Who knew this would ever be a coffee table book?

Fantagraphics announced at their panel Saturday that they will be republishing two comics classics which so far have yet to receive the deluxe treatment: the EC Comics library and a complete collection of the influential early indie anthology Zap Comix. The complete collection of Zap Comix, which was created by Robert Crumb, is two volumes and 800 pages long. EC Comics, however, was a comics industry stalwart for years before changes in comics forced it to close, and even a library of its highlights will be many volumes in length. Fantagraphics is approaching the project by organizing the material by creator and theme – the first four volumes will collect all of Harvey Kurtzman’s EC war stories, Wally Wood’s suspense comics, all of Al Williamson’s EC science fiction comics and Jack Davis’s EC horror comics.

1 COMMENT

  2. I like the idea of buying creator-centric EC volumes, but don’t Gemstones’ re-issues count as “deluxe”?? Does that mean that Fantagraphics’ will be even more expensive?

  3. A moment of excitement … then the letdown of realizing those color EC archive sets sitting on my shelf will not be finished. Will most likely buy the Kurtzman war comics volume and the Williamson science fiction volume but that’s probably it. Fantagraphics could have made a LOT more money off me continuing the program as was and doing artist volumes. The lack of color is the biggest disappointment. That said, I’m sure the program will be succesful and it’s nice to see this material coming out again.

  5. I’d be curious to know how comicbook publishers determine what re-print material they are going to publish. I wonder if there any marketing research done to determine demand? I’m not sure I see the interest for Zap comics. I personally enjoyed them originally, but I’m not sure I’d want to spend that kind of money on a large volume of reprinted material today.

  6. I’m passing on these. If I had wanted B&W reprints of EC Comics, I could have gotten them long ago.

    Boycott this product!

  7. Fantagraphics:
    1. Do the artists volumes in black-and-white, since it’s about the artists.

    2. Finish the Gemstone line of series reprints, in color.

    3. On 05 Jan 2011, Kim Thompson stated, “• POGO VOLUME 1 will be released in the Fall of 2011 – yes, seriously, for real this time” yet now BN.com shows a publication date of 12/05/2011. I hear the Kelly Estate is not part of this project. How amazing will the book be without their involvement? Will subsequent volumes be just as tempest-tossed? (and why are the color sundays, with a different storyline, being collected in the same volumes as the dailies?)

    4. Nice job on Zap (which will sell internationally to Crumb fans). Nice job on Jack Jackson. Now howabout Arcade? witzend?

  8. “a complete collection of the influential early indie anthology Zap Comix”

    First time I’ve ever heard Zap Comix referred to as anything other than an underground.

  9. Agree w/ Torsten re: 1 & 2. Keep in mind that Gemstones had to pay to have the comics recolored, and that may be a job that Fantagraphics doesn’t want to undertake.

  10. Scratchie, they are recoloring the Barks comics… even though they’ve already been recolored by the masterful Susan Daigle-Leach.

    Or is Disney worth it, but EC isn’t?

    They had the Krigstein comics recolored, some by Marie Severin.