THE FIRST DECADE

C H A P T E R18

C O N T I N U I N G

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Ted worked for Dean Mullaney and Eclipse Comicsin the mid ’80s, and Eclipse’s eclectic mix of titles

influenced IDW’s approach to publishing.

Ted and Dean discuss comic-stripreprints and the genesis of TheLibrary of American Comics.

• • • •

TA: When did you you first startreading comics?

DM: The first comics I remember reading were Zorroin the late ’50s and early ’60s, and the Dick Tracy

reprints from Harvey Comics. I later found out thatZorro was drawn by Alex Toth, and that all theviolent sequences in Tracy had beenedited out by the Comics CodeAuthority.

TA: Were you also readingcomic strips in your dailypaper?

DM: Of course. The New YorkSunday News had Dick Tracy on thefront page of the paper and I always read that evenbefore I turned to the sports pages to see how manyhome runs Willie Mays had hit the day before.

In the ’80s and early ’90s, Eclipse Comics was an

influential publisher of independent comics,

including titles by Clive Barker (Tapping the Vein), Max

Allan Collins (Ms. Tree), Neil Gaiman (Miracleman),

Scott McCloud (Zot!), Alan Moore (Brought to Light,

Miracleman), Tim Truman (Scout), and many more.

Eclipse’s Sabre: Slow Fade of an Endangered Species was

the first American original graphic novel, pre-dating

Will Eisner’s A Contract With God by two months.

C H A P T E R18

239

____________________________________Terry and the Pirates, art by Milton Caniff.

THE LIBRARY OFAMERICAN COMICS

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Ted worked for Dean Mullaney and Eclipse Comicsin the mid ’80s, and Eclipse’s eclectic mix of titles

influenced IDW’s approach to publishing.

Ted and Dean discuss comic-stripreprints and the genesis of TheLibrary of American Comics.

• • • •

TA: When did you you first startreading comics?

DM: The first comics I remember reading were Zorroin the late ’50s and early ’60s, and the Dick Tracy

reprints from Harvey Comics. I later found out thatZorro was drawn by Alex Toth, and that all theviolent sequences in Tracy had beenedited out by the Comics CodeAuthority.

TA: Were you also readingcomic strips in your dailypaper?

DM: Of course. The New YorkSunday News had Dick Tracy on thefront page of the paper and I always read that evenbefore I turned to the sports pages to see how manyhome runs Willie Mays had hit the day before.

In the ’80s and early ’90s, Eclipse Comics was an

influential publisher of independent comics,

including titles by Clive Barker (Tapping the Vein), Max

Allan Collins (Ms. Tree), Neil Gaiman (Miracleman),

Scott McCloud (Zot!), Alan Moore (Brought to Light,

Miracleman), Tim Truman (Scout), and many more.

Eclipse’s Sabre: Slow Fade of an Endangered Species was

the first American original graphic novel, pre-dating

Will Eisner’s A Contract With God by two months.

C H A P T E R18

239

____________________________________Terry and the Pirates, art by Milton Caniff.

THE LIBRARY OFAMERICAN COMICS

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One interesting side note on the books that Ed Aprilldid was that he had this really beautiful thickpaper–really heavy, good quality paper–and fantasticreproduction. I think he might have been usingsyndicate proofs. I emulated the paper stock he usedwhen I published Sabre, which was the first graphicnovel, in 1978.

TA: Which brings us to the ’80s and Eclipse. Youwere certainly at the forefront of publishing comicstrips reprints.

DM: Well, just like IDW now, at Eclipse I likedhaving a really diverse line of publications becausemy interests are all over the place. When the comic-shop market started maturing, I saw there was anopportunity to do strip reprint books. In the ’80s,Eclipse was doing them, NBM was doing them,Dennis Kitchen, and then a little while later,Fantagraphics started.

TA: I think the first one you did at Eclipse was theJiggs is Back book.

DM: Yeah, I co-published that with the Celtic BookCompany in Berkeley. We did all the production on

it and distributed it, and then we started the KrazyKat series. We published the first nine years of Krazy

Kat. The design of those

241

_________________________________________________________Jiggs is Back published by Eclipse and the Celtic Book Company.

__________________________________Above: Dick Tracy art by Chester Gould.

TA: How did you learn about the older strips?

DM: Growing up in New York, it was advantageousbecause there were comic shops early on, and therewas a comics fan, Ed Aprill, who was the pioneer incomics fandom for reprinting old strips. He reprintedselected sequences of Buck Rogers, Rip Kirby, SecretAgent Corrigan… he did a lot of strips. That was myfirst introduction to most of those strips. At PhilSeuling’s comic conventions, back when conventionsconsisted mainly of dealers selling old comics, peoplewould have clipped newspaper strips for sale and Iwould just pick up anything that looked interesting.

TA: Around that same time, Bill Blackbeard starteddoing some of his books.

DM: That was a little bit later. Ed Aprill began in thelate ’60s, and Bill’s books started coming out in the’70s. Bill had a deal with Hyperion Press. We all owethe biggest debt to Bill because he virtually single-handedly saved the history of newspaper strips bycollecting so many of them. He went all around thecountry collecting newspaper strips and getting themfrom newspapers–from their archives and theirbound volumes. Bill did probably at least a dozen,

maybe even as many as twenty books, withHyperion. Again, not complete collections but goodsamplings, a year or two of each strip to introduceus to classics such as Barney Google, The Bungle Family,Polly and Her Pals, and others.

TA: The Hyperion edition of Barney Google reprintsstrips from 1919 to 1920–it’s more like a taster thanwhat we’re doing today.

DM: Yeah, today we’re doing comprehensivecomplete collections. The market’s completelydifferent now.

240_____________________________________Barney Google published by The HyperionLibrary of Classic American Comic Strips..

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One interesting side note on the books that Ed Aprilldid was that he had this really beautiful thickpaper–really heavy, good quality paper–and fantasticreproduction. I think he might have been usingsyndicate proofs. I emulated the paper stock he usedwhen I published Sabre, which was the first graphicnovel, in 1978.

TA: Which brings us to the ’80s and Eclipse. Youwere certainly at the forefront of publishing comicstrips reprints.

DM: Well, just like IDW now, at Eclipse I likedhaving a really diverse line of publications becausemy interests are all over the place. When the comic-shop market started maturing, I saw there was anopportunity to do strip reprint books. In the ’80s,Eclipse was doing them, NBM was doing them,Dennis Kitchen, and then a little while later,Fantagraphics started.

TA: I think the first one you did at Eclipse was theJiggs is Back book.

DM: Yeah, I co-published that with the Celtic BookCompany in Berkeley. We did all the production on

it and distributed it, and then we started the KrazyKat series. We published the first nine years of Krazy

Kat. The design of those

241

_________________________________________________________Jiggs is Back published by Eclipse and the Celtic Book Company.

__________________________________Above: Dick Tracy art by Chester Gould.

TA: How did you learn about the older strips?

DM: Growing up in New York, it was advantageousbecause there were comic shops early on, and therewas a comics fan, Ed Aprill, who was the pioneer incomics fandom for reprinting old strips. He reprintedselected sequences of Buck Rogers, Rip Kirby, SecretAgent Corrigan… he did a lot of strips. That was myfirst introduction to most of those strips. At PhilSeuling’s comic conventions, back when conventionsconsisted mainly of dealers selling old comics, peoplewould have clipped newspaper strips for sale and Iwould just pick up anything that looked interesting.

TA: Around that same time, Bill Blackbeard starteddoing some of his books.

DM: That was a little bit later. Ed Aprill began in thelate ’60s, and Bill’s books started coming out in the’70s. Bill had a deal with Hyperion Press. We all owethe biggest debt to Bill because he virtually single-handedly saved the history of newspaper strips bycollecting so many of them. He went all around thecountry collecting newspaper strips and getting themfrom newspapers–from their archives and theirbound volumes. Bill did probably at least a dozen,

maybe even as many as twenty books, withHyperion. Again, not complete collections but goodsamplings, a year or two of each strip to introduceus to classics such as Barney Google, The Bungle Family,Polly and Her Pals, and others.

TA: The Hyperion edition of Barney Google reprintsstrips from 1919 to 1920–it’s more like a taster thanwhat we’re doing today.

DM: Yeah, today we’re doing comprehensivecomplete collections. The market’s completelydifferent now.

240_____________________________________Barney Google published by The HyperionLibrary of Classic American Comic Strips..

10yearbook-FULL.qxd:Layout 1 3/19/09 9:34 AM Page 240

already being reprinted, but then I came across theDick Tracy originals and I thought that might besomething to consider since nobody was doing it.So, I contacted Tribune Media and ended up workingout a deal that allows us to reprint the entire run ofthe strip.

DM: It was great because Tracy had been reprintedhaphazardly over the years but never in a completeway and never in a beautiful book packaging.

TA: We were lucky becauseFantagrahics had shown thatthere was an interest inthis kind of material sowe were able to get

very broad distribution. The comic shops are a reallyimportant home for these books but we’ve also beenable to sell them in more traditional bookstores, bothbrick-and-mortar and online.

DM: Sure, and there are a lot of people who have aninterest, even a passing interest, in comics, and mayhave heard about these strips but because theyhaven’t been in a comics shop, had no opportunity tosee the books.

TA: So, I worked for you at Eclipse back in the ’80sand you were a mentor to me–a lot of thethings that we do at IDW I learned fromworking for you. As you mentioned

earlier, I like a diverse publishing

243

_______________________________________________________Covers of The Complete Chester Gould’s Dick Tracy collections.

books by Dennis Gallagher was a complete departurefrom what had come before. Dennis was not a comicsfan; he was the Art Director for the San FranciscoChronicle and brought a whole new sophisticatedsensibility to the design, which I think hasinfluenced, consciously or unconsciously, the look ofmany of the strip reprint books today.

TA: Fantagraphics then started collecting them...

DM: They began where we left off, and withbeautiful new designs by Chris Ware.

TA: In the ’80s when you were doing these stripbooks, the primary distribution was still comic shops.

DM: It was all comicshops. The onlything available tous outside the

comic shops were library sales and, of all the booksI published, Krazy Kat definitely had the highestpercentage going to libraries–about 10% of thehardcover copies went to libraries. Bookstores werenot available, which limited what could be releasedbecause the market was smaller.

TA: As we start to go into the early 2000s,Fantagraphics was starting to publish their TheComplete Peanuts series. They really set the bar highfor modern-day strip reprints–with both the designand production, but also because they werereprinting larger amounts of material at a time. Thebooks that had come before were a lot thinner andhad a lot less strips. So, Fantagraphics really openedthe door for all of us because they came out withthese great books that were well designed and werea big commercial hit.

DM: Certainly. They did a great job and they reallystarted the whole new movement–and now we’rein a golden age of comic strip reprints.

TA: Absolutely. Around that time, late 2005,I attended the Masters of American ComicsExhibit that was running at the HammerMuseum in Los Angeles. They hadoriginals from all of the classicstrips–there were Krazy Katpages and Gasoline Alleyand Terry and the Piratesand Little Nemo andPeanuts and more. I waswalking around themuseum looking at these beautifulpages and many of these strips were

242

_____________________________________________________Krazy + Ignatz: The Komplete Kat Komics published by Eclipse.

10yearbook-FULL.qxd:Layout 1 3/19/09 9:34 AM Page 242

already being reprinted, but then I came across theDick Tracy originals and I thought that might besomething to consider since nobody was doing it.So, I contacted Tribune Media and ended up workingout a deal that allows us to reprint the entire run ofthe strip.

DM: It was great because Tracy had been reprintedhaphazardly over the years but never in a completeway and never in a beautiful book packaging.

TA: We were lucky becauseFantagrahics had shown thatthere was an interest inthis kind of material sowe were able to get

very broad distribution. The comic shops are a reallyimportant home for these books but we’ve also beenable to sell them in more traditional bookstores, bothbrick-and-mortar and online.

DM: Sure, and there are a lot of people who have aninterest, even a passing interest, in comics, and mayhave heard about these strips but because theyhaven’t been in a comics shop, had no opportunity tosee the books.

TA: So, I worked for you at Eclipse back in the ’80sand you were a mentor to me–a lot of thethings that we do at IDW I learned fromworking for you. As you mentioned

earlier, I like a diverse publishing

243

_______________________________________________________Covers of The Complete Chester Gould’s Dick Tracy collections.

books by Dennis Gallagher was a complete departurefrom what had come before. Dennis was not a comicsfan; he was the Art Director for the San FranciscoChronicle and brought a whole new sophisticatedsensibility to the design, which I think hasinfluenced, consciously or unconsciously, the look ofmany of the strip reprint books today.

TA: Fantagraphics then started collecting them...

DM: They began where we left off, and withbeautiful new designs by Chris Ware.

TA: In the ’80s when you were doing these stripbooks, the primary distribution was still comic shops.

DM: It was all comicshops. The onlything available tous outside the

comic shops were library sales and, of all the booksI published, Krazy Kat definitely had the highestpercentage going to libraries–about 10% of thehardcover copies went to libraries. Bookstores werenot available, which limited what could be releasedbecause the market was smaller.

TA: As we start to go into the early 2000s,Fantagraphics was starting to publish their TheComplete Peanuts series. They really set the bar highfor modern-day strip reprints–with both the designand production, but also because they werereprinting larger amounts of material at a time. Thebooks that had come before were a lot thinner andhad a lot less strips. So, Fantagraphics really openedthe door for all of us because they came out withthese great books that were well designed and werea big commercial hit.

DM: Certainly. They did a great job and they reallystarted the whole new movement–and now we’rein a golden age of comic strip reprints.

TA: Absolutely. Around that time, late 2005,I attended the Masters of American ComicsExhibit that was running at the HammerMuseum in Los Angeles. They hadoriginals from all of the classicstrips–there were Krazy Katpages and Gasoline Alleyand Terry and the Piratesand Little Nemo andPeanuts and more. I waswalking around themuseum looking at these beautifulpages and many of these strips were

242

_____________________________________________________Krazy + Ignatz: The Komplete Kat Komics published by Eclipse.

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TA: The Complete Terry and the Pirates, Vol. 1 won anEisner award last year and I think that’s a testamentto your editorial approach, including production anddesign. What is your editorial approach to thesebooks?

DM: Because we’re selling so manycopies outside of the comics market, topeople who may have just a passingknowledge of Terry and the Pirates orthe other strips, I feel it’s importantthat the books have informativeeditorial material up front. Readersdon’t need any specific knowledgecoming in because we provide thebiographical and background material toget them up to speed very quickly.

TA: How do you choose the writers ofthe introductory material?

DM: Bruce Canwell, who’s my associateeditor and who wrote all the text forthe Terry books and for the ScorchySmith book, was someone Iremembered from comics fandom inthe ’70s. We had never met and didn’t

know each other, but I saw an article by him on aWeb site and I really liked it. So, I sent him an emailand we just really hit it off. We’ve become fast friendsand we both have very similar views about how to

present the material for a more generalaudience. Even with something thatcomics fans may feel like they knoweverything about, like Terry and thePirates, we found so much phenomenalmaterial at Ohio State that comicsfans haven’t seen. But we still writethe introductions so they’ll beaccessible to a general audience.

For Little Orphan Annie, Jeet Heer isacknowledged as the expert on Harold Gray.He’s done a tremendous amount of researchin the Harold Gray archives at BostonUniversity and I loved what he’d beendoing with the Walt and Skeezix booksfor Drawn and Quarterly. So Iapproached him about writing thematerial for our Annie books.

TA: In the Annie books, you’ve beenshowing a lot of the merchandise. Didthat come from Boston University?

245

__________________Dean’s Eisner award.

line. I like having the freedom to do all kinds ofthings. Around the time that we did the first coupleof Dick Tracy volumes you reached out to me withthe idea of doing The Complete Terry and the Pirates.

DM: I first saw Terry in the ’70s. I picked up stripshere and there, Sunday pages particularly, at theconventions in New York. Inthe late ’70s, Woody Gellmanpublished three or fourvolumes of Terry, just fromthe early years, and from thatpoint on, I was absolutelysold. I was actually going topublish the complete Terry inthe early 80s and then NBMended up doing it so I had towait. Luckily, I’m still aroundand I was able to hook upwith you and 25 years laterget the chance to do it. Iactually designed the wholeformat back in the early 80s.I wanted to do it as a landscape book with the colorSunday on one side, three dailies on the opposite sideand that’s what we’ve done.

TA: It’s also lucky because we’re at a point in timewhere everything works from a production

standpoint. We have the ability today to do thingswith the computer that you couldn’t do before.

DM: Oh, it’s so much easier. I can sit in my officeand work on the pages, whereas when we did, forexample, the Jiggs Is Back book, we got colorphotocopies of the tear sheets from Bill Blackbeard

and sent them to our colorseparator to shoot. Theseparators actually had togo in on the film and cleanout the whites for thegutters and for the balloons.Now we can do all thatwith Photoshop–it’s justfantastic.

TA: So, the production sidehas gotten more conduciveto this sort of thing andthere’s a much broaderdistribution model todaythen there was 20 or 30years ago.

DM: And 30 years ago, we’d never even dream ofgetting reviews like we have for Terry in The NewYorker or USA Today or the American Airlinesin-flight magazine or any place like that.

244

________________________________________Terry and the Pirates, art by Milton Caniff.

___________________________________________Cover of The Complete Terry and the Pirates Vol. 1.

10yearbook-FULL.qxd:Layout 1 3/19/09 9:34 AM Page 244

TA: The Complete Terry and the Pirates, Vol. 1 won anEisner award last year and I think that’s a testamentto your editorial approach, including production anddesign. What is your editorial approach to thesebooks?

DM: Because we’re selling so manycopies outside of the comics market, topeople who may have just a passingknowledge of Terry and the Pirates orthe other strips, I feel it’s importantthat the books have informativeeditorial material up front. Readersdon’t need any specific knowledgecoming in because we provide thebiographical and background material toget them up to speed very quickly.

TA: How do you choose the writers ofthe introductory material?

DM: Bruce Canwell, who’s my associateeditor and who wrote all the text forthe Terry books and for the ScorchySmith book, was someone Iremembered from comics fandom inthe ’70s. We had never met and didn’t

know each other, but I saw an article by him on aWeb site and I really liked it. So, I sent him an emailand we just really hit it off. We’ve become fast friendsand we both have very similar views about how to

present the material for a more generalaudience. Even with something thatcomics fans may feel like they knoweverything about, like Terry and thePirates, we found so much phenomenalmaterial at Ohio State that comicsfans haven’t seen. But we still writethe introductions so they’ll beaccessible to a general audience.

For Little Orphan Annie, Jeet Heer isacknowledged as the expert on Harold Gray.He’s done a tremendous amount of researchin the Harold Gray archives at BostonUniversity and I loved what he’d beendoing with the Walt and Skeezix booksfor Drawn and Quarterly. So Iapproached him about writing thematerial for our Annie books.

TA: In the Annie books, you’ve beenshowing a lot of the merchandise. Didthat come from Boston University?

245

__________________Dean’s Eisner award.

line. I like having the freedom to do all kinds ofthings. Around the time that we did the first coupleof Dick Tracy volumes you reached out to me withthe idea of doing The Complete Terry and the Pirates.

DM: I first saw Terry in the ’70s. I picked up stripshere and there, Sunday pages particularly, at theconventions in New York. Inthe late ’70s, Woody Gellmanpublished three or fourvolumes of Terry, just fromthe early years, and from thatpoint on, I was absolutelysold. I was actually going topublish the complete Terry inthe early 80s and then NBMended up doing it so I had towait. Luckily, I’m still aroundand I was able to hook upwith you and 25 years laterget the chance to do it. Iactually designed the wholeformat back in the early 80s.I wanted to do it as a landscape book with the colorSunday on one side, three dailies on the opposite sideand that’s what we’ve done.

TA: It’s also lucky because we’re at a point in timewhere everything works from a production

standpoint. We have the ability today to do thingswith the computer that you couldn’t do before.

DM: Oh, it’s so much easier. I can sit in my officeand work on the pages, whereas when we did, forexample, the Jiggs Is Back book, we got colorphotocopies of the tear sheets from Bill Blackbeard

and sent them to our colorseparator to shoot. Theseparators actually had togo in on the film and cleanout the whites for thegutters and for the balloons.Now we can do all thatwith Photoshop–it’s justfantastic.

TA: So, the production sidehas gotten more conduciveto this sort of thing andthere’s a much broaderdistribution model todaythen there was 20 or 30years ago.

DM: And 30 years ago, we’d never even dream ofgetting reviews like we have for Terry in The NewYorker or USA Today or the American Airlinesin-flight magazine or any place like that.

244

________________________________________Terry and the Pirates, art by Milton Caniff.

___________________________________________Cover of The Complete Terry and the Pirates Vol. 1.

10yearbook-FULL.qxd:Layout 1 3/19/09 9:34 AM Page 244

DM: Some of it came from them. The game board Iused on the end papers for the first volume of Anniecame from my collection. I’m as bad as every othercollector. I’ve got boxes of things.

TA: Let’s talk about your editorial approach forScorchy Smith and the Art of Noel Sickles–the book is asmuch a biography as it is a collection of strips.

DM: I think that’s a unique book in the history ofbooks about newspaper strips. Everyone has admiredSickles for years but very little was known about himother than things like: he was Milton Caniff ’s bestfriend, he did Scorchy Smith, he did some backgroundsfor Terry, and then he became an illustrator for Lifemagazine and places like that. We found so muchmaterial in his archives at Ohio State University thatwhat was going to be a 60-page introduction ended

up being a 140-page biography. So, it’s really twobooks in one–a full biography of Sickles, with somuch new information and original research, plus thecomplete strip. And no one’s really ever seen thecomplete strip until this publication. Each section ofthe book would stand well on its own.

TA: He was so influential to the artists of his timeand now he may be influential to the artists of today.

DM: As you know, we get so many letters fromprofessionals in the business who thank us forpublishing the book. Sickles was an influence fromthe very beginning on adventure-strip artists, andthen in the early ’50s people like Frank Giacoia andAlex Toth were passing around stacks of Scorchy Smithdailies. John Romita, Sr., told us that everybody atDC was passing them around and copying them.

247

_________________________________________Opposite Page: Pages from Scorchy Smith andthe Art of Noel Sickles.

___________________________Cover of Scorchy Smith and the

Art of Noel Sickles.

246

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DM: Some of it came from them. The game board Iused on the end papers for the first volume of Anniecame from my collection. I’m as bad as every othercollector. I’ve got boxes of things.

TA: Let’s talk about your editorial approach forScorchy Smith and the Art of Noel Sickles–the book is asmuch a biography as it is a collection of strips.

DM: I think that’s a unique book in the history ofbooks about newspaper strips. Everyone has admiredSickles for years but very little was known about himother than things like: he was Milton Caniff ’s bestfriend, he did Scorchy Smith, he did some backgroundsfor Terry, and then he became an illustrator for Lifemagazine and places like that. We found so muchmaterial in his archives at Ohio State University thatwhat was going to be a 60-page introduction ended

up being a 140-page biography. So, it’s really twobooks in one–a full biography of Sickles, with somuch new information and original research, plus thecomplete strip. And no one’s really ever seen thecomplete strip until this publication. Each section ofthe book would stand well on its own.

TA: He was so influential to the artists of his timeand now he may be influential to the artists of today.

DM: As you know, we get so many letters fromprofessionals in the business who thank us forpublishing the book. Sickles was an influence fromthe very beginning on adventure-strip artists, andthen in the early ’50s people like Frank Giacoia andAlex Toth were passing around stacks of Scorchy Smithdailies. John Romita, Sr., told us that everybody atDC was passing them around and copying them.

247

_________________________________________Opposite Page: Pages from Scorchy Smith andthe Art of Noel Sickles.

___________________________Cover of Scorchy Smith and the

Art of Noel Sickles.

246

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TA: I just finished reading a book byMalcolmGladwellcalled Outliers: The Story of Success and one of the thingshe argues is that to become really good at somethingyou have to spend 10,000 hours doing it. I think it’ssafe to say that you’ve put in your 10,000 hours.

DM: Yeah. I look at some of the books that I editedand designed in the early ’80s and I wish could goback and redo them. But what I’m doing now is justa culmination of what I’ve been doing since the ’70s.I have a lot of experience. Whether it’s good or badis up to the readers. I’m just doing the best I can.

TA: What’s on the horizon for 2009 and 2010?What projects can we look forward to reading?

DM: Well, after 20 years, we’re going to get back toBringing Up Father. We won’t do it from the beginningbecause McManus got better and better as he wentalong so we’re going to start in the 1930s when hehas these absolutely spectacular Sunday pages. We’lldo the Sundays in color and the dailies inchronological order. From there, we’ll start workingour way back to earlier strips.

We’ll also be doing the first-ever collection of NealAdams’ Ben Casey. Neal got the job when he was 18and it’s just amazing looking at his artwork for thisstrip. He already had all of his chops at the age of18. It’s just phenomenal work.

Then we’re going to be doing Rip Kirby–collectingthe complete Alex Raymond strips. The generalconsensus is that the three best comics artists of alltime were Milton Caniff, Harold Foster, and AlexRaymond. So, now that the Terry and the Pirates seriesis over, we’ve put Rip Kirby on the schedule. Rip Kirbywas really the first modern photo-realistic strip. Itinfluenced everybody from Al Williamson to NealAdams to Stan Drake to Leonard Starr and more.

And in keeping with my interests running the gamut,we’re working on Jack Kent’s delightful King Aroo,which is one of the great obscure classics.

TA: Sounds great! Lots of books I look forward toreading.

249

IDW

_______________________________________________________________The Complete Little Orphan Annie, Vol. 1.

248

TA: From a production standpoint, there are twoways to approach comic-strip reprint projects. There’sthe “artifact” method where you reproduce the stripswith the imperfections of the source material thatyou’re working from…

DM: And that’s a valid approach. My approach issimply that–it’s my approach. I was never a fan ofRoy Lichtenstein or any of that “Pop Art” crap,pardon my language. If there is a model for theLibrary of American Comics, it’s “Art not artifacts.” Ifeel it’s our duty, not just to the reader but also tothe cartoonist who originally created the strip, topresent the work in as pristine a manner as we can.For example, Milton Caniff spent four hours coloringeach Sunday page. So, we put a lot of timeinto restoring the strips so they look like they werewhen originally published. After 60-70 years, thenewsprint turns yellow and it affects all of the colors,they become dull and muted, so we spent a lot oftime restoring it back to what it was supposed tolook like in the first place.

TA: The last thing I wanted to ask you about wasyour design approach to the books because that’sclearly another thing that really makes them special.

DM: I like a lot of white space in books. I feel itmakes the books easier to read and you can use thatnegative space to place emphasis on certain pieces ofwork. I don’t like cramming in every square inch ofthe page with either text or art. I try to balance thepages so they’re attractive and easy to read. A goodcomic-book artist will manipulate the reader’s eyefrom panel to panel with a close-up or a long shot ora down shot. I try to do the same thing with theplacement of the text and the art in all the books. Iremember someone once asked Alex Toth, “How doyou decide when the storytelling is right?” He said(and I paraphrase), “There’s no way you can teach it.There’s no way of explaining why it happens. Youjust know when it’s right.” And it’s the same withme. I usually come up with a design when I’mdriving in the car–I design one page in my head andthen the whole book falls into place from there.

__________________________________Little Orphan Annie, art by Harold Gray.

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TA: I just finished reading a book byMalcolmGladwellcalled Outliers: The Story of Success and one of the thingshe argues is that to become really good at somethingyou have to spend 10,000 hours doing it. I think it’ssafe to say that you’ve put in your 10,000 hours.

DM: Yeah. I look at some of the books that I editedand designed in the early ’80s and I wish could goback and redo them. But what I’m doing now is justa culmination of what I’ve been doing since the ’70s.I have a lot of experience. Whether it’s good or badis up to the readers. I’m just doing the best I can.

TA: What’s on the horizon for 2009 and 2010?What projects can we look forward to reading?

DM: Well, after 20 years, we’re going to get back toBringing Up Father. We won’t do it from the beginningbecause McManus got better and better as he wentalong so we’re going to start in the 1930s when hehas these absolutely spectacular Sunday pages. We’lldo the Sundays in color and the dailies inchronological order. From there, we’ll start workingour way back to earlier strips.

We’ll also be doing the first-ever collection of NealAdams’ Ben Casey. Neal got the job when he was 18and it’s just amazing looking at his artwork for thisstrip. He already had all of his chops at the age of18. It’s just phenomenal work.

Then we’re going to be doing Rip Kirby–collectingthe complete Alex Raymond strips. The generalconsensus is that the three best comics artists of alltime were Milton Caniff, Harold Foster, and AlexRaymond. So, now that the Terry and the Pirates seriesis over, we’ve put Rip Kirby on the schedule. Rip Kirbywas really the first modern photo-realistic strip. Itinfluenced everybody from Al Williamson to NealAdams to Stan Drake to Leonard Starr and more.

And in keeping with my interests running the gamut,we’re working on Jack Kent’s delightful King Aroo,which is one of the great obscure classics.

TA: Sounds great! Lots of books I look forward toreading.

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TA: From a production standpoint, there are twoways to approach comic-strip reprint projects. There’sthe “artifact” method where you reproduce the stripswith the imperfections of the source material thatyou’re working from…

DM: And that’s a valid approach. My approach issimply that–it’s my approach. I was never a fan ofRoy Lichtenstein or any of that “Pop Art” crap,pardon my language. If there is a model for theLibrary of American Comics, it’s “Art not artifacts.” Ifeel it’s our duty, not just to the reader but also tothe cartoonist who originally created the strip, topresent the work in as pristine a manner as we can.For example, Milton Caniff spent four hours coloringeach Sunday page. So, we put a lot of timeinto restoring the strips so they look like they werewhen originally published. After 60-70 years, thenewsprint turns yellow and it affects all of the colors,they become dull and muted, so we spent a lot oftime restoring it back to what it was supposed tolook like in the first place.

TA: The last thing I wanted to ask you about wasyour design approach to the books because that’sclearly another thing that really makes them special.

DM: I like a lot of white space in books. I feel itmakes the books easier to read and you can use thatnegative space to place emphasis on certain pieces ofwork. I don’t like cramming in every square inch ofthe page with either text or art. I try to balance thepages so they’re attractive and easy to read. A goodcomic-book artist will manipulate the reader’s eyefrom panel to panel with a close-up or a long shot ora down shot. I try to do the same thing with theplacement of the text and the art in all the books. Iremember someone once asked Alex Toth, “How doyou decide when the storytelling is right?” He said(and I paraphrase), “There’s no way you can teach it.There’s no way of explaining why it happens. Youjust know when it’s right.” And it’s the same withme. I usually come up with a design when I’mdriving in the car–I design one page in my head andthen the whole book falls into place from there.

__________________________________Little Orphan Annie, art by Harold Gray.

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