As you may or may not be aware, there's a little retailer on The Internets™ called Amazon and they sell all kinds of stuff to peeps who wanna buy stuff. One of their most popular items happens to be compact stacks of paper with words and pictures on 'em all bound together. In the Lit Biz, we call these items "books" and we think they're the best thing to ever hit humanity on the noodle.
In order for each book to become a cohesive whole, someone called an "editor" is needed to corral and sometimes shove everything where it should be so readers don't screw up their faces and murmur, "I'm lost. Can't make heads or tails of this thing. Think I'll donate it to the Home for the Terminally Confused." And so they do.
A good editor, as they rightly say, is hard to come by, but when ya do find yourself saddled up next to one, boy, you know it. Just such a talent emerged recently in the comics genre and that man's name in Dan Schierl, one of our bestest friends in whole wide world!
As we informed y'all in June, Dan worked tirelessly tracking down each and every one of George Herriman's public domain Krazy Kat Sunday strips dated from 1916-1922--that's seven full years!--sacrificing precious electronic sound gadget making time. This daunting task took him to the dark and dusty corners of libraries, where he strained his eyes and got the dizzies while flipping through endless pages of old newspapers on microfilm--'member microfilm, kids? He then had to weed out the badly printed copies, eliminate the repeats, figure out the correct chronological order, scan 'em, clean 'em up in Photoshop, and all for the love of the comic.
By the time he was finished, he had accomplished what no editor of Krazy Kat ever had: Compiling the entire collection of the public domain, full page Sunday strips from 1916-1922 into one HIlarious book! That's right, folks, while other editors at publishing houses had merely cobbled together strips of one or two years per single volume, Dan showed these "professionals" what a conscientious editor should do, and that is to maintain the integrity of a collection by keeping it together.
Anxious to share Herriman's outstanding comics with others, he began selling the book as a paperback and download through Lulu, giving it the honorable title Peregrinating the Highway of Dreams. But bigger things were yet to come, and just days ago Amazon jumped at the chance to become one of the distributors, adding the book to their modest yet ever growing roster--Whoozzah!
So now you can purchase this remarkable collection at both Lulu and Amazon. When you do, you'll be making a strong statement in favor of principled editing that is respectful to the work, to the author and to the reader.
(Thanks, Dan!)
Related:New Collection Gives Krazy Kat Lovers Seven Years
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