Edgar Allan Poe's Snifter of Death #02

Edgar Allan Poe’s Snifter of Death #02

Ahoy Comics 2021

Chess Player

Written, Illustrated & Lettered by Dean Motter

Coloured by Andy Troy

Angle of the Odd

Written by Holly Interlandi

Illustrated by Greg Scott

Coloured by Lee Loughridge

Lettered by Rob Steen

An automaton equipped to defeat an educated human in the game of chess? Preposterous! Poe himself undertakes to pierce the mechanical mystery in “Chess Player.” Plus! An ostensibly helpful bit of software tries to dominate a writer’s creative process in “Angle of the Odd.” Our special “Dread-of Devices” issue closes out with prose stories and a poem.

Before I get into the review, can I just say that the title for the first story is amazing, the lettering in that Hebrew style script really caught my attention and made me smile. I am consistently awed by these odd little stories. What I adore about the first one is it made me want to know about Automaton’s and when they were first created. We are constantly taken off the page with these stories thus being engaged in ways that entertain, make us question and educate us. Not so ironic considering in school we learn about Poe and his writings so it seems that even now he continues to teach us and I find that quite glorious.

I am very much enjoying the way that this is being told. The story & plot development that we see through how the sequence of events unfold as well as how the reader learns information is presented exceptionally well. How we see the character development through the dialogue, the character interaction as well as how we see them act and interact with one another and how this shows us their personalities. The pacing here is excellent and as it takes us through pages introducing the story, the characters and the direction things are headed are handled exceptionally well.

I’m loving the way that these are being structured and how the layers within the stories begin to emerge and grow. I like that the layers open up avenues to be explored and how this adds such wonderful depth, dimension and complexity to the story. Poe’s intuition and general curmudgeon state of being makes for good pathways for this to happen. How we see everything working together to create the story’s ebb & flow as well as how it moves the story forward are impeccably done. To see such great use of smaller page counts to create such complete stories always leaves me in awe.

Two very contrasting styles of artwork that we see. The first one has this more simple style to it with such strong and thick linework that really captures the mood, tone and feel to the story. The colours are beautifully rendered and I very much like how they create the shading, highlights and shadow work. The second story has this much more detailed work that blows my mind with how the linework, its varying weights and techniques being utilised to perfection. That this one takes place at night and the laptop is casting the blue hue over everything makes the hues and tones throughout the blue spectrum pop in their use of shading, highlights and shadow work. Each vignette within the story shows the work of a master colourist in action. Also why the censored bar, in this day and age let his freak flag fly!

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The creativity and imagination in how we see these stories come to life and how they do more than focus on his works that we all know is a large part of the fun that we have. It takes popular opinion on the man and expands upon it and it may or may not be true to him but that’s historical fiction at its finest. Both these stories have amazing writing and interesting characterisation and some great bespoke artwork. This is one of the many reasons I am a huge fan and supporter of Ahoy Comics, the chutzpah in the stories and the exceptional entertainment of their books.