Tuesday, September 23, 2014

Li'l Friz

Tuesday Comic Strip Day.

A couple of years ago Dark Horse published a full color version of all the Li'l Abner Sunday pages that were (at least partially) pencilled by Frank Frazetta between 1955 and 1962 for the Al Capp studios. They are wonderfuly annotated by Denis Kitchen and I recommend them highly, but unfortunately, they had to use printed samples and as you can see here the quality of the samples wasn't always as good from week to week. That is the hard aprt about reprint books these days. To find the best possibly copies sometimes can take years> Fantagraphics had to postpone their Pogo reprint series several times (they are up to book three now) and I could suggest many book projects, but do not have the complete runs necessary for them. That makes the excellent work Dean Mulhanny is doing at IDW all the more exceptional. All their books are beautifully restored and they combine the best of the old material and the new computer techniques.

Fortunately, for online publication the standards are a bot lower. Here are a couple of Frazetta's later pages. Some in better condition than the ones in the Dark Horse book, others about the same.

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