Udolpho, for better or worse, is the template that centuries of romance writers have utilized to craft "ladies' gothics." It has everything you'd expect in a work of this type: a victim heroine thrown into the hands of villains by cruel fate, a crumbling castle with secret passages and a mysterious portrait, seemingly supernatural events that get "logically" explained (in this case, pirates are behind the seeming hauntings), poisonings, a wrongfully imprisoned dashing hero and more. If scripter Antonella Caputo is unavoidably text-heavy, Carlo Vergara's detailed art beautifully captures each teardrop and shadowy corridor. And while its plot isn't a model of air-tight construction, Udolpho's underlying theme – of women imperiled by an avaricious patriarchal culture – still holds it all together.
In one of Northanger's better moments, novel-addled heroine Catharine Morland is shocked to learn that a handsome young gentleman is also fan of Udolpho: "You never read novels, I dare say," she states before learning the truth. "Gentlemen read better books." Despite its frequent status as second-class literature, gothic literature has endured, in part due to its transgressive disrespect for the niceties of realistic plotting. While Gothic Classics only occasionally touches on the genre's more sensationalist tendencies (you wanna do a truly gothic piece, why not adapt Castle of Otranto or, better yet, The Monk?), the sight of a willowy young girl holding onto a flickering lantern as she tremulously treads toward who-knows-what (check out Trina Robbins' back cover illo for a super-fine example of this image) is still rife with "forbidden" connotation . . .
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