Edgar Allen Poe's "Berenice"

Just finished this job for Graphic Classics' second collection of Poe adaptations, due out on August 1st 2011. Needless to say, it's the kind of source material I've been dying to be let loose on, this particular tale concerning a monomaniacal French aristocrat becoming morbidly obsessed with his ill fiancée's teeth.

On reading the section of the script illustrated above, I'll admit to succumbing to a good giggle. The guy's haunted by visions of The Teeth, see. He covets and clutches at them. There's a big potential pitfall here, because it's all a bit silly, but needs to be dark and somewhat horrific as well (or preferably instead). Whether I've nailed it is up to you, excellent, lovely and discerning human being that you are ;-)

The actual drawing of the story was a game of two halves. I've been long beholden to Bernie Wrightson's luscious inkwork on comics such as this, and have been enjoying a long running re-primer in his back catalogue courtesy of Peter Richardson's fab Cloud 109 blog, so it's little wonder that this started out as an unconscious homage. A poor man's homage, admittedly - a couple of weeks into the job I realised what was happening, and overhauled the look to more genuinely reflect the direction in which my work's heading these days. So it's ended up as a combination of me on a good day and Wrightson on a bad day. Does it work? Again, that's for you to decide, you brilliant thing you, etc etc etc.