You may have heard that a SMURFS hardcover anthology is coming out this week from Papercutz, an all-ages publisher who have a strong contingent of European-origin comics in their stable, often being brought to the US for the first time, but though the anthology is plenty glossy and well-designed for fans of the Belgian creator of SMURFS, Peyo, they’ve also announced that this is the first volume of several anthologies. Their intention is to bring out the complete SMURF works of Peyo in chronological order with extraneous historical materials and photos laid in. Archival quality indeed. This will give English-speaking readers a chance to dig into the history behind Peyo, and his studio’s vast output and gauge more accurately the kind of influence Peyo had on the history of comics. It’s going to be a worthy addition to documenting comics history for historians of the medium, too, and hopefully these volumes will take up their place in libraries that are starting to give due honor to comic art.
Papercutz describe it as:
an archival project that will see every Smurfs comic presented in beautifully designed hardcovers in chronological order, with contextual notes and behind-the-scenes photos. As a special treat for fans, the series will include Peyo’s Johan and Peewit stories in which The Smurfs made their very first appearances, many of which have not been published in English before.
It’s certainly going to be an attractive offering for completists, and it’s going to give access to difficult to find material, always a plus for fans of European comics in the US.
Hannah Means-Shannon writes and blogs about comics for TRIP CITY and Sequart.org and is currently working on books about Neil Gaiman and Alan Moore for Sequart. She is @hannahmenzies on Twitter and hannahmenziesblog on WordPress. Find her bio here.
For the record, this came out last week (I already have my copy). It’s smurfin’ gorgeous. I am so, so glad we’ll get the rest of them in hardcover.
Gaah! So now they present them in chronologically order? Why couldn’t they do that with the soft covers?
And I see that they are still recoloring the Gnap smurfs from black to purple. Guess they will color the swoofs from red to green as well then. (Who are offended by red swoofs, btw?)
Dammit, they are still purplewashing the Black Smufs!
Thankfully I already have those comics in french…
Hogne, they released the books in the same order as the original french edition – which is also NOT chronological!
Still, the first few books are some of the very best all-ages comics EVER! I would recommend them to everyone!
With the book in my hands, I’m happy to report that the censored story is prefaced by a 2 page text explaining why is such a good idea to censor it and how proud they are to have made the decision.
The only thing more pathetic than censorship is a lengthy explanation on how intelligent and even brave the decision to exercise that censorship was.
Comments are closed.