I check around for what people think about this anthology series. People are familiar with Edgar Allan Poe's best works from a literature class. What many people don't know is that Poe's work are satirical in nature. I even found records of an essay that back up that claim here: http://connection.ebscohost.com/c/essays/57547746/humor-satire-edgar-allan-poes-absurd-stories. Many people are familiar with the gothic nature that is the default look at Poe. Many people don't really realize that the guy was a drunk who only got famous post-mortem. He's certainly known for his exploits that give rise to detective fiction. At the same time there is the boundary between horror and comedy. The macabre often smashes together for comedic effects. Looking at that, you see the writer try to emulate Poe's mostly hit-or-miss work. As such those hits receive the most attention while the rest are forgotten. In fact, these stories say more about the writers own relationship with the world rather than Poe. When it comes to all of that, it's really a matter of taste as things can either be comedic or just plain weird. Me I've never been the biggest fan of Poe because my teachers had me focus on his landmark work. Nowadays I see a guy just trying to make a living who had real problems. But how well the writer influences today's storytellers can go a long way. I'm not one of those people though.

Unfortunately, the narrative of this text was not able to sustain my attention long enough for me to finish this. I hope the author can edit this a bit and work on the overarching themes.

Another good Edgar Allan Poe novel! Love the art. His stories are very well done!

ARC provided by the publisher through NetGalley in exchange for an honest review

I was looking forward to read this one, but unfortunately, I didn't like it. Some of the stories were interesting. I liked the illustrations. Maybe this would be better if the authors didn't use E. A. Poe's name and his stories as the basis.

I'm sorry, I wanted to like it. I tried multiple times, but it's not for me, I guess.

I was excited to read this. I’m a Poe fan and this was a man so for me. I really wanted to like it. I did enjoy the artwork.

As a fan of both Poe and EC Comics, I was really hoping to like this, but, overall, just found it a strange and largely incoherent collection of disparate pieces that was neither as funny or politically sharp as it thinks it is (which is a shame since inclusions like "The Fall of the White House of President Usher" had a lot of potential).

Titles included here worked best when directly satirizing Poe's works, particularly when the marriage of Poe and Mad Magazine-inspired grotesquerie was on full display (Hunt Emerson's "Poe and the Black Cat," for example), but so many pieces felt like bizarre sidetracks that made only limp attempts at poking fun at 19th century Gothic (broadly, that is; not sure why there wasn't actually more focus on Poe specifically when it isn't as though there isn't plenty of material to work with) .

That said, Mark Russell and Peter Snejbjerg's "Dark Chocolate" is by far and away the best piece of the lot -- a tale that, again, has more to do with 19th century horror and the mid-20th century's commercialization of it into "happy gothic" broadly and less to do with Poe's tales specifically. That the funniest and most imaginative inclusion has very little to do with Poe is perhaps exactly the problem, because, overall, the gags about Poe, most fully on display in the frame narrative of a drunken Poe as our host, were just TIRED (the over-exaggerated claims of Poe's drinking and opium use, jokes about Poe's marriage to his cousin, etc, etc.). Poe and horror comics is a match made in grotesque slapstick heaven, but this collection just falls flat.

This felt forced to me. While I enjoy the drunk history style this kind of fell flat from that goal. It seemed to lack understanding of Poe's work and felt pretty forced. I wish I could have enjoyed this more because it is something I would normally enjoy (if done well).

The art style was done well and I enjoyed the colors and line work.

A curiously specific anthology, with various moderately well-known creators (Mark Russell, Ann Nocenti, Hunt Emerson, folk like that) turning in short horror comics, almost all of them at the horror-comedy end of things, and the vast majority of them based (albeit often fairly loosely) on Edgar Allan Poe strips, often introduced by comedically wasted versions of the man himself. In between them are one-page prose pieces, some of them entirely serious, and generally with no Poe link that I noticed (though it's not as if I've read anything like the complete works). Most of these are serious, a few are properly horrific, and one, by Joachim Heijndermans – not a name I've seen before – is plain heartbreaking. Oh, and once or twice these categories break down altogether and you get something like a two-page pastiche of The Raven in which the narrator is Trump and the corvid is Putin, which is probably the outright funniest thing in the book, and definitely the most appalling. Another one to file under 'I have absolutely no idea why this book should have come to exist, but I'm quite glad it does'.

(Netgalley ARC)

Bakers exploding a la Mr Creosote because they've held death back too far don't exactly seem the stuff of Poe, but purists may well not be imagining anything terribly classical about this book from the cover art. They might well be missing out, however – for the second piece of a tortuous party held by a vampire was good fun, and we get a very straight adaptation of 'Ligeia'. But not all the works here shine – a Frankenstein story does too little, and a ribald series of murders on the Rue Morgue gain us little either. On the other hand, however, a comic poem where Putin comes to own Trump's election success proves the puff quote right, that this has much of the DNA of Mad Magazine, as does the NRA trying to send a man to the moon. An Egyptian mummy resurrected with a bog-standard defibrillator and being shown the glories of America is a kind of halfway house between the more scatological, non-Poe works here and the straight adaptations, as is a quite different House of Usher. And you have to laugh at the Pit and the Pendulum's cameo late on. All told it's a richness – some is clearly fool's gold, but some the real deal, and most is worth a look, even if the hit rate on the prose pages is low. A slightly generous four stars, for the hit rate is usually a lot worse in these things.

I really wanted to like this.
But...in many places it fell short. The art was ok, but the stories just didn't resonate with me. It's probably just me, but I found it very hard to get into, and though I read it, there was a few times that I put the book down to look at others in my TBR, or to read something else.
Quirky though, which was what eventually drew me back.

Loved this! Really liked the artwork and though the graphic novel really captured Edgar Allan Poe and his crazy stories!

It's back to school season as I write this review....so I am already gearing up for Halloween. I am going to stuff my head full of all the horror, ghosts, ghoulies and things that go bump in the night that I can until that time of year where things morph from fall to jingle bells. As that gets earlier every year, I start reading horror earlier each year. My Halloween time must not be encroached upon by Santa Claus! Soon I will be reading Poe at Easter. I have already seen one dollar store in the area with Christmas ornaments for sale. Made me rush home and start filling up my horror TBR pile.

I always start out with more light hearted stuff.....horror mixed with comedy, cheesy plots, stories that could be late late night movies.

I saw a graphic novel with an obviously dead drunk (or maybe drunk and dead would be a better way to put that) Edgar Allan Poe with a goblet of very suspicious looking liquid. Edgar Allan Poe's Snifter of Terror? Oh hell yeah I'm reading that! Immediate click. I will review weird stuff like this all day long! What fun!

Now....I do have to say....I am usually quite defensive about Mr. Poe. He has been maligned since his death in 1849. He's been accused of being a pedophile (for marrying his young cousin), a drunk, a drug addict....and the story goes that before his death he was found raving nonsense in a gutter in the midst of a fatal overdose. Well....when your obituary in the newspaper is written by an enemy, anything is bound to be said....right?? I have always been of the opinion that Poe was attacked, poisoned, met a fate not completely of his own fault.....and then his reputation was ruined by jealous fellow writers, journalists and sleeze buckets because he was no longer able to defend himself. Shit rakers. Now this could be true....totally untrue.....or partially true.....or a flight of fancy by people who love Poe's dark writing. I'm always keen to give people the benefit of a doubt. That being said.....I also have a sense of humor. And I think Poe did too. So this comic did not upset me as a Poe fan....I chuckled at the artwork, the mangling of his stories for fun and the lovely little horrific wonders in this illustrated anthology. It is better to be open and honest about poking fun.....rather than sneakily do it to ruin someone as the shit rakers in 1849 did.

Some caution is needed here -- this anthology is not for kids or those easily offended. There is a bit of harmless nudity. No dangly bits.....just some butt cheeks. But for those who don't want to see an artistic representation of Edgar's butt....you might want to pass this by. Those who really do want to see Edgar's butt might also want to pass this by.....it's not done in a booty sort of way, but rather a drunken moon fashion. There are also some illustrations of vomit and other gross things. Humorously done.....but eww. :)

The stories are varied. Some are parodies of Poe's work and some are completely original short works of horror/disgust/strangeness. I do wish they had not mixed in quite so much political satire. I am getting weary of the same old shit.....I wanted horror not thinly veiled SJW short pieces or jabs at el presidente. (Despite the fact it is very very easy to poke jabs at that certain person) One or two pieces that were political satire rather than other forms of dark comedy/horror I could have enjoyed and moved on to the rest of the darkness...but there were just too many. I found myself skimming a couple of the stories because I just wasn't interested. But....with any anthology collection (even a small one), there will be stories a reader enjoys and ones that aren't for them. Variation is the spice of life....and reading. So, I didn't make any judgments on the pieces I didn't like.....just thought of them as "not for me.''

As I finished, I couldn't help comparing this collection with MAD Magazine. Irreverent. Fun. Bit of dark jabs at every day life. And a bit of fun at Poe's expense. All in all, I enjoyed this collection! But I went in to it knowing what I was going to be reading....a reader can't pick up this book thinking it is actual horror stories. It's meant to be dark comedy, satire, strange pieces that hit sideways....all narrated by a drunken, angry Poe. Strap on your sense of humor and love of the strange before you start reading....and all will be well. No sense of humor? Walk on by, love.

This anthology collects issues 1-6 of the comic by Ahoy Comics. The artwork is great! The wrinkles on Poe's butt were quite realistic...hee hee. :) Loved the snark! Not sure if that was really Poe's butt though.....it may have been a stunt butt. :)

**I voluntarily read an advance readers copy of this book from Diamond Book Distributors via NetGalley. All opinions expressed are entirely my own. I did not laugh at Poe during my reading...but with him...sort of. Maybe. A bit. **

Uh huh... so it's a buncha stories about weird cereal mascots with a Poe twist? What a load of rubbish. Mediocre art, unengaging stories, predictable Poe narrator - total waste of time.

A quirky little bit of fun filled with macabre comedy. I want to try out more Poe originals and this just drew me in from the start. Thank you Net Galley for accepting my request.

I love Edgar Allan Poe, and I loved horror comics in the 80s so I expected to love this.
It wasn't scary and it was too corny to be funny. I don't think Poe would be impressed.
Kudos to the illustrator for the amazing artwork.

I thought I was going to love this a lot more than I did! I went in thinking it would be more like Tales From the Crypt, but I ended up being a little disappointing. I'm sure lovers of Edgar Allan Poe would appreciate this one way more than I did. However, the illustrations were amazing for my horror loving self!

*Thank you so much to NetGalley and the publisher for providing me with this ARC in exchange for an honest review*

If you like a mixture of comedy and horror, then you might enjoy this book. I enjoyed these,they reminded me of The Takes From The Crypt a little.

Horror meets humor in a book that I would have gladly read as a younger me — and also enjoyed as my grey-haired self. Very cool book.

I appreciate having had an opportunity to read this book in ARC form. The appeal of this particular book was not evident to me, and if I cannot file a generally positive review I prefer to simply advise the publisher to that effect and file no review at all.

This is a story collection, so each will be reviewed separately and, in the end, I’ll gather my thoughts on the whole experience of this book.

The Facts in the Case of M. Valdemar

This story is light hearted and mixes horror and humor together. To me, however, it felt as though the humor relied on it being gross.

Rating: 2 stars

Dark Chocolate

I really liked this one, it was light hearted as well, but it was funny and also told a story.

Rating: 4 stars

The Scallop and the Barnacle

To me, it felt like the author trid so hard to creat a weird environment that they forgot to actually make it funny.

Rating: 2 stars

The Tragic Tale of Franken Cherrie

I don’t know what supposedly makes this funny. But I think there might rhave been a rape joke. Gross.

Rating: 1 star

The Putin

This was funny but I’m not sure if a poem about Russia’s involvement in Trump’s election is a great addition to a book like this. Don’t get me wrong, books can be political, but this felt like a political cartoon in the middle of the book. There are other (better) ways to make a political statement, and this ain’t it, chief.

Rating: 2 stars

Ligeia

In this one, the author focused on changing the way the classic Ligeia is narrated – this time, it’s Poe who tells the story with some comments inbetween things. Poe is portrayed as a drunk opium obcessed man we should laugh at, though. That’s no good.

Rating: 1 stars

The Bad One

I loved this story! It was lovely to read and I was happy in the end.

Rating: 5 stars

Bewildering Mysteries #26: The Mummy That Never Was

This story was fun at first, but it quickly became too crazy. It’s hard to make a short detective story funny, I know that, but making the killer a sarcophagus reminds me of that god awful trend of random always equals funny.

Rating: 1 star

From the Earth to the Moon

This story wasn’t great but I have a more pressing question… Why are they trying so hard to make Poe’s alcoholism the butt of jokes? He had a real problem. He might have even died due to complications from this.

Rating: 1 star

Horsey

This was… funny I think? I’m not sure.

Rating: 3 stars

Tar Feathers

This was a fun story with a satisfying ending. And it didn’t poke fun at Poe’s alcoholism either, that was the first in a long time.

Rating: 4 stars

Craft Cocktails for Troubled Times

Poking fun at sexual assault victims isn’t a great look for an author. Just saying.

Rating: 1 star

Just the Facts

This has some funny parts but it’s more of a political thing. I had to pass.

Rating: 1 star

I… I can’t bring myself to pick another story up. I can’t finish this. No. There’s too much poking fun at alcoholism. Not only that, most of the humour relies on crazy things happenning instead of jokes and/or anything else.

Average rating of the stories I read: 2 stars

Actual rating: 1.5 stars — there are some good stories but there are too many terrible ones