ALBUM CLASSICOS DE TERROR 6
"WILLIAM WILSON"
(IN COLOR w/ English Translation)
REMASTERED
Editora Continental / Outubro / Taika were 3 names used by the same small publisher in Brazil. The work of artists Jayme Cortez & Miguel Penteado, they produced some wonderful comics, many of them in the horror genre, each doing many gorgeous, stunning cover paintings!
I have discovered, between my own researches and the IMMENSE help of artist and fellow fan Toni Rodrigues, that Continental / Outubro / Taika during their run produced at least 25 POE adaptations-- MORE than Skywald or Warren !! It's my intention to compile, clean up, TRANSLATE and COLOR every one of these for my POE blog project!!
15th in line, making its comic-book debut here...
"WILLIAM WILSON"
This story, which may or may not involve the supernatural, has been adapted in some rather wildly different ways from one version to another. This is certainly another example of that. The instant I saw the splash page, I recognized that this was not so much adapted from Poe's short story, as it was from the adaptation seen in the 1968 film, "HISTORIES EXTRAORDINAIRE"-- released in America as "SPIRITS OF THE DEAD". There's no mistaking it. It opens with the title character running into a church, to confess his lifetime of sins to a priest. And it ends with him racing to the top of a bell tower.
This is the earliest comics version of this that's turned up.
It would not be the last!
The artist here is Osvaldo Talo. His style is a bit simpler than many of the Brazillian cartoonists whose work I've discovered of late, but he seems to have done more Poe adaptations than any of the others! He's become a real favorite of mine. His style really lends itself to COLOR.
This is his 5th of 5 POE adaptations.
I initially set this up in August 2015, before I found out WHERE it originally appeared.
On 9-5-2017, I managed to get ahold of a copy of the original comic. I hate doing any job twice, but being able to do my own HIGH-RES scans straight off the original comic allowed the improvement in line quality to be so drastic, it was worth it. This "REMASTERED" version was finished on 10-13-2019.
ALBUM CLASSICOS DE TERROR 6
cover by PRIMAGGIO MANTOVI (Editora Taika / Brazil / 1968)
Adaptation & Art by OSVALDO TALO / Page 83
As of this writing, each of the 4 comics versions of "WILLIAM WILSON" has been drastically different from all the others. As might be expected, this version doesn't quite match the 1968 movie version, either. While the "framing sequence" with the church, the priest, and the bell tower here definitely came from the film, the comic is vastly toned-down from that version. There's no sadism, nudity or sado-masochism, for one thing. And, the main character here has a moustache, and doesn't really resemble actor Alain Delon at all. (In fact, in ONE single panel on page 2, he actually looks like Basil Rathbone. But not in any of the others.)
However, given that this was apparently at least partly inspired by the film, I decided to use the film for visual reference when I did the coloring job. The color schemes for the town, the church, the uniforms worn at the private school, medical school and the military, all came from the film.
CLASSICOS DE TERROR 5
cover by JOSE EVOLDO (Editora Taika / Brazil / June 1973)
English Translation & New Color Copyright (C) 2015 Henry R. Kujawa
Scans of ALBUM CLASSICOS DE TERROR #6 (1968)
from MY collection!
Special thanks to Mark Castrodale.
Scans of CLASSICOS DE TERROR #5 (1973)
from the QuadriBrasil site.
Danube Monarchy lithograph from the Getty Images site.
Restorations by Henry R. Kujawa
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