IDW has announced THE LIBRARY OF AMERICAN COMICS
ESSENTIALS! Each volume of will reprint
early daily newspaper strips that are essential to the history of comics
presented in a novel format, 11" wide by 4.25" high, each page
containing a single daily strip.
“It's different from our other books which generally
contain two or three years of strips printed three to a page,” says LOAC
Creative Director Dean Mullaney. “By reproducing the strips one per page in an
oblong format, it allows us to have an experience similar to what newspaper
buyers had fifty to a hundred years ago—reading the comics one day at a time.”
Every volume in the series contains a year's worth of
dailies bound in hardcover, retailing for $19.99. Each page will showcase the
title given to that daily by the cartoonist, plus the weekday and date. In
addition to recreating the feeling of reading sequential comics one at a time,
the idea sprang in part from Harold Gray's set of bound Little Orphan Annie
proofbooks. Syndicate proofs come in differing varieties, but dailies are often
bound annually, in a thick one-strip-per-page book. The series begins in September.
Baron Bean by George Herriman. The first of a three-book
sub-set by the creator of Krazy Kat that will reprint for the first time the
complete series from 1916-1919 starring the character Gilbert Seldes called
"half Micawber, half Charlie Chapin." Edited by Dean Mullaney with an
introduction by Jared Gardner. September 2012.
Volume 2
Polly and Her Pals by Cliff Sterrett. A complete year
(1933) of surrealistic hilarity featuring Polly, Maw and Paw Perkins, cousin
Ashur, Neewah, and the rest of the outrageous Perkins household. Edited byDean
Mullaney with an introduction by Bruce Canwell. January 2013.
Volume 3
The Gumps: The Saga of Mary Gold by Sidney Smith. In the
early 1920s Sidney Smith augmented his gag-a-day style in The Gumps with
suspense and soap opera continuity, creating what was arguably the most popular
strip of its time. With The Saga of Mary Gold in 1928 and 1929 he cemented his
reputation by creating a storyline that changed the comics forever, a saga that
was called "one of the ten biggest events in comics history" by
Hogan's Alley magazine. Edited and with an introduction byJared Gardner. March
2013.