Even More Major News - Frank Santoro Deluxe Edition!
Today, we secured the rights to publish a deluxe edition of Blast Furnace Funnies by Frank Santoro. No joke, this is one of the very best comics to come out in years - "a heartfelt postcard to my hometown" in the artist's words, Blast Furnace Funnies uses the backdrop of Pittsburgh, PA, rendered in Santoro's exquisite style, to wend its way through a meditation on memory, home, and the inevitable passage of time. I could go on and on about this comic, but Copacetic Comics has a great description of it:
Despite the thematic benefit of the newsprint format described above, I have never been able to shake the feeling that Blast Furnace Funnies deserves an archival presentation. As a book collector, this is the kind of stuff I obsess about, and after a year or so of wishing that someone would reprint this comic in a sturdier format, I decided to get in touch with Frank myself.
Because this book will be made entirely in-house, there are a number of constraints we need to take into consideration. First and foremost, we're printing it full-size, which means each page will be 11" x 17". We don't have a laser printer capable of printing in that size, so each page will be run through our Epson printer individually. We'll be using archival cotton rag paper and Ultrachrome K3 ink to guarantee that the pages look as close to the original art as possible. The book itself will be an enormous hardcover - nearly as big as Kramers Ergot 7 - bound entirely by hand with no expense in materials spared.
This book is meant for collectors - the original comic is still available online from Copacetic Comics and PIcturebox, so this is a different situation from when Picturebox reissued Storeyville years after the original newspapers had vanished. I'm basically putting my money and time on the line (one might even say I'm selling my boots) in hopes that there are a few more people out there like me who really dig this kind of over-the-top bibliophile stuff.
The final details are still moving around, but here's what I know so far: the price will most likely be $300 + shipping, although I won't know for sure until I see how much the book costs us to make. It will be ready sometime in the summer or fall of 2013, and we won't be taking preorders, since it's never a good idea to take money when you don't know when you'll be able to deliver. We will make five copies to start - if these copies sell out right away, we may make another five. If you'd like to be notified when the book comes out, email us using the contact form on this site.