Laurent Hennebelle, prestigious publisher, invites you to find an exceptional work from the album “La Tour” by Peeters and Schuiten, the 4th volume of the successful series, “les Cités obscures”, published by Casterman.
In this album, Giovanni Battista is guardian of the tower, he will abandon his post to embark on an incredible quest, with marvellous surprises on his way, but also, deplorable disappointments…
Format: 38 x 51 cm of 112 pages, entirely printed in offset with UV inks, on luxury Munken Pure paper.
All the plates, except two, are in facsimiles and the back of the album is on paper with a silkscreen printing.
Edition limited to 180 copies numbered and signed by the authors and delivered with one offprint printed in pigment inks on 100% cotton paper and the original synopsis in facsimile.
- Laurent Hennebelle, November 2022
- ISBN: none
- 38 x 51 cm (15″ x 20″), 112 pages, hardcover
- 350,00 €
- Order online
As with all AE format material (Artist’s Editions, Artifact Editions, Gallery Editions, Art Editions, Studio Editions, etc.), this is a collection of classic comic material and I’ll be reviewing the book and not the story. For a complete list of all current and announced editions, with review links, please visit our Index. Also, see What is an Artist’s Edition and our Artist Index. This site contains affiliate links for which I may be compensated.
A complete presentation of Shuiten’s original art for The Tower. The solicitation says all but two pages are from original art, but the colophon says all but the prologue page are from original art. Perhaps they located the second page before going to print. After the main story, there are a few pencilled pages and then covers for various versions.
The scans are flawless: Schuiten’s exquisite linework is visible throughout. I wasn’t able to spot any correction fluid or paste-ups. Some pencils are visible in the word balloons as ruler lines, and panels have light visible pencils. The blacks don’t show gradients. The pages are all off-white.
There is almost no design to the book. All the pages are full-size pieces, scanned and presented. No divider pages and the endpapers are black. The ex libris and colophon pages are text. I do appreciate the silk ribbon.
Production appears quite good: a hand-sewn binding of Munken (uncoated, heavy stock) paper. My copy has an issue with the first few pages getting a dent in the center at the binding. The book comes with a dust jacket of tissue paper. The book does an excellent job of laying flat, and even where the signatures meet it’s mostly flat.
This is the most I’ve paid to date for a pre-ordered AE format book. Also the first hand-bound book I’ve ever owned. I can’t say I notice a difference in the binding from other AE format books. I can’t discern the difference here with hand binding, Munchen paper, and UV inks. It’s wonderful to have Schuiten original plates at this size, but his work is so clean it’s hard to see much difference between this and published black-and-white line art. It’s there, but you have to really examine each panel to catch it.
