New ‘Prince Valiant’ and ‘Wash Tubbs/Captain Easy’ Reprints From Fantagraphics
In one item of news coming out of last weekend’s Book Expo America, publisher Fantagraphics will be offering new reprints of long-running comic strips Prince Valiant and both Wash Tubbs and its successor, Captain Easy.
According to iCv2:
Prince Valiant will be presented in an oversized color hardcover format, with two years per book, beginning in 2009. This presentation will be of higher quality than the 50 trade paperbacks Fantagraphics published, which collected all of the strips with art or story by creator Hal Foster. At two years per book, it will take 16-17 volumes just to reprint the full page strips with Foster art.
As for the Roy Crane-created series Wash Tubbs and Captain Easy, which Fantagraphics will begin reprinting in 2009:
Sundays will be printed in color; dailies in black and white. Although the two strips ran an incredible 64 years, from 1924 to 1988, creator Roy Crane’s work ran only until 1943. NBM released an 18-volume series collecting the Crane years from 1987 to 1992.
Color Sundays finally! Bravo! – Dan Davis
I missed out on the Captain Easy from flying Buttress back in the day, and I've regretted it ever since. As Mike Price pointed out on ComicMix (http://www.comicmix.com/news/2007/09/02/michael-h…), Roy Crane was one of the absolute masters of the comics form. This should be required reading for any fan of the medium.
Terrific news! Really hope those b&w Wash Tubbs reprints come soon too!