Henrique Alvim Corrêa's 'The War of the Worlds' Final Page, 1906
Executed in dense, expressive pen-and-ink cross-hatching, this allegorical tailpiece by Henrique Alvim Corrêa closes H.G. Wells' 'La Guerre des Mondes' with darkly satirical wit. A mustachioed figure — likely Wells himself — sits astride a defeated Martian creature amid trailing tentacles, while a diminutive reader studies a book beside a monumental stone bearing 'FIN.' A Martian tripod looms behind, smoke still rising, its invasion definitively ended. The composition balances triumph, irony, and literary self-awareness.
A restrained but deeply imaginative tailpiece — the allegorical wit of Wells triumphant over a slain Martian earns genuine distinction. It lacks the raw visceral spectacle of Corrêa's battle scenes, but its literary self-awareness and technical draftsmanship make it a memorable capstone.
“FIN”
