Wednesday, May 27, 2015

Poe 1978, Pt. 1

(Continued from Poe 1977, Pt.11)

SPEKTRO  8
"A ADORMECIDA"   ("THE SLEEPER")
"O RETATO OVAL"  ("THE OVAL PORTRAIT")
    (Illustrated stories)

Editiora Vecchi was a Brazillian publisher founded in 1913 by Italian emigrant Arturo Vecchi.  They became known for their comics, including horror titles SOBRENATURAL, HISTORIAS DO ALEM, PESADELO, and...  SPEKTRO.

SPEKTRO ran from January 1977 to 1982, at its peak selling 40,000 copies an issue.  It began, oddly enough, with reprints of Gold Key's DR. SPEKTOR, but ran through those stories so quickly it soon expanded to reprinting Fawcett's Dr. Death and Dr. Mystery, and Charlton's Dr. Graves (I see a pattern here), as well as stories from Brazillian publisher Continental / Outubro / Taika's CLASSICOS DE TERROR.

I'll admit right here, detailed information about many Brazillian comics has been hard to track down, so that at the moment, I'm not entirely sure which stories, if any, are new to SPEKTRO, and which are reprints (and where they may have originally appeared).  However, I believe this was new in 1978; the "Illustrated" stories & poems do not appear to be of an earlier vintage.

This issue has 2 short subjects, so I decided to lump them together on a single page.

We start with "THE SLEEPER", a relatively obscure poem.  The artist is Cesar Lobo.  As I'm setting this page up, I've discovered at least 3 OTHER comics versions of this, although all of them were done around 3 decades later!  (By the way, I figured out that the 2nd & 3rd images and accompanying text of the poem in SPEKTRO were printed in reverse order.  FIXED now!)

After that, we have "THE OVAL PORTRAIT". This was text with only a single illustration, so by my definition, is NOT an "illustrated story".  However, as I had already replaced the Portuguese text with English text, I'm going to leave it here (for now).

As with SPEKTRO #2, I'm going to present this with the original English text re-formatted to fit the art.  Enjoy!

SPEKTRO  8
cover by MAURICIO VENEZA   (Editora Vecchi  /  Brazil  /  November 1978)
Page 4  /  Editorial
Page 49  /  Poe biography
"A ADORMICIDA"   ("THE SLEEPER")  /  Version 1
Adaptation & Layouts by R.F. LUCCHETTI  /  Art by CESAR LOBO
Page 50-51
Page 52-53
Page 54-55
Page 56-57
"O RETRATO OVAL"  
     ("THE OVAL PORTRAIT")
Art by ELMANO SILVA ("MANO")  /  Page 58
Page 59
Page 60
Back Cover  /  Art by H. FATON
Copyright (C) Editora Vecchi.
English version (C) 2015 Henry R. Kujawa

Scans of SPEKTRO #2 from the Gibi Classico site.
Original text of "The Dreamer" from the Poetry Foundation.org site.
Original text of "The Oval Portrait" from the xroads.virginia.edu site. 

Restorations by Henry R. Kujawa

For more:
Read about Edgar Allen Poe at Wikipedia.

Read about Editora Vecchi at Wikipedia.
Read about Spektro at Wikipedia.
Read about Maruicio Veneza at Editora DCL.
Read about Mauricio Veneza at the Aeilij Paulista site.
See more work by Mauricio Veneza at his site.
Read about Cesar Lobo at the Lambiek Comiclopedia site.
Read about Elmano Silva ("Mano") at Wikipedia.
Read an interview with Elmano Silva ("Mano") at the Tinta Nankin site,
     Special thanks to Toni Rodrigues for the link!

Read about The Sleeper at Wikipedia.
Read The Sleeper at the Poetry Foundation site.
Read about The Oval Portrait at Wikipedia.
Read the complete story the xroads.virginia.edu site.
See the OVAL PORTAIT Gallery of Illustrations.

Read the Osvaldo Talo OVAL PORTRAIT adaptation!
Read the Giovanni Cianti OVAL PORTRAIT adaptation!   (coming soon!)
Read the Richard Corben OVAL PORTAIT adaptation!
Read the Elmano Silva OVAL PORTRAIT illustrated story!

See my Edgar Allan Poe overview at this very blog!

(Continued in Poe 1979, Pt. 1)

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