Friday 20 September 2013

Heros The Spartan—A Peek Inside

A week ago I posted that advance copies of the eagerly awaited 'Frank Bellamy's Heros the Spartan' had arrived at Book Palace Books HQ. Having shared the photos of the book's covers that we received from our printer, we have been looking forward to sharing with you some of the contents of this publication and that moment has now arrived.




















Both editions of this book are a delight to hold, the smell and feel of the matte archival paper makes leafing through the book a real pleasure. The sewn binding again just exudes quality and means that the book will open and reveal all of the pages right into the gutter. This is something which other books attempting to reprint spreads from UK comics have often made problematic, with crucial dialogue and artwork often becoming irretrievably lost in the process. In the case of 'Heros', our printers Prolong Press, went to extraordinary lengths to ensure that the signatures of pages butted up cleanly and precisely with each other so that all of this extraordinary strip was visible to the reader.

As regards the print quality, I am pleased to say that the weeks of painstaking restoration work has been really well realized by virtue of superb repro from our restorations and the matte archival paper ensures that not one line of Bellamy's pen work has been obscured in the process as these close-up photos reveal.

The penultimate photo shows one of the 11 original boards that appears in the sumptuously bound red leather edition with gold blocking, of which there are only 120 copies.

I won't witter on any more about these books, other than to say, that we feel that this book is the best book we have produced so far and response to it has been tremendously positive with over half the entire print run sold before publication day. On the subject of which, we had another notification from our printer to say that we could expect to take receipt of these books on 15th October, they are still at sea but getting ever closer to these shores.

Here again are the links if you would like to order copies of the book:


http://www.bookpalacebooks.com/acatalog/Book_Palace_Books_Frank_Bellamy_s_Heros_the_Spartan_The_Complete_Adventures_154.html

More pictures can be seen on the Marvel Masterworks Fan Site:


http://marvelmasterworksfansite.yuku.com/topic/15660/master/1/?page=5#.Uj2iu7ztPRU

6 comments:

  1. I'm dying for a copy of this book! I made the pre-order in December 2012. At last in my hungry hands!

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  2. I was just checking in...did the books arrive on time?

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  3. I received my copy on Monday. I was on vacation in London for a few days and I had gone today to the post office to pick up. My first word to say: WONDERFUL!

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  4. A couple of things to say about this AMAZING, EXTRAORDINARY edition:

    - the type of paper used is (maybe) is somewhat obscure

    - in the central part of the book is lost part of the drawing and the dialogue (slightly)

    - a minor error: On page 61 is said: "Heros books 3, 5 & 8 artwork by Luis Bermejo". But on page 260 appears "Heros Book 8: Eagle Annual September 1965". Also on page 61 is said: "Book 7: The Wolf Men". A little mess.

    Greetings from Spain

    P.S. And if you have a doubt, this book is INDISPENSABLE.

    P.P.S. Wouldn't it be wonderful an edition of "Fraser of Africa"?



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  5. Hi Alex and Andoni, Great to hear from you guys and yes the books arrived on time and have been going out as swiftly as the Book Palace elves can get them packed and addressed. So yours should be with you shortly Alex.

    Andoni, great to hear from you and sorry to hear about the typos—we had three people copy editing and yet they still missed those bloopers! We'll have to get you on the case next time around.

    The paper you refer to is the closest we could get to achieve the repro we wanted. It's the same stock that we used for Wulf and Fantagraphics use for their Prince Valiant reprints. We really like it and if Fraser happens it's the sort of paper we want to use again.

    Many thanks to both of you for your enthusiasm and support!

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  6. Peter, That sounds great! We all so much appreciate the work you have been doing and the wonderful books you guys are creating. Best, Alex-

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