{"id":2775,"date":"2009-01-03T12:00:14","date_gmt":"2009-01-03T12:00:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.comicsreview.co.uk\/nowreadthis\/?p=2775"},"modified":"2009-01-02T18:22:11","modified_gmt":"2009-01-02T18:22:11","slug":"hell-on-earth-%e2%80%93-a-dc-science-fiction-graphic-novel","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.comicsreview.co.uk\/nowreadthis\/2009\/01\/03\/hell-on-earth-%e2%80%93-a-dc-science-fiction-graphic-novel\/","title":{"rendered":"HELL ON EARTH \u00e2\u20ac\u201c A DC SCIENCE FICTION GRAPHIC NOVEL"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>
\nBy Robert Bloch, adapted by Keith Giffen & Robert Loren Fleming (DC Comics)
\nISBN: 0-930289-05-6<\/strong><\/p>\n

During the 1980s DC, on a creative roll like many publishers large and small, attempted to free comics narrative from its previous constraints of size and format as well as content. To this end, legendary editor Julie Schwartz called upon his old contacts from his youthful days as a Literary Agent to inveigle major names from the book world to have their early Sci-Fi and fantasy classics adapted into a line of Science Fiction Graphic Novels.<\/p>\n

One of the most radical interpretations came courtesy of Keith Giffen and Robert Loren Fleming, with inks and colours from Greg Theakston and Bill Wray not to mention phenomenal lettering and calligraphic effects from Gaspar Saladino.<\/p>\n

August horror fantasist Robert Bloch developed out of the Lovecraftian tradition of the early pulps to become a household name for books such as Psycho <\/strong>and I Am Legend<\/strong> which replaced unspeakable elder gods with just-as-nasty yet smaller-scaled devils like Jack the Ripper. In 1943 he scripted a blackly ironic tale of three ordinary people, researcher Professor Phillips Keith, his assistant Lily Ross and the reporter\/pulp horror writer they hire to document their great experiment.<\/p>\n

The tense interplay of this claustrophobic chiller is effectively captured by artist Giffen in his multi-paneled homage\/distillation of Jos\u00c3\u00a9 Mu\u00c3\u00b1oz’s stark art style as the experiment proceeds and the parapsychologists proceed to bring the Devil to Earth and trap him a glass cage. But as the lives of the trio spiral down into a miasma of darkness, guilt and regret, we have to ask: \u00e2\u20ac\u0153is he really trapped?\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n

Although a wordy, moody text, the interpreters have created a visual analogue that is just as tense and stifling as the original (which was recently reprinted with other \u00e2\u20ac\u0153forgotten\u00e2\u20ac\u009d classics in Hell on Earth: the Lost Bloch<\/strong> volume two) so if you like daring art and classic spookiness you should track down this album. And while you’re at it why not grab the prose piece as well and see how it works sans graphic narrative?
\n\u00c2\u00a9 1942 Weird Tales. Text and illustrations \u00c2\u00a9 1985 DC Comics Inc. All Rights Reserved.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Robert Bloch, adapted by Keith Giffen & Robert Loren Fleming (DC Comics) ISBN: 0-930289-05-6 During the 1980s DC, on a creative roll like many publishers large and small, attempted to free comics narrative from its previous constraints of size and format as well as content. To this end, legendary editor Julie Schwartz called upon … <\/p>\n

Continue reading “HELL ON EARTH \u00e2\u20ac\u201c A DC SCIENCE FICTION GRAPHIC NOVEL”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2775","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-graphic-novels"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4AFj-IL","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.comicsreview.co.uk\/nowreadthis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2775","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.comicsreview.co.uk\/nowreadthis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.comicsreview.co.uk\/nowreadthis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.comicsreview.co.uk\/nowreadthis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.comicsreview.co.uk\/nowreadthis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2775"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.comicsreview.co.uk\/nowreadthis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2775\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.comicsreview.co.uk\/nowreadthis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2775"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.comicsreview.co.uk\/nowreadthis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2775"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.comicsreview.co.uk\/nowreadthis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2775"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}