Carmine’s on the way

Over the next two weeks, we’ll be shipping three versions of our new book Carmine Infantino: Penciler, Publisher, Provocateur: Softcover, Hardcover and Limited Edition Hardcover (with an original pencil sketch by Carmine in each of 50 copies).

The limited edition was available only from our website; we announced it to our Yahoo mailing list and past customers back in the Spring, and the copies sold out quickly, so if you missed out, be sure to sign up for our Yahoo group!

Co-author Eric Nolen-Weathington just conducted an interview about the book at FirstComicNews.com, and you can read it here:

http://www.firstcomicsnews.com/?p=14564

The OTHER co-author, Jim Amash, has this to say about it on his own blog (located at http://www.myspace.com/jimspoolhall):

“As most of you know, Carmine Infantino: Penciler, Publisher, Provocateur will be out Sept. 22.  Roy Thomas wrote a terrific introduction which adds surrounding context to Carmine’s career in regard to what else was happening at the time. Legendary inker Terry Austin embellished a new version of Carmine’s original cover from the 1968 DC Special #1 cover. Also, we are printing two complete stories written and drawn by Carmine in the 1940s.  The Airboy story is in black and white, but the Heap story (a really nice job!) is in color, and is available only in the hardcover edition, which has a sixteen page color gallery.  You can get your copies at your local comic book shops, selected book stores, Amazon.com (among many other internet sites), and from the publisher at www.twomorrows.com. I hope you’ll get your copy directly from Twomorrows.  You get a 15% discount, and help insure that books like this continue to be published.”

“This is the most definitive look at Carmine’s comic book career.  In keeping with my regular style, the text is in the interview format.  I know there’s a couple of people who prefer written biographies, but I believe it’s best to let the subject speak for his/her self.  In this book, Carmine and I discuss his art style and how it changed throughout the years, and why it changed, in great detail.  That section of the interview is in the sneak preview that I posted on my blog several days ago.  Until now, Carmine has seldom talked about his publishing days in any great detail, and I believe this is be one of the most potent sections of the book, and his life.  His tenure as President and Publisher has sparked much controversy over the years, and we did not avoid the difficult parts of that time period. We spent quite a bit of time talking about the conditions of the industry as it existed at the time, including how distribution worked (and sometimes did not), and competition for newsstand sales, as well as Carmine’s ceaseless attempts to introduce new formats, ideas, creative personnel, and characters, trying to buck the trend of declining comics’ sales through the entire industry.”

“This book was several years in the making (once planned to be a multi-part interview for Alter Ego magazine), and we feel we covered Carmine’s career as fairly and honestly as we could.  It’s certainly more in depth than any book or magazine that has ever tried to define the scope of his enormous contributions to the comics medium.  No, we did not talk about his personal life.  That was purposeful.  Carmine has always been a very private man who wanted to keep it that way, and I respected his wishes.  In spite of this, you’ll get to know and understand Carmine in the context of his work, and observations about that work, and the people he encountered during his seven decades in the business.  His personality is as unique as his art, both of which are represented on virtually every page.  And we are very proud to present it to you.”

Don’t forget to download the FREE 25-page 5mb PDF preview of the chapter on Infantino’s Silver Age FLASH work and artistic approaches and influences at this link:

http://twomorrows.com/media/InfantinoPreview.pdf