Tweet
Published by: Dark Horse Comics
Released on: Apr. 2, 2014
Writer: Richard Corben
Artist: Richard Corben
Cover artist: Richard Corben
Purchase at Amazon
You don't even need to read what some asshole writes about this comic book know the single, glaring reason to pick this book up: it's a Richard Corben book. That should be the end of the review, but just in case you have lived in Ted Kaczynski's Hobbit hole for the last SIX fucking decades and are not familiar with Corben, or Edgar Allen Poe for that matter, here's what some asshole has to say. And we'll not bash you in the words that follow if you are such a person who has never read Corben's stuff.
This one-shot comic actually contains two Poe adaptations, and The Premature Burial is the shorter of the two at just nine of the 24 pages the book holds. Mag the Hag hosts the two tales, with her open coat and massive knee-knocking juggs (it is NOT a nice pair of boobs). The Premature Burial is the story of a sex-crazed man trying to get sloppy with his girl, only to be shut down. He'll get no sex from her until the marriage vows are said. That won't do, so he kills her and later on the eve of her burial he digs her up. Necrophilia ensues, but she isn't dead and wakes from her apparent demise. The struggle between them ends with HIM getting killed, and then waking up in HIS grave as he wasn't dead either. He gets out of the tomb alive to continue on with life…or does he?
The second story, The Cask of the Amontillado, is about a guy called Montresor who buries his friend Fortunato alive and then brings the poor sap's widow down to tell her how he killed her husband. The fat lush Fortunato wanted to try Montresor's wine, the amontillado, and made Montresor bring him into the family vaults for a taste of the famous wine. This of course was what Montresor wanted all along, and tricked Fortunato (unfortunately named) into thinking he was calling the shots as they marched onward and deeper into the vaults. But that taste of the elusive wine never came to the drunken glutton. Instead his friend bricked him up into the walls to die a slow and lonely death. Now, he merely wants to confess and gloat about his getting away with murder before he takes his own life down in the tombs.
Corben's work, whether in underground comix or the aboveground major league publishers, is always stunning. It's hard to find words to praise him that have not already been sung a thousand times such as his incredible talent for storytelling and how innovative his art techniques are and always have been, without repeating said praises and sounding like a broken record. The man is legendary and for a reason: he's just THAT good. Whether you've been drooling over his artwork since you were 12 years old or you're just discovering his genius now, his fantastic contributions to comic books will long outlive his ability to produce such high caliber stuff.
