Christmas in May
Anyone who's been involved in a relationship that lasted through at least one holiday gift-giving season knows how fraught with emotional danger the entire process of giving and receiving can be. (Actually, i'm willing to entertain the notion that i'm projecting here. Maybe it's just that i'm the only one who had a hard time giving or receiving.)
The best trick i learned, and most of you probably know this, is to watch your partner when she's window shopping, or looking through catalogs, especially at the stuff you know she's not going to buy for herself, and pay attention at what catches her eye. The best gifts to get, i think, are the ones that you really want, but maybe are a little too pricey, or non-essential, to go out and buy for yourself.
This is all by way of a preface for what happened last Christmas. We were window shopping on Franklin St. in Chapel Hill, and my honey and i walked into Chapel Hill Comics. She'd heard about Peter Maresca's labor of love, reprinting over 100 of the original Little Nemo in Slumberland broadsheet Sunday comics from the early part of the 20th century into a mammoth, original size, lovingly reproduced, beautifully bound book.
Sure enough, they had a couple of copies in stock, at the list price of $120. "Ah-ha!", i thought. "Christmas present." Of course, it would have been tacky to have bought it right then, and i didn't have the foresight to recognize that this limited edition print run would become an instant collector's item, so when i went back to the store a few days later, the entire stock was sold out.
There was a single copy listed on eBay, for about $350, which was out of my league. The good folks at the comic store told me that, given the success of the first printing, there was going to be a second printing, probably due off the press in the spring, so i left my name and number and waited for the call.
It came late last week, so on Friday evening, on the way down to Shakori Hills, we stopped off at the store and picked it up.
It's really impossible to do justice to this object in a few words. If you love books, if you love the smell of ink, the feel of well finished paper, the way a smythe-sewn binding lays flat when you open it, this is a book that belongs in your house. I'm actually scared to read it; i don't want to get any finger oil on the pages, or risk spilling coffee on the cover. I know a little bit about the process of putting something like this together, from scanning the flimsy and probably deteriorating original newsprint pages, to color correcting and retouching the tears, cracks, bleedthrough from the back of the original page, laying out the signatures, imaging the plates, cutting the paper, the whole mechanical process of laying ink down on paper to create something, that while not necessarily permanent, is not as ephemeral as a web page, that has heft and weight and presence. That you know, when you hold it, is going to be around for generations, is going to be enjoyed by people who are not yet born. And with that comes a responsibility, i think, to make sure that those people will have some appreciation for what it takes to create a book like this, in an era where pretty much anything can and does stream across the fibre-optic cable, through the atmosphere, and into our eyes and ears through two inch screens and bluetooth headsets.
So get down to Chapel Hill Comics, or a store near you, and take a look at, and hold, and smell, this book.
And i haven't even started to discuss what's in the book. What an incredible artifact from a century past, these stories that first saw light wrapped around the Sunday paper as color printing became an affordable mass media technology. Better and more knowledgable scholars of the comic book than i can talk about how Winsor McCay used the dynamic combination of page and story to mold the visual approach to storytelling that still predominates in contemporary comics.
I'm just glad to have had a chance to hold this thing in my hands.
The best trick i learned, and most of you probably know this, is to watch your partner when she's window shopping, or looking through catalogs, especially at the stuff you know she's not going to buy for herself, and pay attention at what catches her eye. The best gifts to get, i think, are the ones that you really want, but maybe are a little too pricey, or non-essential, to go out and buy for yourself.
This is all by way of a preface for what happened last Christmas. We were window shopping on Franklin St. in Chapel Hill, and my honey and i walked into Chapel Hill Comics. She'd heard about Peter Maresca's labor of love, reprinting over 100 of the original Little Nemo in Slumberland broadsheet Sunday comics from the early part of the 20th century into a mammoth, original size, lovingly reproduced, beautifully bound book.
Sure enough, they had a couple of copies in stock, at the list price of $120. "Ah-ha!", i thought. "Christmas present." Of course, it would have been tacky to have bought it right then, and i didn't have the foresight to recognize that this limited edition print run would become an instant collector's item, so when i went back to the store a few days later, the entire stock was sold out.
There was a single copy listed on eBay, for about $350, which was out of my league. The good folks at the comic store told me that, given the success of the first printing, there was going to be a second printing, probably due off the press in the spring, so i left my name and number and waited for the call.
It came late last week, so on Friday evening, on the way down to Shakori Hills, we stopped off at the store and picked it up.
It's really impossible to do justice to this object in a few words. If you love books, if you love the smell of ink, the feel of well finished paper, the way a smythe-sewn binding lays flat when you open it, this is a book that belongs in your house. I'm actually scared to read it; i don't want to get any finger oil on the pages, or risk spilling coffee on the cover. I know a little bit about the process of putting something like this together, from scanning the flimsy and probably deteriorating original newsprint pages, to color correcting and retouching the tears, cracks, bleedthrough from the back of the original page, laying out the signatures, imaging the plates, cutting the paper, the whole mechanical process of laying ink down on paper to create something, that while not necessarily permanent, is not as ephemeral as a web page, that has heft and weight and presence. That you know, when you hold it, is going to be around for generations, is going to be enjoyed by people who are not yet born. And with that comes a responsibility, i think, to make sure that those people will have some appreciation for what it takes to create a book like this, in an era where pretty much anything can and does stream across the fibre-optic cable, through the atmosphere, and into our eyes and ears through two inch screens and bluetooth headsets.
So get down to Chapel Hill Comics, or a store near you, and take a look at, and hold, and smell, this book.
And i haven't even started to discuss what's in the book. What an incredible artifact from a century past, these stories that first saw light wrapped around the Sunday paper as color printing became an affordable mass media technology. Better and more knowledgable scholars of the comic book than i can talk about how Winsor McCay used the dynamic combination of page and story to mold the visual approach to storytelling that still predominates in contemporary comics.
I'm just glad to have had a chance to hold this thing in my hands.
Since 1949, Durhamites have slept soundly, secure in the knowledge that, in our town, erection can be depended upon. Now, thanks to the power of the internets, we can spread that security all over the world.
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