FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
December 7, 2021
The Library of American Comics On the Move!
The Library of American Comics founder and Creative Director Dean Mullaney announced that beginning in 2022 the primary home for LOAC and its sister imprint EuroComics will be Clover Press, co-founded by former IDW chief Ted Adams and EVP Robbie Robbins. Mullaney and Adams have a long history, going back to the legendary Eclipse Comics.
During the past fifteen years partnering with IDW, LOAC and EuroComics won seven Eisner awards, two Harvey awards, and was nominated for more than thirty others. Its roster of artists includes some of the most influential cartoonists of all time: Milton Caniff, Alex Raymond, Chester Gould, Alex Toth, Harold Gray, Russ Manning, and dozens more.
Mullaney explained, “Moving forward it’s become clear that IDW has less interest in archival projects, whereas LOAC has rededicated itself to preserving the history of classic newspaper comics one strip at a time.”
LOAC intends to pursue all available distribution channels in order to reach both die-hard fans and new readers. While Clover will be LOAC’s primary home base, Mullaney said that some existing series—such as Lynn Johnston’s For Better or For Worse and Milton Caniff’s Steve Canyon—will continue to be released through IDW.
The LOAC/Clover partnership begins with a bang—the ambitious tabloid-sized Terry and the Pirates: The Master Collection, funded partially by a novel subscription model.
Additional projects will be announced in the spring.
For more information, contact:
Hank Kanalz (hank@cloverpress.us)
or
Kurtis Findlay (kurtis@loacomics.com)
Hello: I’d wish Clover Press offered other options for shipping, especially to us, foreign customers. DHL is too expensive! Also, there are news about Little Orphan Annie? It’s my favorite LOAC collection…
Lastly, a request: maybe after the Caniff project, you could make a new edition of Flash Gordon from printer’s proofs: in the ’90s there was a nice Italian edition made from a set of printer proofs from the Raymond estate. Beautiful!
We are working on alternative shipping methods for international buyers. We are open to suggestions if you have any.
Little Orphan Annie will be wrapping up with one more volume. We are not quite sure what the future holds for Annie at this point.
Since LOAC and Titan have both done Raymond’s Flash Gordon in the past few years, it is probably safe to say that it will be a little while still before a new edition of Flash Gordon is published.
USPS with tracking it’s ok, and it’s not so expensive. Too bad about the Flash Gordon, yours is sold out and I don’t like so much the Titan edition. Maybe further Little Orphan Annie volumes could be published with some kind of Kickstarter method?
Unfortunatly, that italian edition by Comic Art, stop using original color proofs in the middle of issue number 3.
Hopefully this will be a good fit. I hope to see more projects collecting less reprinted strips. I have purchased 4 different series of Terry reprints already, and am not interested in yet another, great though the strip is. Ben Casey is a strip crying out for a complete reprinting. Johnny Hazard has not been well-served by the current licensee.
Well, we definitely can’t do books that are currently being done by other publishers, but we are looking into new projects that have never been done before, or are in need of a newer, better edition.
Who distributes your titles to bookstores and libraries?
Bookstores and libraries can order directly from Clover Press.
This is very exciting to me. Clover has done a great job with their own books and I can’t wait to see what this partnership brings.
Any chance of electronic versions of the books in the future? While I love holding a book, shelf space is an issue with some of the longer running strips. If you were to do electronic books, maybe a subscription service? Pay a monthly or yearly fee and be able to read everything in the library.
Yes, ebooks has been in our discussions! Thanks for the ideas, we will take them into consideration.
Is there any news if you’ll be printing Superman: The Atomic Age Dailies at some point?
We still have not located all the strips we need, so no, there is no news about this yet.
I hope Annie can continue, at least through the Harold Gray years. Any possibility of L’il Abner continuing past volume 9? Also Dick Tracy volume 23 is out of print and almost impossible to find. When it does turn up, it’s at a very high price. Is there a chance it will be reprinted? Thank you.
Reprinting all depends on who is holding the rights. Right now they are still with IDW. We would have to wait out their term and then negotiate a new contract. Right now reprints are not on the table, but this is something we hope to address in the future.
This is exciting news! I was getting concerned about the slowed pace of released over the past two years. Does changing from IDW to Clover allow for you guy to do reprintings of previous books or should we expect that all of your books that were put out through IDW are part of a closed chapter?
We will be exploring our options regarding our old books in the future, but at the moment the licensing rights for most of the books are still held by IDW. We would have to wait for those contracts to come to term and then negotiate new contracts with the rights holders. For this reason we will not be looking into reprints right away.
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Will there be any more Essentials…
Dickie Dare
Gordo
Adventures of Patsy
Mel Graff Secret Agent x-9 come to mind…
Leslie Turner Wash Tubbs
Brick Bradford….
We would love to do more Essentials! We are currently forming our publishing plan for the future. Essentials will be in our discussions but obviously can’t say yes or no at this time.
I’m late chiming in on this post, but if the move to Clover Press keeps the Library of American Comics going, then I say congrats on the move and I wish you all well–it HAS inspired me to subscribe to the new Terry set which for some reason I’ve always admired but never sat down to read. It is sad about Little Orphan Annie being wrapped, though. I’ve felt like Sandy scanning the horizon hoping for Annie to reappear. I’ve been a fan since the mid-70s when the Detroit News reran sections of the 30s storylines. Before the LOAC, the options for reading her adventures were limited, indeed. It’s always been a great joy whenever a new book has been released, and I couldn’t be more grateful the for 16 volumes you’ve put out.