Both of these tales show up in Classics, with "Squaw" retitled as "Torture Tower," perhaps out of a desire to downplay the original story's Native American subtext. Neither of the new versions made me forget Goodwin and Crandall's original adaptations, though "House" artist Gerry Alanguilan comes close to matching Crandall's straightforwardly sinister style. Onsmith Jeremi takes a funkier art comics approach to "Tower," and, while it serves to make this version distinct, it doesn't, unfortunately, make it better.
Two text pieces round out the Stoker collection. One, a humorous vampire hunter manual adapted from Abraham Van Helsing's expository lectures from Dracula, benefits from the pure cartoony style of British artist Hunt Emerson (who once assayed a swell graphic novel version of Lady Chatterley's Lover). The second, an illustrated version of the writer's children's fantasy, "The Wondrous Child," would be totally disposable were it not for the tantalizingly dreamlike illustrations by Dutch comic artist Evert Geradts, best known for his European comic book versions of Donald Duck and Uncle Scrooge. Also buried near the back of the book: a Spain Rodriquez graveyard image that makes you wish he'd taken on one of the longer adaptations.
As with the Gothic Classics anthology, there are moments where you can see the scripters lose the battle to fit the original writer's pre-modern writing voice (all that long explanatory dialog!) into word balloons and narrative captions. But, in general Stoker's less artful melodramatic writing voice works better in comics format than Jane Austen, say. Per the back of the book, Graphic Classics is recommended for ages 12 to adult, though I have to wonder just how receptive pre-teen readers will be to Stoker's 19th century voice. Still, the thought of some young would-be horror buff discovering the malevolent judge's house or that revenge-seeking cat for the first time must surely warm the cockles of ol' Uncle Creepy's barely beating heart.
Article comments
1 - Natalie Bennett
This article has been selected for syndication to Advance.net , which is affiliated with newspapers around the United States, and to Boston.com. Nice work!