Recently, in 2008, The Edgar Allan Poe Museum of Richmond, Virginia held a special exhibit of comic book adaptations of Poe?s works. The comic book adaptations on display ranged in years from 1943 to 2007. When Dr. M. Thomas Inge, a prominent comics scholar in the US, contributing currator and author of the exhibit catalog heard that the trustees of the Poe Foundation first thought of titling the exhibit ?Poe Goes Pop,? his response was that the title was all wrong and had to be changed immediately (Inge 10). His rationale was that Poe had always been ?pop.? Inge pointed out that Poe wrote for a mass medium, the emerging mass circulation magazines numbering in the tens of thousands and distributed from coast to coast. Though Poe never earned a considerable amount from his writings he was a popular author and his stories helped sell magazines. One story, ?The Gold Bug,? was adapted into a play within weeks of its publication (10). Poe?s readership was significant during his lifetime and has sustained popular support for the last two hundered years, all of which supports the idea that Poe has not suddenly gone pop over the last years, but as Inge asserts has always been pop.
