Poe-mania!

As the Austin American-Statesman noted recently, the bicentennial of Edgar Allan Poe’s birth has not gone unnoticed by the publishing industry. The paper mentions several incredible books published to celebrate the Master of the Macabre’s 200th birthday, featuring works by authors such as Peter Straub, Stephen King, and Neil Gaiman, as well as Papercutz’s CLASSICS ILLUSTRATED #4 “The Raven and Other Poems” by Edgar Allan Poe and illustrated by Gahan Wilson. “Wilson — whom you probably think of as a frequent cartoonist for The New Yorker, but I will always think of as the illustrator of the Matthew Looney series of kids’ books — lends his aptly creepy sensibility to nine Poe poems.” Well, we completely agree!

Funny, but even though the title of the series is CLASSICS ILLUSTRATED, because the series has traditionally adapted Stories by the World’s Greatest Authors into comics, we actually received one complaint that objected to these CLASSIC poems actually being ILLUSTRATED, rather being turned into comics. I couldn’t help but be amused that someone was actually upset because we literally lived up to the title of the series, but I knew what the person meant.

Speaking of CLASSICS ILLUSTRATED, we need to give a shout out to the great folks at Dr Comics and Mr Games, located at 4014 Piedmont Ave, Oakland, CA 94611, for devoting an entire window to both our CLASSICS ILLUSTRATED and CLASSICS ILLUSTRATED DELUXE lines of graphic novels. Thanks, guys– we really appreciate it, and hope that folks enjoy these artful adaptations as much as we do.

Also, we want to mention that anyone looking for information on the original CLASSICS COMICS and CLASSICS ILLUSTRATED comics, we highly recommend CLASSICS ILLUSTRATED: A CULTURAL HISTORY (McFarland, 2002) by William B. Jones Jr. — it’s not only filled with fascinating facts, it’s also a great read about one of the greatest, yet most underrated, comics publishers in the world. And if you want to see what those original comics are like, go to www.jacklakeproductions.com and see how many of the original 169 are now back in print as hardcover reproductions.

Yes, now is a great time to be a fan of CLASSICS ILLUSTRATED! Papercutz is proud to keep this great comics publishing tradition alive, and thank YOU for your loyal support.