The advance copies of Amazing Mysteries: The Bill Everett Archives v1
have arrived on U.S. shores! My publisher, Fantagraphics, has received the small batch, destined for promotional outlets, and the book looks amazing. The rest of the print run is literally on a slow boat from China and will likely hit stores in late January or early February. You can pre-order it from Amazon.com at the link above, or pre-order it directly from Fantagraphics to get it ahead of the game (they ship out pre-orders as soon as the books hit their warehouse). I am very proud of this volume for a number of reasons. First and foremost is that it gets this super-rare, super-expensive, super-awesome Bill Everett artwork out there for the first time. When the book finally hits stores, I'll run through the Overstreet Price Guide and tally up how much it would cost to buy all this material even in not-so-good condition. Prediction: a lot of money. And that's even if you could find half of it. There is so much super-rare, barely-ever-seen material in this book; some illustrations that I had never even seen before until putting together this volume.
Second reason for contentment is how I organized the book - by hero, not by chronology - and how that plays out so wonderfully in the design. Each action hero has its own special section, introduced by some context regarding their history and appearances. It's so "colourfully" organized too, so well designed overall and with such wonderful reproduction of this 1938-42 artwork. Thirdly, there's the value of the introductory essay. I went to town on the piece, drawing the lines from the earliest sequential art to this specific period in history. That's important given that Everett's first work in comics predates every major superhero milestone in comic-book history.
Need proof of how good this book looks? Here's a POV promo video on YouTube:
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