Gahan Wilson collection…

I have to admit, I have a taste for those big, hard cover multi-volume sets for cartoon strips. I have the ones for Calvin & Hobbes (essential), the Far Side (great), Dilbert (pretty darn cool) and all of Don Martin’s work for Mad Magazine (albeit not his paperback work). All were expensive but well worth the money, especially since the sets generally work out cheaper than picking up an entire series of paperback collections.

Someday I’ll get all those Peanuts hardcovers, too.

Now, there’s a new one, a three volume set collecting all of Gahan Wilson’s cartoons for Playboy over the years. If you’re not familiar with Wilson, he draws macabre cartoons that obviously inspired everyone from Bill Watterson to Gary Larsen to (especially) Mark Tatulli, who does the wonderful Lio cartoon strip.

The set sounds very cool indeed (almost a 1,000 pages!), and although I will delay a while because it turns out I mysteriously owe the IRS four times as much money this year despite not getting a raise, I’m sure I’ll pick this up as soon as it’s convenient.

Speaking of Wilson, though, when the hell is somebody going to issue a set like this for the great Charles Addams? It seems impossible that there hasn’t been one yet.

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BeckoningChasm

There was a nice collection of Addams’ work several years ago, put together by his widow I believe. And of course, there is a “complete [so far] cartoons” collection of New Yorker cartoons on DVD-ROM which would have pretty much everything of Addams, as I’m not sure he published anywhere else.

Edward Gorey has some fantastic “Amphigorey” collections that ought to be in everyone’s library except that most are out of print.

By the way, I found the Don Martin MAD magazine hardcover collection in a Barnes and Noble recently…for $25 (the slip case was slightly damaged). Needless to say, I bought that right quick.
Jayson Spears

I am waiting for the George Trosley collection
Rock Baker

Why was Playboy running spooky cartoons? I admit I haven’t seen many issues, but I thought the magazine was supposed to be more or less ‘light.’
BeckoningChasm

Playboy had some pretty good cartoonists (B. Kliban did some of his work there).

(For my money, most of those cartoonists did better work elsewhere, however–The New Yorker or National Lampoon.)
Rock Baker

I know Alberto Vargas did some work for Playboy, but I don’t guess you’d call him a cartoonist. Most agree he did better work for Esquire in the 40s.
John M. Hanna

I’ve been collecting the ‘Peanuts Complete’ books for six years now (only five and a half years to go!) They’re releasing only two books a year and each book covers two years of the strip. Since the strip ran for almost 50 years, anyone collecting these is in it for the long haul.
David Fullam

Wilson’s cartoons are classic. This should be an awesome collection.
Sandy Petersen

I have met Gahan Wilson in person, at a game convention, and it was a very unproductive meeting. Turns out he is a big fan of Call of Cthulhu the game, and so HE did the fan-boy thing to ME, while I was trying to do the same thing back to him. We just wasted 20 minutes gushing about each other’s work. I think me with more justifcation than he.

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