It used to be that reprints of vintage comic books and comic strips suffered from presentation almost as shabby as the yellowing pulp originals. That hasn't been the case since publishers figured out that when nostalgia and cartoon art meet, readers are willing to pay a bit more for nice-looking presentation. The current generation of classic comics reprints—and books about the artists behind the comics—treat their subjects with the care they often didn't get the first time around.
The most extensive current program of reprints from comics' "Golden Age" (generally considered to be 1938—1956) and "Silver Age" (1956—1978 or so) is from DC Comics, whose Archive Editions program includes almost 90 $50 hardcovers, reprinting series such as Legion of Super-Heroes and All-Star Comics. DC also publishes hardcover collections of Will Eisner's influential series The Spirit, from the '40s, and occasional lower-priced paperback reprints of key titles from the early '70s; the first volume of Jack Kirby's over-the-top Jimmy Olsen stories was published recently, and Denny O'Neil and Neal Adams's beloved Green Lantern/Green Arrow stories will reappear in paperback this spring. Marvel Comics, meanwhile, has revived its Marvel Masterworks program of archival hardcovers reprinting its best '60s material, including Spider-Man and X-Men. And Last Gasp's hardcover reprints of the French cartoonist Hergé's earliest Tintin books predate even the Golden Age: the first one, Tintin in the Land of the Soviets was originally serialized in 1929.
An even greater change has come over the practice of reprinting decades-old comic strips. The random selections and redesigned pages that used to plague such collections are mercifully long gone: now, publishers reprint cartoonists' entire oeuvres from the beginning. Fantagraphics' 50-volume run of Hal Foster's Prince Valiant ends this April, but the house is just starting the most anticipated strip reprint of all: 25 volumes of the complete Peanuts, in chronological order, designed by the Canadian artist Seth. (The Charles M. Schulz Museum has also just published Li'l Beginnings, a scholarly collection of the Li'l Folks strip that Schulz drew before Peanuts.) The three volumes of Krazy & Ignatz—reprinting George Herriman's Krazy Kat—that Fantagraphics has published so far (designed by Chris Ware of Jimmy Corrigan fame) have each sold more than 10,000 copies; a fourth is due shortly. Ware is also designing reprints of Frank King's Gasoline Alley strip for Drawn & Quarterly, due in June. And Dark Horse Books recently reprinted a couple of specific artists' work on well-known strips: four volumes each of Mac Raboy's Flash Gordon (1948—1967) and Frank Frazetta's work on Al Capp's Li'l Abner (1954—1961).
The earliest Flash Gordon strips, by Alex Raymond, will be appearing in a series that starts in May from the young company Checker Book Publishing Group. Checker has also started to reprint Milton Caniff's Steve Canyon, from its 1947 debut; publisher Mark Thompson told PW, "Caniff was such an official genius, we're getting quite a bit of attention for being the lucky publisher who's bringing him back into print"—not to mention a steady stream of reorders for the first two books.
A few classic cartoonists and series are starting to be the subjects of coffee-table books, too. Fantagraphics recently published Will Elder: the Mad Playboy of Art, a survey of the Mad cartoonist's career, and is following up B. Krigstein Vol. 1, Greg Sadowski's acclaimed 1992 biography of B. Krigstein, with a hardcover collection of Krigstein's comics early this summer. TwoMorrows Books has been publishing titles such as The All-Star Companion and The Legion Companion, featuring interviews with the creators of fan-favorite series, and drawing on its magazine about action-comics legend Jack Kirby for a series of Collected Jack Kirby Collector books.
Vanguard Productions recently published the memoirs of Kirby's old partner Joe Simon (written with Simon's son), The Comic Book Makers, along with books on Prince Valiant's Hal Foster (which has sold around 10,000 copies, according to publisher J. David Spurlock), Superman's Curt Swan and The Flash's Carmine Infantino. Coming later this year from Vanguard: art books about science fiction illustrator Roy G. Krenkel and pulp/Tarzan illustrator J. Allen St. John, and a collection of science fiction comics by legendary Spider-Man co-creator Steve Ditko.
