'The League,' 'Far Side' Go Deluxe
by Calvin Reid -- Publishers Weekly, 7/7/2003
Two forthcoming boxed collections of comics will knock your socks off with their exquisite production—and with their prices.
Arriving just in time for the release of the forthcoming film, DC Comics and America's Best Comics are releasing The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, the Absolute Edition Volume One, a $75, two-book boxed set of acclaimed comics author Alan Moore's series about a swashbuckling group of 19th-century heroes taken from the pages of classic Victorian adventure novels. The boxed set includes two oversized hardcovers: a 224-page edition of the first collection of stories and a 192-page book containing Moore's detailed scripts for the series. The latter also features a batch of unpublished illustrations by series illustrator Kevin O'Neill.
Fans of the Gary Larson's The Far Side
have had to do without the strip since it stopped running nine years ago. Well, Larson's fans can cheer up. In the fall, Andrews McMeel is releasing The Complete Far Side, a deluxe, two-volume, hardcover boxed collector's set that will contain every Far Side cartoon ever published—over 4,000 cartoons—along with more than 1,100 that have never appeared in book form.
The set will also contain a foreword by comedian Steve Martin and Larson will contribute introductions to each chapter. Book collections of Far Side cartoons have sold more than 40 million copies. The Complete Far Side will be priced at $135.
