Wednesday July 20, 2005

With Katie Holmes as Alien Adultress Hester Prynne

Alexandra recently picked up a Pocket Classics comic book version of The Scarlet Letter—from not so long ago, 1984—that features some rather strange cover art. Perhaps knowing that the volume would be competing with the actual book, on the one hand, and with Intellivision, on the other, the publishers gave the classic tale of early American Puritanism *yawn* some hacky sci-fi flavor with a flaming “A” shooting across the heavens amid apocalyptic clouds. Think War of the Worlds (or perhaps Dianetics.) The full cover appears below.