In a promo YouTube video this week, Hermes Press publisher Dan Herman announced that their latest anthology collection, Phantom Sundays Volume 4 (1950-1953), is printed and ready for release.
Dan explains a few details about the book, and some interesting historical oddities about the comic strip.
In the first first few minutes of the clip, Dan clarifies what is often a hot point of discussion among phans, namely the continuity among Daily and Sunday strips. He explains that from 1949 through to early 1950, Lee Falk wrote the Daily and the Sunday stories as a single continuity - these stories are presented in Hermes' Daily collections Volumes 9 & 10. From 1950, the Sundays reverted to their own continuity and could once more be read as standalone stories. These are the stories that are picked up in Sundays Volume 4, and explains the gap since the publication of Hermes' Sundays Vol 3 (1945-1949), which has now sold out.
Dan explains in some detail the amount of work that goes into re-producing the old newspaper strips into the high-quality publication that Hermes prides itself on. It truly is impressive that these books are recreated simply from cut-out Sunday strips that were gathered by collectors as they were printed in the early 1950's, and Dan gives a very special and grateful shoutout to Jeff Schwarz for his contributions in this area.
Unusually, Sundays Volume 4 features a couple of stories that are partially colour and partially black and white, which is explained in full by Dan in the video.
Dan makes a fantastic offer for anyone who has a store of these old newspaper strips - free books, mentions in the finished publication, entry to Comic Cons, the chance to sit at the Hermes booth - and even a free lunch!
You can hold Dan to the offer as he outlines it in the video below, and make sure you head to Hermes' website to order Volume 4 before it too sells out!
