It's too early for Christmas, I know, certainly for two items about a month apart.
When I posted about a rare Kirby Sandman story in mid-August (#0046: Turn On Your Magic Beams), I had considered saving it for December because it was a Christmas story, but a Sandman Special was imminently due and that 1970's character is so rarely used that I wanted to tie into it. I also realized that I might just own every published appearance of him and should put together a post outlining his history, which skips around multiple titles, spread out over decades. To give myself a little time to do that, I thought I'd take advantage of another Christmas item I found about a week ago.
The item on the left isn't a comic book itself. It's a thin supplementary catalogue (64pp) of merchandise available from Capital City Distributors. Capitol was briefly a publisher itself, launching NEXUS, BADGER and WHISPER, which were all continued by First Comics in the 1980's. Since then its publishing has mostly been premiums and brochures related to their distribution business, such as their monthly Advance Comics which carried solicitations from a variety of publishers. This supplement, "Comicopia", offers previously solicited perennial items like trades, posters, clothing, etc.
The art on the front cover is there to tie in with the release of a collection of Spirit Christmas stories originally published once a year as part of the newspaper supplement in the 1940's. The first printing in 1994 (from Kitchen Sink) sold out and a second was due out in October 1995 ahead of the holiday season. This is the same art used on the book, but the date of "89" under Eisner's signature in the bottom right corner tells me that this (a) wasn't part of the original run and (b) wasn't drawn specifically for a book published five years later.
After the newspaper supplement ended The Spirit was published (usually reprinted) in comics form by companies as different as Harvey and Warren. In the 1970's, Kitchen Sink Press began publishing reprints first as a magazine and then (starting in the early 1980's) as a standard sized comic book on higher grade paper. None of the covers from that series use this art, although it's possible that a back cover did. I don't have a complete run of the comics and the issues I do have simply run in-house ads for Kitchen Sink titles on all the back covers. I know that the magazines sometimes had wraparound covers, but I don't remember the comics having any. What I did find is that a comics and music retailer in Sweden named Alvglans was publishing a magazine sized Spirit reprint series during the 80's and this art was used for their late 1989 issue. The other issues used cover art created for the Kitchen Sink comics. If a Spirit fan out there knows of an American publication of this art prior to the 1994 book, please let me know about it in the comments.
Less than a year after this Comicopia (Vol. 2) came out, Capial City Distributors was absorbed into Diamond Comic Distributors. I don't know if there was ever a Vol. 3. Kitchen Sink only lasted a few years more than that, after which Eisner's work was brought back into print by DC under his own imprint: The Will Eisner Library, which included Archive hardcover compilations of the newspaper sections. Dark Horse has continued to keep his work available.
When I posted about a rare Kirby Sandman story in mid-August (#0046: Turn On Your Magic Beams), I had considered saving it for December because it was a Christmas story, but a Sandman Special was imminently due and that 1970's character is so rarely used that I wanted to tie into it. I also realized that I might just own every published appearance of him and should put together a post outlining his history, which skips around multiple titles, spread out over decades. To give myself a little time to do that, I thought I'd take advantage of another Christmas item I found about a week ago.
The art on the front cover is there to tie in with the release of a collection of Spirit Christmas stories originally published once a year as part of the newspaper supplement in the 1940's. The first printing in 1994 (from Kitchen Sink) sold out and a second was due out in October 1995 ahead of the holiday season. This is the same art used on the book, but the date of "89" under Eisner's signature in the bottom right corner tells me that this (a) wasn't part of the original run and (b) wasn't drawn specifically for a book published five years later.
After the newspaper supplement ended The Spirit was published (usually reprinted) in comics form by companies as different as Harvey and Warren. In the 1970's, Kitchen Sink Press began publishing reprints first as a magazine and then (starting in the early 1980's) as a standard sized comic book on higher grade paper. None of the covers from that series use this art, although it's possible that a back cover did. I don't have a complete run of the comics and the issues I do have simply run in-house ads for Kitchen Sink titles on all the back covers. I know that the magazines sometimes had wraparound covers, but I don't remember the comics having any. What I did find is that a comics and music retailer in Sweden named Alvglans was publishing a magazine sized Spirit reprint series during the 80's and this art was used for their late 1989 issue. The other issues used cover art created for the Kitchen Sink comics. If a Spirit fan out there knows of an American publication of this art prior to the 1994 book, please let me know about it in the comments.
Less than a year after this Comicopia (Vol. 2) came out, Capial City Distributors was absorbed into Diamond Comic Distributors. I don't know if there was ever a Vol. 3. Kitchen Sink only lasted a few years more than that, after which Eisner's work was brought back into print by DC under his own imprint: The Will Eisner Library, which included Archive hardcover compilations of the newspaper sections. Dark Horse has continued to keep his work available.
No comments:
Post a Comment