One of the best major publishing announcements in a while, Fantagraphics has announced that beginning next year they'll be publishing collections of the classic 1950s EC comics, with black and white hardcover collections with stories selected based on the creators, and then further subdivided by genre. The usual collection strategy for EC up to now has been to reprint the books by title, and for me this is a welcome change. This is as close to my ideal EC reprint line as I could realistically expect.
The first four books announced are collections of Kurtzman written war stories (those he drew himself and a few drawn by non-regular EC artists like Gene Colan, Joe Kubert, Russ Heath, Alex Toth and Ric Estrada), Wallace Wood's suspense stories, Jack Davis's horror stories and Al Williamson's science fiction and fantasy stories. A great mix, with four great creators (plus a sampling of some other big names in the Kurtzman book) and hitting all the major genres as well. I'll definitely get all of those, and look forward to the future books (especially the Graham Ingels books). At the size these books are, there's enough material for about 40 to 50 volumes, a good solid decade of publishing.
I've been enjoying these collections as they come out, mainly because I would like because artists like Jack Davis are frequently the main attraction in the EC anthologies. However, I did have the good fortune to win a "Tales from the Crypt" slipcase set in an eBay auction, and was pleasantly surprised by the work of artists I hadn't heard of. When I started reading the set, I skipped the first couple of stories by George Evans, but his artwork has become something I look forward to seeing as I've worked my way through the series.
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