Edgar Allen Poe sits in darkness, fixated on a paper in front of him. His attention solely focused on writing the next piece of literature with a feather quill in his right hand. The title in autumn orange letters read “Poe; Stories and Poems,” “A Graphic Novel Adaptation By Gareth Hinds.” Up above, weapons and gothic items hang from hooks— most notably a trowel, a bladed pendulum, a bloodied saw, a skull, and other items synonymous with Poe’s stories and dark themes. There is no background, just endless darkness. To Poe’s left, a candle burns, illuminating one of the greatest writers in history. The back cover is pictured like a dungeon wall, further accentuating the gothic nature of the book. In the bottom left corner a quill rests inside an open bottle of black ink. Most notably a paper scroll sprawls out with multiple quotes by commemorating reviews and journals. “Brilliant and terrifying,” “Befittingly dark” some say, and one review by the Booklist claims Gareth Hinds “breathes vivid life” into Poe’s “most well-known stories and poems.” This comic book, as well as Hinds, is highly regarded.
Gareth Hinds illustrated and adapted other classic literature works into graphic novels. These include works by Shakespeare, Homer’s The Odyssey, and Beowulf to name a few[1]. This book remains Hinds’ only work on Edgar Allen Poe. According to his author notes, Hinds strived to “translate [Poe’s] florid, descriptive prose into the medium of comics.”[2] He also filled the novel with visual nods and symbols relating to gothic tropes for which Poe synonymizes with. Intermediate pages have ravens, coffins, saws, and lamp patterns. Even the table of contents parallels the back cover: text written on giant parchment paper stuck to a dungeon wall. The stories and poems Hinds adapted include The Masque of the Red Death, The Cask of Amontillado, Annabel Lee, The Pit and The Pendulum, The Tell-Tale Heart, The Bells, and of course The Raven. Hinds employs digital coloring for the short stories, sometimes with ink and/or acrylic paint[3]. The short stories incorporate comic panelling, while the poems have little to no paneling (Annabel Lee contains very few panels).For poems, Hinds illustrates full page spreads, commonly dubbed splash pages, considering the poems do not have definite plots that would not translate well into comic medium. The Bells and Annabel Lee were both created using acrylic paint like the stories, while The Raven was composed with charcoal.
Certain hurdles test a creator’s abilities when adapting any of Poe’s works. A major test resides in Poe’s unreliable narrators and lack of contexts for time and setting. The upside to these hurdles is the large creative space adaptors can take and apply their own portrayal of Poe’s text. In this case, Hinds interpreted what Poe’s narrators look like, and took liberties into deciding the time period the narratives could be set. Some examples include Hinds setting the The Masque of The Red Death “roughly in the early 1600s” because of the story’s allusions to the Black Death[4], and Hinds’ decision to reveal The Tell-Tale Heart’s narrator as a mentally ill patient. This choice provided a clearer ending then the one Poe originally left his audience.
Compared to the other pieces, Hinds’ version of The Raven is particularly unusual because of its complete lack of panelling and color— black charcoal exclusively details this entire piece. Hinds also made the poem’s narrator look like Poe because the piece “seems very much like a reflection on [Poe’s] personal grief.”[5] He explains The Raven sets in a “somewhat ambiguous time period” being “so timeless.” Both of these decisions admirably honor Poe. Consequently, Hinds limited himself from any attempt at an impactful adaptation. The honoring of Poe overshadows The Raven as art. Multiple stanzas are grouped to a single page. As a result, Poe’s prose ultimately disappeared.
Hinds chose to save the most famous American poem for last. I consider this a good decision, as it prevents Poe’s lesser known from being overshadowed. But unlike the other visuals in this comic, Hinds’ focused on adapting Poe instead of The Raven itself. That is, Hinds read this poem from a biographical point of view. Which means he read The Raven as a window into Poe’s life and mind. He believes this poem to be a mirror, a “reflection” into Poe’s personal griefs. This method of reading is problematic towards adaptation because it doesn’t respect the poem as art anymore but interprets it instead as a biography. Poe’s narrator could be anyone, since he left the context surrounding the narrator so open. Hinds also “[tucks] visual ingredients from the other stories and poems” into The Raven’s illustrations. On Page 94 lies a mask in the grass, possibly from the Red Death. The Raven’s feathers on 96-97 morph into hands and skulls for some unclear reason. Flying bells from The Bells on page 99 ring in the top right corner. These “easter eggs” do not help adaptation, but further bog down the intricate prose of The Raven.
Hinds could have drawn one page for each stanza to provide insight into his interpretation of the poem. Only 3 out of 12 pages caption a single stanza. For example, page 92 captions the poem’s first two stanzas. In the original text, Poe’s narrator describes himself as having vainly “sought to borrow/From my books surcease of sorrow.”[6] Many interpretations of the Raven conclude that the narrator was reading a book before nodding off. The book the narrator reads is described in the first stanza as a “curious volume of forgotten lore.”[7] In Hinds’ splash page, his narrator, “Poe,” is not reading. Instead, books are stacked neatly on a table, but there is no hint of his narrator picking up the book. A picture assumed to be of Lenore rests on a stack of books, indicating that “Poe” couldn’t have moved them prior to the arrival of tapping sound (Lenore’s name appears eight times in the poem but this is our only instance of her in this work). Each stanza needs its own page or panel. For example, going back to the first page, we’ll keep the original illustration but only have one caption, the first stanza. For the second stanza, Hinds could have charcoaled a dream sequence or a flashback either detailing the “bleak December (Poe 7)” or giving us a better picture of Lenore that isn’t limited to a small blurry photograph. The most problematic part of this adaptation awaits within pages 96-97. Hinds beautifully illustrated a dark yet extremely detailed and intricate two page spread of the Raven. It’s eyes are black and beady, the feathers on its body slowly transforming into ghoulish hands and skulls. But Hinds surrounds the bird with four stanzas— stanzas 8-11. This removes any chance of interpretation, and oversteps a lot of information. Hinds doesn’t dealinate any interesting details, such as the narrator’s “Hopes [having] flown before” or the bird’s theorized “unhappy master”[8]. These would have been amazing details to explore. What does Hinds think the narrator’s lost “hopes” are? What could have the bird’s previous master looked like? Why is the Raven cawing here, when it only speaks in stanzas 8 and 10? By having four stanzas miss their own page and/or panel, all sense of time, space, and progression is lost. Synonymizing Poe with this poem, Hinds fails at complementing the text with visual art. That is what a Graphic Novel should do— combine visual mediums with prose. Reading Hinds’ version of The Raven is almost no different than reading it printed on a white sheet of paper because of how little text was actually adapted.
You would think Hinds would end on a high note, with every creative choice he made in the other works building up to this timeless piece. Unlike Annabel Lee and The Bells, Poe’s The Raven contains a sense of progression and quotations that easily could have been incorporated into speech bubbles or just one page panels. But he chose to focus solely on Poe as a person, instead of The Raven as art. The graphic novel would be a good introduction to Poe for newer readers. But for those who’ve previously read and studied Poe, you won’t find anything intriguing here. [1] “My Books.” Garethhinds.com, https://www.garethhinds.com/wp/.
[2] Hinds, Gareth, and Edgar Allan Poe. Poe: Stories and Poems. Candlewick Press, 2017.