Abstract

Edgar Poe’s visions and images have been nourishing the European visual arts ever since the nineteenth century (e.g., Doré, Rossetti, Beardsley, Monet, Redon), and the creative impulse is still powerful in the ninth art of the last decades. From Lalio and Battaglia to recent adaptations in French and albums featuring Poe as a fictional character, the European comic is exploiting the mine of Poe’s literary work, and although the macabre seems prevalent, it is not the only element that can be extracted. The light side of Poe is growing visible when studying these comics: first of all, from the point of view of the gallows humor and the grotesque (Battaglia: “The Unparalleled Adventure of One Hans Pfaall”); second, in regard to comic situations and visual jokes (“The Murders in the Rue Morgue” by Céka&Clod, “The Gold-Bug” by Corbeyran, and “The Oval Portrait” by Somon); and lastly with the games of intertextuality and the vision of Poe as a benefactor of humankind in Tarek&Morinière’s Baudelaire ou le roman rêvé d’E. A. Poe (Baudelaire or a Novel Dreamt by E. A. Poe) and Vilà&Collignon’s Edgar Poe: Le dernier cauchemar (Edgar Poe: The Last Nightmare). The visual interpretations magnify the comic, humorous, or life-affirming potential of Poe’s texts. Playing with Poe’s images is so powerful that even the openly macabre intention of such illustrators as Lacombre take on the turn of black humor or childish games. Thus comic images overshadow and ward off the tragedy of death.

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