Exclusive Limited Edition Exhibition Catalog now available from the Society of Illustrators.
100 pages of EC and Mad Comics greatness, original art, and many scholarly essays outlining the history and cultural legacy of EC and Mad Comics. Deluxe printing and paper, limited edition, containing detailed colour reproductions of the art of Jack Davis, Frank Frazetta, Wally Wood, Johnny Craig, Al Williamson, Graham Ingels, Marie Severin, Al Jaffee, Angelo Torres, and many more. This Society publication is a highly collectible keepsake of the popular 2018 exhibition.
- Society Of Illustrators, July 2018
- No ISBN
- 8.5″ x 11″, 96 pages, softcover
- $30 USD
- Order online: Society Of Illustrators, Amazon
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.
An excellent representation of EC original art in an inexpensive format. Along with full-page scans of original art, this features an introduction by Annie Gaines Ashton, exhibit introduction, and twelve short essays or personal recollections from noted EC fans. There are also four double-page enlargements of art, three successful and one blurry.
The scans are mostly clear with a few soft or blurry issues. Correction fluid, margin notes, paste-ups, red pen, and more are visible, albeit at a reduced size.
Each piece includes margin notes along the bottom with story name, page, title, issue number, writer, artist, publication date, and owner.
The design is intriguing and clever. The art presentation is quite static, as is expected. The essays feature clever letters column titles and utilize the red from the cover.
This is a perfect-bound glued softcover of medium glossy paper. There is some bleed through but it’s not detracting. The binding is quite tight and the book doesn’t open fully, but there are decent margins and therefore no gutter loss.
The essays, testimonials, or whatever you’d like to call them, don’t serve much purpose other than to let people wax on about how great EC was. Those pages would have been better served showing more art.
I attended this exhibition in 2018 while on vacation in New York and this catalogue covers almost everything that was on display, but I can’t what percentage was or wasn’t included. In their store at the time, they had a few EC Artist’s Editions for sale which was a great fit.
