It’s Baltimore Comic-Con this weekend, and Dynamite look to have a number of announcements over the course of the next few days. The first of which is a new line of premiere art editions the publisher will soon be putting out – starting with the complete storyboards from Frank Thorne’s Red Sonja.
Dynamite have worked with Thorne to scan the collection directly from his own personal archive, making this a complete run of his 1976 series. One of the characters most associated with Dynamite, the work is scanned in colour and printed in original size. Thorne, in a press release run by Dynamite this week, speaks on his work with the character:
What is it that makes Red Sonja endure? So many fine craftsmen had drawn her!
When I took over Sonja in 1975, I was standing on the shoulders of giants. Still, many have said that I gave life to The Redhead, the living and iconic fantasy female (and sexiest title on the comics scene at the time). Fans should thank Roy Thomas, the great writer of comics and screenplays, for assigning me to shepherd Sonja into her own series. A sidekick no more, she was finally the star of the show!
The company will not be publishing more than 1973 copies of the book (1973 being the character’s debut), so this first edition will also be the only edition available. Due for release in December, Editor Nick Barrucci also notes that the book will be available at a discounted price for retailers, as the company seek to create a stronger business model between publisher and retailers.
Very exciting, but will they be photographing the originals (a far superior way to reproduce artwork), or scanning (which creates some flaws/ artifacts, particularly where artists used zip-a-tone or other techniques that made the depth of the sheet uneven and keeps them from sitting flush against the scanner), like IDW unfortunately does?
Steve, when you say ‘the compete storyboards’, do you mean the original comic art pages, or something else, ie planned TV series drawings etc?