From his canonical runs on classic comics titles such as DC's The House of Mystery and Swamp Thing, to his many infinitely mysterious illustrations and paintings, Berni Wrightson (b. 1948, d. 2017) is widely known as the reigning champion of modern macabre narrative art. An ongoing inspiration to giants of scary storytelling such as Guillermo del Toro and Stephen King, within Wrightson's oeuvre, his famed Frankenstein portfolio, illustrating the Mary Shelley classic, is a notable apex of illustration writ large. In 1976, Wrightson turned his attention to the pages of another titan of 19th-century dark literature, Edgar Allan Poe, creating eight indelibly intricate and eerie paintings, each inspired by the text of a classic Poe tale. Simultaneously terrifying and embracing, once seen, Wrightson's imagery always leaves a permanent mark, and beyond the vast catalogue he created himself, will live on in countless other comics, films and TV shows of note that use his work as reference.
In 1972 a neophyte Spanish media company created a rare platform for artists to explore classic genre imagery with a sophisticated cinematic sensibility.
