Andrews & McMeel is preparing a new Calvin & Hobbes book for publication this September.  Although the book will not include any new Calvin & Hobbes comic strips, it will contain Bill Waterson's 36 favorite Sunday pages in full color on the left page, with commentaries by Waterson about the creation of the strip on the facing pages to the right.  The book is based on an exhibition of Waterson's art at Ohio State University.  Calvin & Hobbes collections were by far the best selling series of strip reprints in pop culture stores during the 1990s, and this new trade paperback collection should be no exception.  It will be priced at $14.95. 

 

Gary Larson's The Farside was the comic strip that came the closest to matching Calvin & Hobbes in sales at the time.  Andrews & McMeel also published The Farside, and in the fall of 2002, they'll be bringing out a two-volume, sixteen-pound Complete Farside Collection, that will include all of Larson's Farside work including some panels that were never published.  Retailers can expect Calvin & Hobbes to get a similar treatment in the fall of 2003.

 

Andrews & McMeel remains the leader in publishing collections of contemporary comic strips, and while no one would maintain that we are in a new golden age of comic strip creation, there are still some comic strip collections that sell well in pop culture stores.  Scott Adams' Dilbert has mercilessly flayed the organizational flaws of the modern corporation, and When Did Ignorance Become a Point Of View ($10.95) takes the 'war of the cubicles' to new levels of frustration.  Bill Amend's Foxtrot is another contemporary strip that has some sales potential, and the new Foxtrot collection, Encyclopedias Brown and White ($8.95) will be out in August.  Unfortunately one of the best contemporary comic strips, Lynn Johnston's For Better or For Worse, with its subtle, sometimes sentimental renderings of family life in real time (the kids grow up), doesn't really resonate with the audience that shops in pop culture stores.  But at least we will have Calvin for one more go-round.