GRAPHIC CLASSICS: MIND CANDY FOR THE ADVENTURE GAMER – Article

If there is a single, uniting irrefutable factor that defines all adventure gamers, it is that we all share a love of reading. We devour any and all reading material. Classic literature, horror novels, comic books – it doesn’t matter, we love to read

But there is even another, more esoteric, factor that defines the adventure genre for we are the only group of gamers who actually get excited when it is announced that a work of classic literature is to be developed as an adventure game.

A new Sherlock Holmes adaptation, Agatha Christie’s And Then There Were None, Jules Verne’s Journey to the Center of the Earth – the gaming community as a whole yawns, but adventure gamers are ecstatic for we are literary gaming geeks of the highest magnitude.

So it is that I was thrilled to learn of a relatively new series of graphic novels based on the collected works of well-known (and sometimes not so well-known) authors. Graphic Classics is an extension of Rosebud – a magazine devoted to creative prose, poetry and visual art – and the literary pedigree is obvious.

Those who have fond memories of Classics Illustrated will immediately recognize the format, but whereas an issue of ‘Classics Illustrated’ was a color comic book that usually only featured one story drawn by a single artist, each Graphic Classics is 144 page oversize glossy soft-cover that spotlights several different black-and-white stories by the same author. The exceptions are special issues devoted to a specific subject, such as Horror Classics or Adventure Classics – that feature adaptations from several different authors on the same theme and are reminiscent of Warren Publishing’s Creepy & Eerie magazines. Each story is illustrated – or as artist R. Tommaso so wonderfully labels it, ‘pictated’ – by a different artist who brings his own unique style to the telling.

So what we are treated to are not only the illustrated works of such luminaries as Edgar Allen Poe, H.P. Lovecraft and Mark Twain, but also lesser read authors such as Rafael Sabatini, Johnston McCulley (the creator of Zorro) and W.W. Jacobs (who, as I’m sure you remember, wrote the lingeringly eerie ‘The Monkey’s Paw’ which is not only one of the most haunting stories ever written, but also served as the springboard for horror tales in many of William M. Gaines E.C. comics).

Most interestingly though is that while the tales that the featured author is most remembered for are usually included, the editors have also wisely chosen to include many lesser known stories by the same author. So while we can relive Robert Louis Stevenson’s ‘The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde’, we are also introduced to ‘The Bottle Imp’. Or how about a collection of stories by Arthur Conan Doyle that don’t feature his legendary Sherlock Holmes character? Bram Stoker’s Dracula is represented by a collection of story highlights as envisioned by sundry artists, but it was this volume that also introduced me to the Stoker’s nifty ‘Torture Tower’ and this is what ultimately makes the Graphic Classics so special – each volume contains at least one story that will be unfamiliar to even the most voracious reader.

The Graphic Classics collection is now thirteen in number (Several of the more popular authors such as H.P. Lovecraft, Poe & Stoker are out-of-print, but copies can be found on Ebay). The series had an inconspicuous beginning with a collection of Edgar Allen Poe stories that relied too much on text and not enough on graphics. But the editor – apparently recognizing that the reader had been shorted on the ‘Graphic’ promise – was quick to reissue an updated second edition that featured 80 new pages of illustrated Poe (tip of the hat to multi-talented illustrator/editor Tom Pomplun for his homage to Vincent Price’s atmospheric Roger Corman films).

By volume three’s H. G. Wells adaptations, it seemed that the editor was more willing to risk what could have been audacious liberties and so instead of a flat out interpretation of War of the Worlds, we instead are treated to a superb adaptation of the infamous War of the Worlds Halloween radio broadcast from Orson Welles’ Mercury Theatre. Other volumes often feature snippets based on key moments in the featured author’s life – or in Poe’s case death – and it is these small touches that elevate the Graphic Classics above other graphic novels.

But of course, we must have our adventure connection and there are many such as H.G. Welles’ (sic) ‘The Time Machine’, which many of you will fondly remember from our not-too-sublime review. Or how about Poe’s Tell Tale Heart which was such a large part of JA Hall of Fame entry The Dark Eye. There are others, but what struck me most while reading some of these classic stories was how easily they could be adapted as an adventure game.

If I sound like a paid huckster for the Graphic Classics, believe me I am not, but it is difficult to not be enthusiastic about such quality, especially when each volume can be had for only $11.95 or less. I would though like to offer one suggestion for a future volume of Graphics Classics – how cool would it be to have illustrated versions of classic adventure games?! Sanitarium, Roberta Williams Phantasmagoria, Jane Jensen’s Sins of the Fathers, Amber – there is a great, untapped opportunity waiting for a publisher willing to take a chance by thinking outside the box.