Comic Con News—Fantagraphics Books President and co-publisher Gary Groth announced two major publishing initiatives at Comic-Con, a collection reprinting the classic EC Comics organized in volumes by artist and writers, and a new collection reprinting all the issues of the seminal underground comix title Zap Comix.
Fantagraphics will re-package all the EC Comics (except Mad, which is owned by DC) in a series of hardcover collections devoted to specific artists and writers. All previous EC collections have been organized by title, so Fantagraphics’ plan represents a major change as it pays tribute to the incredible lineup of artists and writers at William Gaines' EC Comics that included Harvey Kurtzman, Wally Wood, Jack Davis, Johnny Craig, Al Feldstein, Reed Crandall, Will Elder, Frank Frazetta, Graham Ingels, Jack Kame, Bernie Kriegstein, John Severin, Al Williamson, and Joe Orlando to name the most prominent.
The first four books in the EC Library reprint series will include Corpse on the Imjin and Other Stories by Harvey Kurtzman, which will collect all the groundbreaking , humanistic war stories that Kurtzman wrote and drew himself for Two-Fisted Tales and Frontline Combat, plus all the war stories that Kurtzman wrote and laid out that were drawn by artists who weren’t regularly featured in his war books.
The second volume Come the Dawn and Other Stories features the noirish Alfred Hitchcock Presents-type stories of Wally Wood that were published in EC’s Shock Suspenstories. It will be followed by a yet-to-be-titled collection of Jack Davis horror stories. The fourth book in the series will collect the superbly-drawn science fiction sagas of Al Williamson.
