THE PET AND THE PENDULUM

Telepathically conjoined twins, distant relatives of the eminent eponymous author, fall into the clutches of their mad-scientist nemesis one last time in this truly explosive series finale.

The lives of single-minded (literally!) Edgar and Allan have only just begun to return to normal in the wake of previous exploits. Now, a series of tantalizing clues to whether their great-great-great-great granduncle’s death was natural or not leads the lads to a remote estate outside Baltimore. It’s a fiendishly clever trap, as it turns out, that leaves the two tied to a table beneath a huge swinging blade set up by looney-tunes professor S. Pangborn Perry. Fortunately, the boys have read their Poe too, so they know how to escape (see “The Pit and the Pendulum” for the ratty details). Also, they have help not only from their unusually capable cat, Roderick Usher, but also, laboring in the Celestial Office Building, from their spectral relative himself and sympathetic co-workers Walt Whitman and Emily Dickinson. Along with Zuppardi’s loose vignettes, frequent correspondence, news stories and other documents add visual flourishes here as they have in previous episodes. The climactic arrival of a falling communications satellite neatly, completely settles plotlines both in this world and the afterlife.

A fitting conclusion to a series as suspenseful as it is less-than-earnest, in which mad science, quantum entanglement, encounters with ghosts, and sly twists on literary figures and memes all figure.