The Pull List – Edgar Allan Poe’s Snifter of Terror #2
Edgar Allan Poe is back for more storytelling while under the influence. The first story, Poe tells the tale of Ligeia, a story of an unnamed narrator and his Ligeia, a beautiful and mysterious woman with connections to dark arts. A strange sickness weakens Ligeia and the narrator’s marriage begins to unravel into something very strange. The second story, Poe visits one of his fellow writer’s pieces, Jules Verne’s From the Earth to the Moon, a story that involves the Baltimore Gun Club trying to travel to the moon, but with a very politically charged angle. Instead of gentlemen using post Civil War technology, its a collection of itchy trigger finger conservatives looking to show the moon who’s the greatest.
Ligeia is based on Poe’s 1838 short story in which the narrative can be viewed as gothic romance or satire of gothic fiction, something that Poe wrote to lash out on his critics for their judgment on gothic writing. Writer Rachel Pollack brings together the eerie tones of the original, with some opium flavored humor to make silly jokes at Poe’s expense. Rick Geary’s renditions of Victorian-era art, with Michael Garland’s colors, perfectly captures the gothic ambiance with comedic expressions.
Stuart Moore, Ryan Kelley, Rico Renzi, and Rob Steen update From the Earth to the Moon for the modern era that jabs at gun culture and the people who take it too seriously. Instead of a scholarly crew looking to reach the moon, Stuart Moore re-imagines the worst space pioneers assembled. Their bumbling attempts are well illustrated by Ryan Kelley and Rico Renzi, with hilarious parody stereotypes and a very vulgar Edgar Allan Poe.
Included in the issue from Ahoy Comic is another struggle between the man and cat in Poe and the Black Cat by Hunt Emerson, a gothic tale about Vladimir Putin in The Putin by Hart Seely and Dan Schoeneck, and a short story about being labeled a “bad” person in The Bad One by Laura Gjovaag and David Hicock.