'McSweeney's' Goes For Literary Comics

This editor walked into a bookstore in Chicago and was surprised to find that the latest issue of McSweeney's Quarterly is actually a hardcover comics anthology, filled with the full-color work of more than 50 terrific cartoonists, and edited and designed by acclaimed comics artist Chris Ware.

Turns out that issue #13 of author Dave Eggers's unpredictable conceptual publishing project is devoted to comics. There's work by Ware (a beautifully illustrated and visually complex broadsheet page filled with comics and folded into the book's jacket) and Art Speigelman (an excerpt from his new book, In the Shadow of No Towers); as well as Chester Brown, Lynda Barry, Jeffrey Brown, Julie Doucet and many others.

The joke is that the broadsheet page is designated as issue #13 and "included with the paper is a free 264-page hardcover." A beautiful book project filled with acclaimed comics artists and no advance notice of any kind?

Eli Horowitz, McSweeney's managing editor, told this exasperated editor that the publisher just "couldn't afford galleys. We wanted to keep the price down, not keep it a secret." Beautifully designed and printed and full of talented comics artists, the book won't be a secret for long.

The first printing is 33,000 copies in the U.S. and through a deal with Penguin, McSweeney's will release another 7,000 in the U.K. and Europe. Horowitz says the staff hasn't quite settled on its publicity plans for #13. But since most of the cartoonists will be in San Diego for Comic-Con, he said, "we might do something to promote it there, too. We just tend to think on a small scale."