REVIEW: The Stories of Edgar Allan Poe (manga) adaptation by Stacy King, art by various artists

The Stories of Edgar Allan Poe is one of several entries in the Manga Classics series, which pairs text (usually taken word-for-word, I believe) from classic works with manga-style illustrations.

This didn't work out very well here. These works ("The Tell-Tale Heart," "The Cask of Amontillado,"The Raven," "The Masque of the Red Death," and "The Fall of the House of Usher") weren't written to act as graphic novel scripts, and shoe-horning them into that role resulted in "adaptations" that were mediocre at best.

The artwork was generally decent - my favorites were probably "The Tell-Tale Heart" (art by Virginia-Nitouhei) and "The Fall of the House of Usher" (art by Linus Liu). "The Masque of the Red Death" (art by Uka Nagao) would probably have been another favorite of mine if it had been in color - the stained glass windows practically begged for it.

All in all, I felt that this did Poe's works a disservice by trying to include too much of the original text - if you're going to adapt something into graphic novel form, you have to be willing to recognize that, at times, it's best to leave out some text and trust the artwork to do the talking.

Extras:

Full-color cover images for each of the stories, some sketches, and additional information about Poe and a few of the stories.