We all know about the beautiful and successful For Those Who Came In Late trade paperback released by Frew late last year, and are excited about the prospect of a Pirates of the Red Dragon TPB to be released as a Reward level or Stretch goal in the Kickstarter campaign for The Phantom board game in November 2018.
ChronicleChamber has now discovered that Frew will also be celebrating their 70th Birthday later this year with another very unique and special TPB.
As we explored with Frew artist Shane Foley in his interview with X-Band: The Phantom Podcast in episode 92, Frew has commissioned a number of modern artists and authors to create Australian-produced sequels to classic Lee Falk stories!
Our understanding is that three Falk stories, one from each of the 'big three' artists (Ray Moore, Wilson McCoy & Sy Barry), will be featured in the book. Each story will then be followed by a brand new sequel that follows hot on the heels of Falk's tale.
Frew co-director Glenn Ford has confirmed this format, and that the original Falk stories will also be featured in the TPB "in colour". Given the very high standard set by Frew, with high quality paper stock, printing and colouring in For Those Who Came In Late, these reprints promise to be marvels in their own right. Ivan Pederson was very impressive in his colouring of the Falk stories in that first TPB, so it seems likely that he would return for this anniversary edition.
As for the sequels, in his podcast interview Shane was able to tell us that he would be working on the Wilson McCoy follow-up, but was not sure exactly which story he would be continuing.
Since then, publisher Dudley Hogarth has clarified for us, "Shane is working on a new story which will be a sequel to The Movie Stars in the style of Wilson McCoy due for publication in our 70th Anniversary Trade paperback (subject to King approval)".
The other stories are still a closely guarded secret at this stage, but Shane did mention in the podcast that the choice would be driven by Frew's desire to only use stories that had not been printed by them in the last 20 years.
Writers are also unknown at this stage. There is a lot of speculation around the ChronicleChamber water-cooler around the rest of the creative teams. Christopher Sequeira, Andrew Constant, Pidde Anderson and Andreas Eriksson are all names we're throwing around for the writers, while Massimo Gamberi's style would certainly seem to see him lend himself to creating the sequel to whichever Sy Barry story is chosen. A modern artist whose style could flow easily from Ray Moore? Your guess is as good as ours!
Whoever is chosen, we are thoroughly excited about the prospect of this collection and can't wait to hear more about it!
