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A review by leslie_d
Edgar Allan Poe's Tales of Mystery and Madness by Edgar Allan Poe
3.0
I read the final story (The Fall of the House of Usher) in this illustrated collection of 4 Edgar Allan Poe stories just before falling asleep last night. Yeah, my dreams were even more demented than usual. I also woke to the dismembering of several trees, where the snowfall was too much for the still leafy behemoths. Tree carnage everywhere. Needless to say, Gris Grimly’s Edgar Allan Poe’s Tales of Mystery and Madness is a perfect seasonal read.
The claim that “The original tales have been ever so slightly dismembered” is true. Gris Grimly handles these stories masterfully. Poe’s work is as delicious dark as ever, atmospheric, gruesome, and wickedly worded.
The daughter picked up a collection of Poe’s work from the school library not long ago. And the delight in her reading Poe was his overall effect, and his incredible vocabulary. Lists were made by page where she would stop and look them all up. Then at the end re-read the story in a definite state of awe. In Gris Grimly’s lovely book, the words remain as flavorful and difficult as ever. The oft long and unwieldy sentences that sing so perfectly are still enacted, sinking the chills so deeply inward as they wind about and descend.
Poe has a way of externalizing the internal machinations using everything at his disposal, and I think Gris Grimly via his figure sketches and his composed frames/pages would echo a similar effect. The accompaniment of illustration is really well done in a contemporary styling of Edward Gorey, with some water color, and with an edge of mania. Admittedly, at first I shrugged at their darkling charm, but the images really grew on me. They’ve an energy; and they infuse the sinister in the same subtle ways Poe does with words. Given time and a better vocabulary I could disassemble the effects, like one might do with Poe (sentence structure, diction, etc) but in the end there is sure to be an organic quality that unsettles appropriately.
from The Fall of the House of Usher. this image is pre-text. I liked Gris Grimly’s use of water color.
The presentation of the stories are of interest. There is a lot of framing, with actual—er—frames, but it is more picture book than comic*; although the debate there is sure to continue. The images move as the story warrants, and they clarify the mood of each piece. Mind the compositions, as well as the delicacy in which Gris Grimly handles the more gory aspects to a story. I adored the font for the dialog and how it paired so nicely with the regular text in Locarno. The details really come together. But for the color, it is old cinema at points, a bit of Hitchcock; perhaps with the color, Tim Burton, both with film and with pen. I can liken, but Gris Grimly, even as he glowingly cites influences, concocts an imagery all his own.
You read enough Edgar Allan Poe and you note repetitive images and themes and his brilliant observations of mental illnesses. In the 4 stories Gris Grimly chose to collect and illustrate find commonality, and not just Mystery and Madness. For those adults who worry over characters drinking or smoking, Poe and Grimly provide good morality tales as to how alcohol and opium (among other things) poorly affect the spirit and drive a body into horrible states. In the first story, Black Cat, the protagonist, driven by alcoholism and its subsequent inhibition of rage, gouges his beloved cat’s eyeball out. And then later tries to take an axe to it, but well, I won’t spoil it for you. Suffice it to say, many a story here is an advertisement for how the drink and anger harms; and how horrifying the unrepentant truly are.
And yet, of course, Poe can be complicated. With Black Cat: Was it the Alcohol? Was it an adult onset of some other illness complicated by drink? Was he really just a bad man (and since he was writing the letter misled us at the beginning)? We really want to work out some of Poe’s mysteries, review his words, his establishment of the story, because his villains (who are oft our narrator) are scary and it feels safer to explain them away—which is a mistake, because Poe’s villains become all too familiar a figure.
For instance, The Mask of the Red Death feels timely, does it not? Prince Prospero hiding away behind impressive and impassable walls in opulence with the select courtiers while the 99% writhe in anguish beneath the onslaught of the Red Death (assign the red state where you will). –okay, sorry, I usually avoid anything political, but you get the example. Poe (and Grimly) use both the upper and the lower classmen as figures of terror. Notably however is the gleefulness you feel at the ending of the villainous Prince (The Mask) and King (Hop-Frog). Then, with both The Mask of the Red Death and Hop-Frog the endings are a conflict of terror and jubilance; not unlike the masquerade balls in which the concluding events occur. As for The Fall of the House of Usher just felt inevitable. I felt an enormous relief of having escaped that story. Unfortunately Black Cat is a scenario that isn’t always so inevitable. Poe’s stories and Grimly’s artwork are inspired.
Poe’s stories (and Gris Grimly’s illustrations) can be enjoyed at a most basic level: you can get a fairly simple chill of horror and enjoy its lingering effects for hours after. Or you can linger and worry over how you yourself have been thus revealed by the reading and manipulative response of Poe’s tales. You can marvel over a sentence, a scene, or creatively subtle devisement. In Gris Grimly’s book, you can enjoy the illustrations several passes more. Edgar Allan Poes’ Tales of Mystery and Madness is a treat that keeps on giving, “ever so slightly dismembered” into bite-sized stories for enjoyable autumnal afternoon sittings. And I would echo the recommended daylight hours, for Poe in the hands of Gris Grimly is delightfully disturbing.
***************
*Since this book is for 11 & up you will likely find this in a Teen Graphic Novel/Comics section. And I really would take the age 11 & up seriously here.
L @ omphaloskepsis
http://contemplatrix.wordpress.com/2011/10/26/tales-of-mystery-madness/
The claim that “The original tales have been ever so slightly dismembered” is true. Gris Grimly handles these stories masterfully. Poe’s work is as delicious dark as ever, atmospheric, gruesome, and wickedly worded.
The daughter picked up a collection of Poe’s work from the school library not long ago. And the delight in her reading Poe was his overall effect, and his incredible vocabulary. Lists were made by page where she would stop and look them all up. Then at the end re-read the story in a definite state of awe. In Gris Grimly’s lovely book, the words remain as flavorful and difficult as ever. The oft long and unwieldy sentences that sing so perfectly are still enacted, sinking the chills so deeply inward as they wind about and descend.
Poe has a way of externalizing the internal machinations using everything at his disposal, and I think Gris Grimly via his figure sketches and his composed frames/pages would echo a similar effect. The accompaniment of illustration is really well done in a contemporary styling of Edward Gorey, with some water color, and with an edge of mania. Admittedly, at first I shrugged at their darkling charm, but the images really grew on me. They’ve an energy; and they infuse the sinister in the same subtle ways Poe does with words. Given time and a better vocabulary I could disassemble the effects, like one might do with Poe (sentence structure, diction, etc) but in the end there is sure to be an organic quality that unsettles appropriately.
from The Fall of the House of Usher. this image is pre-text. I liked Gris Grimly’s use of water color.
The presentation of the stories are of interest. There is a lot of framing, with actual—er—frames, but it is more picture book than comic*; although the debate there is sure to continue. The images move as the story warrants, and they clarify the mood of each piece. Mind the compositions, as well as the delicacy in which Gris Grimly handles the more gory aspects to a story. I adored the font for the dialog and how it paired so nicely with the regular text in Locarno. The details really come together. But for the color, it is old cinema at points, a bit of Hitchcock; perhaps with the color, Tim Burton, both with film and with pen. I can liken, but Gris Grimly, even as he glowingly cites influences, concocts an imagery all his own.
You read enough Edgar Allan Poe and you note repetitive images and themes and his brilliant observations of mental illnesses. In the 4 stories Gris Grimly chose to collect and illustrate find commonality, and not just Mystery and Madness. For those adults who worry over characters drinking or smoking, Poe and Grimly provide good morality tales as to how alcohol and opium (among other things) poorly affect the spirit and drive a body into horrible states. In the first story, Black Cat, the protagonist, driven by alcoholism and its subsequent inhibition of rage, gouges his beloved cat’s eyeball out. And then later tries to take an axe to it, but well, I won’t spoil it for you. Suffice it to say, many a story here is an advertisement for how the drink and anger harms; and how horrifying the unrepentant truly are.
And yet, of course, Poe can be complicated. With Black Cat: Was it the Alcohol? Was it an adult onset of some other illness complicated by drink? Was he really just a bad man (and since he was writing the letter misled us at the beginning)? We really want to work out some of Poe’s mysteries, review his words, his establishment of the story, because his villains (who are oft our narrator) are scary and it feels safer to explain them away—which is a mistake, because Poe’s villains become all too familiar a figure.
For instance, The Mask of the Red Death feels timely, does it not? Prince Prospero hiding away behind impressive and impassable walls in opulence with the select courtiers while the 99% writhe in anguish beneath the onslaught of the Red Death (assign the red state where you will). –okay, sorry, I usually avoid anything political, but you get the example. Poe (and Grimly) use both the upper and the lower classmen as figures of terror. Notably however is the gleefulness you feel at the ending of the villainous Prince (The Mask) and King (Hop-Frog). Then, with both The Mask of the Red Death and Hop-Frog the endings are a conflict of terror and jubilance; not unlike the masquerade balls in which the concluding events occur. As for The Fall of the House of Usher just felt inevitable. I felt an enormous relief of having escaped that story. Unfortunately Black Cat is a scenario that isn’t always so inevitable. Poe’s stories and Grimly’s artwork are inspired.
Poe’s stories (and Gris Grimly’s illustrations) can be enjoyed at a most basic level: you can get a fairly simple chill of horror and enjoy its lingering effects for hours after. Or you can linger and worry over how you yourself have been thus revealed by the reading and manipulative response of Poe’s tales. You can marvel over a sentence, a scene, or creatively subtle devisement. In Gris Grimly’s book, you can enjoy the illustrations several passes more. Edgar Allan Poes’ Tales of Mystery and Madness is a treat that keeps on giving, “ever so slightly dismembered” into bite-sized stories for enjoyable autumnal afternoon sittings. And I would echo the recommended daylight hours, for Poe in the hands of Gris Grimly is delightfully disturbing.
***************
*Since this book is for 11 & up you will likely find this in a Teen Graphic Novel/Comics section. And I really would take the age 11 & up seriously here.
L @ omphaloskepsis
http://contemplatrix.wordpress.com/2011/10/26/tales-of-mystery-madness/