by Robert Loren
Fleming (Adapter), Keith Giffen
(Artist), Robert Bloch (Author)
Publisher: DC
Comics Inc. (1985)
Softcover, 48
pages
"But
what about Satan? What about the spell to send him back? Back to where -- to
hell? But we could have hell here on Earth!
And
why not?
An
Earth filled with man-made war and misery. An earth filled with grasping,
cheating, lying, stealing, raping, murdering, crazy humans. Filled with
pestilence, disease, idiocy. Let the Lord of Evil come into his own!”
This
is a graphic novel adaption of the original short story by Robert Bloch, famed
author of Psycho. Bloch, as we know,
was a contemporary of Lovecraft and part of his writer’s circle. In fact the
character of Robert Blake from The
Haunter in the Dark is based on Bloch. Hell
on Earth was originally published in Weird
Tales (where else) back in 1942. DC made a number of these thin volumes of
graphic adaptations of old Sci-Fi classics in the 1980s with varying degrees of
success.
A
horror writer is paid $100,000 to be part of an experiment to determine through
scientific principles if magic is real. It is and through misadventure the
scientists, his assistant, and the writer accidentally conjure up the living
devil whom they trap under a protective glass (similar to Dream in the first
issue of Sandman). The next question
is, what to do with the creature? One by one, the participants in the experiment
succumbs to the Devil’s power.
For
those familiar with the story it may seem that 48 pages isn’t enough space for
this tale. However the format of this book is larger than usual. Each page has
a 16 panel grid, which was necessary to accommodate a faithful adaptation of
the story. And they succeeded. Visually this was a stunning work that pumped
new life into an old classic that nobody remembers.
For more readings, try books by Rex Hurst.
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