Pop culture historian and author of Carl Barks and the Disney Comic Book, Dr. Thomas Andrae is joining Hermes Press as “Special Projects Editor” where he will supervise the creation of a series of archival reprints of some key Golden Age comics.  Andrae co-authored (with Bob Kane) Batman & Me as well as Walt Kelly: The Life and Art of the Creator of Pogo. 

Andrae’s knowledge of the life and art of Walt Kelly will be extremely useful in his first announced project for Hermes Comics, a collection of Kelly’s Peter Wheat comics.  Kelly drew 35 issues of The Adventures of Peter Wheat, a promotional comic that was given away to bakeries as part of an on-going promotion for Peter Wheat bread.  The 16-page promo comics presented clever fairy tales featuring the elfin Peter Wheat who lived in a hollow log at the edge of a wheat field and battled Dragonel, the Queen of the Hornets.  Hermes plans to publish a complete collection of Kelly’s Peter Wheat comics, Walt Kelly’s Peter Wheat in October of 2016.

In addition Hermes Press has announced the upcoming publication of Frank Thorne’s Battling Beauties, a deluxe, 9” x 12,” 192-page hardcover with over 500 full color illustrations including some of the renowned “good girl” artist’s cheesecake creations.  This volume will explore Thorne’s comic book work from various titles including Red Sonja, Ghita, Lann, and The Iron Devil as well as the storyboards and concept art he created for the unproduced Ghita film as well as interviews with Howard Leroy Davis in which Thorne discusses “how to draw beautiful women.”