in Boston on January 19, 1809. Edgar was the second of three children. His other brother William Henry Leonard Poe would also become a poet before his early death, and Poe’s sister Rosalie Poe would grow up to teach penmanship at a Richmond girls’ school. Within three years of Poe’s birth both of his parents had died, and he was taken in by the wealthy tobacco merchant John Allan and his wife Frances Valentine Allan in Richmond, Virginia while Poe’s siblings went to live with other families. Mr. Allan would rear Poe to be a businessman and a Virginia gentleman, but Poe had dreams of being a writer in emulation of his childhood hero the British poet Lord Byron. Early poetic verses found written in a young Poe’s handwriting on the backs of Allan’s ledger sheets reveal how little interest Poe had in the tobacco business.
For more information, please see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edgar_al...
Just as the bizarre characters in Poe’s stories have captured the public imagination so too has Poe himself. He is seen as a morbid, mysterious figure lurking in the shadows of moonlit cemeteries or crumbling castles. This is the Poe of legend. But much of what we know about Poe is wrong, the product of a biography written by one of his enemies in an attempt to defame the author’s name.
The real Poe was born to traveling actors in Boston on January 19, 1809. Edgar was the second of three children. His other brother William Henry Leonard Poe would also become a poet before his early death, and Poe’s sister Rosalie Poe would grow up to teach penmanship at a Richmond girls’ school. Within three years of Poe’s birth both of his parents had died, and he was taken in by the wealthy tobacco merchant John Allan and his wife Frances Valentine Allan in Richmond, Virginia while Poe’s siblings went to live with other families. Mr. Allan would rear Poe to be a businessman and a Virginia gentleman, but Poe had dreams of being a writer in emulation of his childhood hero the British poet Lord Byron. Early poetic verses found written in a young Poe’s handwriting on the backs of Allan’s ledger sheets reveal how little interest Poe had in the tobacco business.
For more information, please see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edgar_al...
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Displaying 1 - 18 of 18 reviews
November 11, 2016
This volume features adaptations including HP Lovecraft's "The Thing on the Doorstep", The Monkey's Paw and a few lesser known stories. Authors include Poe, Ambrose Bierce, Bret Harte and many others.
The adaptations were a little too "artsy" for me, as most of them had very cartoony art and the stories were hard to follow in places. The art and stories were also a little inconsistent. If you are a fan of underground comics, most notably from the 60s and 70s, this volume may appeal to you as that's what the art seemed to echo. However, if you prefer your adaptations a little more straightforward, like me, then this may not be the book for you.
Overall it's not bad, just not my cup of tea.
The adaptations were a little too "artsy" for me, as most of them had very cartoony art and the stories were hard to follow in places. The art and stories were also a little inconsistent. If you are a fan of underground comics, most notably from the 60s and 70s, this volume may appeal to you as that's what the art seemed to echo. However, if you prefer your adaptations a little more straightforward, like me, then this may not be the book for you.
Overall it's not bad, just not my cup of tea.
August 14, 2021
Graphic Classics, Volume 10: Horror Classics
***
The Mummy – respect for the dead
The Thing on the Doorstep, by H.P. Lovecraft - The first HPL story of his I have read. Ghastly, possession - beyond the grave
Some Words with a Mummy – Poe’s satire is definitely a driving force in his work
In A Far-Off World – that sucks when you appeal to a god to give your beloved their hearts desire .. and your beloved takes off!!
The Thing at Ghent – hoping for treasure they find a corpse
The Monkey Paw – what you wish for comes at a grave price, the essence of WW84 movie
The Open Window – Saki’s mischievous young female character drives away guests
A Day Dream – that moment when an upstanding civilian could have pulled the trigger
Keesh, Son of Keesh – Jack London’s intense tribal tale
Professor Jenkin’s Cannibal Plant – Little Shop of Horrors tale
The Beast of Averoigne – medieval demonology and deliverance
Selina Sedilia – dark comedy like inverting a Jane Austin novel.
…
***
The Mummy – respect for the dead
The Thing on the Doorstep, by H.P. Lovecraft - The first HPL story of his I have read. Ghastly, possession - beyond the grave
Some Words with a Mummy – Poe’s satire is definitely a driving force in his work
In A Far-Off World – that sucks when you appeal to a god to give your beloved their hearts desire .. and your beloved takes off!!
The Thing at Ghent – hoping for treasure they find a corpse
The Monkey Paw – what you wish for comes at a grave price, the essence of WW84 movie
The Open Window – Saki’s mischievous young female character drives away guests
A Day Dream – that moment when an upstanding civilian could have pulled the trigger
Keesh, Son of Keesh – Jack London’s intense tribal tale
Professor Jenkin’s Cannibal Plant – Little Shop of Horrors tale
The Beast of Averoigne – medieval demonology and deliverance
Selina Sedilia – dark comedy like inverting a Jane Austin novel.
…
December 9, 2017
Was not familiar with about half of the stories in the collection. Not all were successful for me, but I did enjoy how they were translated into graphic format. My favorites were The Thing on the Doorstep by Lovecraft and The Beast of Averoigne by Clark Ashton Smith. I might pick up one of the other volumes in the series, but don't feel compelled to do so any time soon. I'll probably stick to the orignals.
January 13, 2019
Graphic novel anthology.....stories were not great 😔
November 5, 2022
I have read several of these and enjoyed them very much. Most of them are devoted to the works of one author and I enjoyed them more, but this one is still fun!
April 7, 2024
Would have been rated higher but some of the font choices make the stories incredibly difficult to read.
October 28, 2012
Horror Classics is a graphic novel compiled and edited by Tom Pomplun, consisting of illustrated adaptations of many classic horror stories. It contains 11 famous stories written by various authors, including Edgar Allan Poe, H.P Lovecraft, Jack London and W.W Jacobs.
Of all the stories, my favorite was “The Thing on the Doorstep” by H.P Lovecraft. It tells the story of a young man, Daniel Upton, who in the end of the story is forced to kill his best friend, Edward Derby. Derby marries a girl named Asenath who is rumored to practice black magic. As the years go by, Derby starts to act stranger and people start to see him change. The rest of the story talks about Asenath’s secret and the events leading up to Derby’s death in the end.
While I liked a few of the stories, I did not enjoy this book. For a graphic novel, there was WAY too much text in it. The text was not exactly written in easy-to-understand language either. It used quite a few archaic words that I was not familiar with. I spent a really long time just trying to understand what was being conveyed in every page. For these reasons, it took me a really long time to actually finish the book. Even though it was only 144 pages, it took me a few class periods to finish. In addition, some of the stories were really hard to follow and made almost no sense to me. The illustrations too were quite unclear, and didn’t help me understand the stories at all.
Despite all of this, there were still a few stories that I did enjoy and I hope to read some of the original versions in the future.
Of all the stories, my favorite was “The Thing on the Doorstep” by H.P Lovecraft. It tells the story of a young man, Daniel Upton, who in the end of the story is forced to kill his best friend, Edward Derby. Derby marries a girl named Asenath who is rumored to practice black magic. As the years go by, Derby starts to act stranger and people start to see him change. The rest of the story talks about Asenath’s secret and the events leading up to Derby’s death in the end.
While I liked a few of the stories, I did not enjoy this book. For a graphic novel, there was WAY too much text in it. The text was not exactly written in easy-to-understand language either. It used quite a few archaic words that I was not familiar with. I spent a really long time just trying to understand what was being conveyed in every page. For these reasons, it took me a really long time to actually finish the book. Even though it was only 144 pages, it took me a few class periods to finish. In addition, some of the stories were really hard to follow and made almost no sense to me. The illustrations too were quite unclear, and didn’t help me understand the stories at all.
Despite all of this, there were still a few stories that I did enjoy and I hope to read some of the original versions in the future.
June 12, 2013
Fantastic collection of popular and not so well-known horror tales from the 1800s. Starting with a wonderful tale from Lovecraft "The Thing on the Doorstep", my favourite in the entire collection. Michael Manning's art was superb and for some reason his portrayal of the main character really captured me. I have to say I've only read Lovecraft in anthologies and so far to date have not had any luck with him but this tale has made me see why he is so beloved by many. A brilliant story wonderfully adapted in graphic form here. I enjoyed every tale in this collection and there was just the right combination of scary vs ironic. The art was all perfect for the stories they portrayed and I even got along well with Milton Knight's offering, who I am beginning to appreciate more than I have in the past :-) Familiar to me were Poe's "Some Word's With a Mummy", Jacob's "The Monkey's Paw, Saki's satirical "The Open Window" and London's haunting "Keesh, son of Keesh". Of the others I was unfamiliar with I was delighted with Antonella Caputo & Nick Miller's rendition of Bret Harte's Selina Sedilia. Altogether 11 stories and 1 poem make one of my favourite themed collections in this series.
March 12, 2014
I am not a big fan of the horror genre, so I read this to get a glimpse into some authors and themes I may not get from my regular reading. For a variety of different, entertaining, and thought-provoking stories I think this book contains what you need.
There are some authors in this graphic collection that are synonymous with horror such as H.P. Lovecraft and Edgar Allen Poe. The two stories by these authors truly symbolize the horror genre. There are also story selections from older writers who are not often associated with horror such as Bret Harte and Jack London. The choice of authors represents a wide canon of horror from the literary selection standpoint.
As far as being an expert on critiquing the horror genre and giving expert testimony to the faithfulness of the story renditions I will leave that up to someone who is more familiar with horror. I was genuinely frightened by a couple of the stories (H.P. Lovecraft for certain) and I can also see the educational value of this collection. As someone who is studying literature and YA I know that there is a wider variety of horror I could become familiar with. For a reader like myself who wants to grow more familiar with horror I would highly recommend this book.
There are some authors in this graphic collection that are synonymous with horror such as H.P. Lovecraft and Edgar Allen Poe. The two stories by these authors truly symbolize the horror genre. There are also story selections from older writers who are not often associated with horror such as Bret Harte and Jack London. The choice of authors represents a wide canon of horror from the literary selection standpoint.
As far as being an expert on critiquing the horror genre and giving expert testimony to the faithfulness of the story renditions I will leave that up to someone who is more familiar with horror. I was genuinely frightened by a couple of the stories (H.P. Lovecraft for certain) and I can also see the educational value of this collection. As someone who is studying literature and YA I know that there is a wider variety of horror I could become familiar with. For a reader like myself who wants to grow more familiar with horror I would highly recommend this book.
March 30, 2014
This 144 Paged graphic novel was probably one of the best I have read. It consists of a bundle of short horror stories. The stories are mainly of the classic rather than the scary for example, "The Monkey's Paw". Based on horror standards today, you feel that these stories are not scary but back then people would have thought of these as.... Just plain messed up.
The artwork itself was plain and simple. the only colours were black and white and I thought that it added to not only the classical affect but also the horror aspect. The writing in the text bubbles could have been debatable, but on my side of the fight I will have to say that they were too small. Each story had a different type of art style, some with simple cartoony and some detail to the line dark pen.
This book is nice for kids near a fire that want to tell scary stories that are for their age, and adults that just want a good old nostalgic feel of the classics. Either way in all ages your bound to know 90% of these stories.
The artwork itself was plain and simple. the only colours were black and white and I thought that it added to not only the classical affect but also the horror aspect. The writing in the text bubbles could have been debatable, but on my side of the fight I will have to say that they were too small. Each story had a different type of art style, some with simple cartoony and some detail to the line dark pen.
This book is nice for kids near a fire that want to tell scary stories that are for their age, and adults that just want a good old nostalgic feel of the classics. Either way in all ages your bound to know 90% of these stories.
May 29, 2012
BOTTOM LINE: Really nicely drawn (but ruthlessly edited) versions of several classic horror stories in large paperback form. I much prefer the - full - originals, though.
My imagination being rather, um, wild (grin) the pictures those classic words call up in my head whilst reading are far more horrific than any depicted here, and thus this large graphic book was a disappointment to me. And the fact that each story was heavily (although fairly well-) edited was extremely annoying for me. I wanted a nice, short sharp "fix" of horror by revisiting some of my favorite short stories, and found these versions to be rather bland.
As an introduction to many classic creepy old tales, this might be a good starting point for an 8-year-old or a comics/manga fan; as I'm neither....
My imagination being rather, um, wild (grin) the pictures those classic words call up in my head whilst reading are far more horrific than any depicted here, and thus this large graphic book was a disappointment to me. And the fact that each story was heavily (although fairly well-) edited was extremely annoying for me. I wanted a nice, short sharp "fix" of horror by revisiting some of my favorite short stories, and found these versions to be rather bland.
As an introduction to many classic creepy old tales, this might be a good starting point for an 8-year-old or a comics/manga fan; as I'm neither....
October 27, 2012
The stories are very good in adaption to graphic novel genre. The only flaw I think for myself was the drawings for The Monkey's Paw, they were not as clear as I would have liked. I think the essense best for conveying emotion in the characters would have been if there was a little less repeated lines over the drawings. Otherwise the book brought a refreshed experience at the reading of these tales.
November 1, 2016
Interesting, weird, silly...but definitely not scary in the slightest. There was just one that gave me a bit of a shiver, but mostly I just chuckled my way through. The stories were fine, the artists did a great job, but if you are looking for something that is actually spine-tingling and horrific, give this collection a pass.
April 3, 2008
This was a really fun read. The artwork was a bit of a mixed bag, but overall it was quite nice. It makes me want to delve into some of the featured writers and their stories. Saki's The Open Window and The Monkey's Paw in particular were outstanding.
June 20, 2009
This was a fun, quick read. I think the graphic aspect made many of the stories easier to read and enjoy than if I'd picked up the actual story. It's a perfect pick for those times when you want something slightly spooky, slightly silly, and light.
November 3, 2009
A collection of 12 classic horror stories adapted into comic format. Some work better than others. "The Thing on the Doorstep" and "The Monkey's Paw" were my personal favorites--deliciously creepy and effective in this format.
November 1, 2007
My favorites from this volume include:
The Monkey's Paw, by W.W. Jacobs
The Open Window, by Saki
Selina Sedilia, by Bret Harte
The Monkey's Paw, by W.W. Jacobs
The Open Window, by Saki
Selina Sedilia, by Bret Harte
Displaying 1 - 18 of 18 reviews