Last Sunday was sixty years to the day since the first issue of Fantastic Four appeared on newsstands and forever changed the world of comics. How much it changed it is hard to explain but a couple of us try it in a forthcoming hardcover book from Abrams Comic Art. The book, which will be out this November, is called Fantastic Four No. 1: Panel by Panel. It's a reprint of that fateful publication lovingly reformatted by ace book designer Chip Kidd to achieve, as the title suggests, panel by panel analysis of the material.
This was tried before but from what I've seen, this is a much better realization of the goal with superior reproduction. There are also some new essays by Marvel Editor Tom Brevoort and me, and some other goodies. You can advance order a copy here.
The expert reproduction has been achieved by locating a just-about-perfect copy of that first issue and then spending a lot of time and skill photographing and scanning and making it look as sharp as possible. How did they locate someone with such a copy? Easy: I asked here in this blog post last September. Here — I'll quote it here so you don't have to click…
This is not for me. It's for something I'm working with. They're looking for someone who has an unslabbed copy of Fantastic Four #1 — an original one, not a reprint — who will make it available to them for scanning…and yes, this is all approved by Marvel. It's for a forthcoming fancy book and they will pay a fee and give you credit and some free copies and take very good care of it. In fact, they may even be able to come to you and you can take it out of its Mylar® sleeve or whatever it's in and handle it. They just need to scan it for this big, impressive book.
Someone who is located in the Eastern Tri-State area would be ideal but they may be willing to settle for anywhere. Drop me a note if you've got one and are willing to share it with the world. I will pass you on to folks I trust.
Several volunteers came forward and the gent who loaned his to the project is very happy that he did. Meanwhile, the folks behind Fantastic Four No. 1: Panel by Panel are so happy with it that they're starting work on a similar book that would reprint Amazing Fantasy #15 with the debut of Spider-Man, and also Amazing Spider-Man #1…so now they're looking for someone with copies of those two books. They're looking for original, unslabbed first editions, not reprints and would prefer someone in or around New York. If you can help them and wanna do so, drop me a note and I'll forward it on.