Gothic Classics: Graphic Classics #14
© Graphic Classics
Mania Grade: A
Issue: 14
Authors: Various
Publisher: Graphic Classics
Price: $11.95
Issue: 14
Authors: Various
Publisher: Graphic Classics
Price: $11.95
Gothic Classics: Graphic Classics #14
By: Kurt AmackerReview Date: Saturday, June 16, 2007
You think you know what Gothic means. You think of Tim Burton movies, Bauhaus, and a bunch of nerds in black clothes and eyeliner hanging out in front of Hot Topic after school. You think you know, but you have only glimpsed the surface of a literary and artistic tradition dating back to the 18th century. Before all of the aforementioned examples and even before Bela Lugosi graced the screen as Dracula, a few malcontents defied the en vogue literary realism to bring us atmospheric tales of mystery and horror. And, they often used just as many words as I did in that last sentence. Gothic literature brought macabre thrills to many bored wives of its day, dominating English popular literature for years before moving beyond its earliest genre conventions and geographic boundaries.
Graphic Classics’ 14th volume, appropriately entitled Gothic Classics, adapts and illustrates five examples of the genre. The selections include obvious selections like Ann Radcliffe’s The Mysteries of Udolpho and J. Sheridan Le Fanu’s Carmilla, but also, curiously enough, Jane Austen’s Northanger Abbey – a story merciless in its parody, given its author’s distaste for the Gothic. Edgar Allen Poe gets a nod with The Oval Portrait, and the collection concludes with a story by Myla Jo Closser about dogs waiting for their masters in Heaven, called At the Gate. I can’t, for the life of me, figure out why Graphic Classics elected to include the latter story or Northanger Abbery, but the entire volume offers some really fine illustration by a range of artists, including Lisa K. Weber, Leong Wan Kok, and Carlo Vergara. The latter has done an amazing job with The Mysteries of Udolpho, in tandem with Antonella Caputo’s incredibly condensed, yet very faithful adaptation. When I read that book before my freshman year of college, I hardly expected to ever see a comic book adaptation of it.
Gothic Classics reintroduces modern readers to a good, if occasionally puzzling, selection of stories from the genre – ones that predate modern understandings linked to horror films and the Goth subculture. While it employs a somewhat-loose definition of the genre, it still sheds light on a dark, delightful literary tradition that many have forgotten. Give it to your favorite angst-ridden Goth kid and show him where it all began.
Questions? Comments? Let us know what you think at comicscape@mania.com.
More From Mania
GRAPHIC CLASSICS #1
GRAPHIC CLASSICS: BRAM STOKER #7
(Friday, August 31, 2007)
"Graphic Classics: H.P. Lovecraft"
(Wednesday, February 14, 2007)
Horror classics
(Tuesday, September 26, 2006)
CULT CLASSICS: Disc 2
(Wednesday, July 26, 2006)
More classics on disc
(Thursday, February 17, 2005)
Warner Bros. Classics
(Tuesday, September 30, 2003)
See more related content
