« Upon its head, with red extended mouth and solitary eye of fire, sat the hideous beast whose craft had seduced me into murder, and whose informing voice had consigned me to the hangman. » — The Black Cat (1845)

What can I tell you about the legendary English cartoonist and bon vivant Hunt Emerson — born in 1952 in Newcastle and still devilishly active these days — that he can’t tell you in his own words?

Mr. Emerson has recently (and I do mean recently!) contributed a series of hi-concept short strips to Ahoy Comics’ gamut-running Poe-themed humorous horror anthology. Taking his place in a thematic thread that includes Tom and Jerry, Antonio Prohías‘ Spy vs Spy, Brian McConnachie and Warren Sattler‘s Kit ‘n’ Kaboodle, Massimo Mattioli‘s Squeak the Mouse* and Simpsons cartoon-within-a-cartoon Itchy and Scratchy, Emerson merrily escalates the hostilities launched in Poe’s The Black Cat, with Poe himself in the rôle of the narrator. Assume the position!

-RG

* not, by a long shot, Mattioli’s best work. *That* would be, without question, his nonpareil M le magicien (1968-73).