The Library of American Comics


Library of American Comics is an American publisher of classic American comic strips collections and comic history books, founded by Dean Mullaney and Bruce Canwell in 2007.

History

Background

Dean Mullaney, the founder of the Library of American Comics, developed his interest for comics in his early youth and by the 1970s he was a so-called letterhack, regularly sending in letters of comment to the Marvel comic books' letter pages. His career in comics began in 1977 when he, together with his brother Jan Mullaney as well as Don McGregor and Paul Gulacy, launched the publishing company Eclipse Comics, famous for publishing the graphic novel Sabre. After some time at Eclipse Comics, Mullaney left the comics industry.
In 2006, Mullaney was thinking about making a return to comics, and he found an online article about Sabre written by Bruce Canwell, a former DC Comics and Marvel Comics employee. The article mentioned that Canwell remembered Mullaney as a once frequent letter writer to the Marvel comic books' reader pages which he read growing up, just as Canwell himself was. Mullaney contacted Canwell, and after discussing their future plans, they realized that their visions and ideas were aligned. They discussed going into business together, with the initial goal of bringing a complete hardcover collection of Milton Caniff's comic strip Terry and the Pirates to the public.
Mullaney and Canwell launched the Library of American Comics in summer 2007, beginning publication of a definitive collection The Complete Terry and the Pirates.

Findlay joins

While writing as an animation blogger, Kurtis Findlay discovered a comic strip he had never heard of: "Crawford", created by the famous animator Chuck Jones. When Findlay checked the copyright status of the strip, he was connected by a worker of Tribune Media Services to Dean Mullaney of LoAC. When Findlay approached LoAC with the proposal of publishing a book about the strip, he learned that Mullaney was a fan of Chuck Jones' works; Mullaney was enthusiastic about Findlay's book idea, and Chuck Jones: The Dream That Never Was was eventually published by LoAC in December 2011.
Since then, Findlay has become the company's Online Communications Coordinator as well as editor for the For Better or For Worse collection published by LoAC.

New partnership

From 2022, LoAC and EuroComics switched publisher to Clover Press. An agreement was made with IDW Publishing to continue publishing the remaining volumes of For Better or For Worse, which ended with the release of the ninth and final volume in November 2024.
The first, and so far only, LoAC title to be published through the Clover Press partnership was the enhanced reprint series Terry and the Pirates: The Master Collection which started in early 2022.

Company organization

LoAC create their output of books independently from their partner company Clover Press, but they share distribution network, printing facilities, and logistics with the partner company.
The team at LoAC is editorially fully responsible for book design, selection of content, essays, and production. Most research, compilation of supplemental material and feature texts, and original writing for the company's biographical books are done in-house, although occasionally there is also some freelance material.

Key people

  • Dean Mullaney, Creative Director, founder and editor
  • Bruce Canwell, associate director, co-founder and editor
  • Lorraine Turner, Art Director
  • Kurtis Findlay, Online Communications Coordinator, editor

Publications

The goal of all Library of American Comics collections was to preserve classic American newspaper comics in definitive archival editions. Each framed a comic-strip series with informative essays to provide historical context, both in relation to other comic strips and to the historical events of their time. Unfortunately, however, LoAC discontinued publishing most of the titles long before being complete.

Format

All the books The Library of American Comics published were hardcover, with sewn binding; the majority also came with a dust jacket and sewn linen bookmark. Book size and reproduction color depended on each series.

Recognition

Nominations

Eisner Award nominations
Harvey Award nominations

Awards

Eisner Awards
Harvey Awards
  • 2012 – "Best biographical, historical or journalistic presentation" – ''Genius, Isolated: The Life and Art of Alex Toth''

Imprints

Recognition

Harvey Award

Nominations
  • 2015 — "Best American Edition of Foreign Material" — Corto Maltese: Under the Sign of the Capricon by Hugo Pratt
  • 2016 — "Best American Edition of Foreign Material" — Corto Maltese: Beyond the Windy Isles by Hugo Pratt
  • 2018 — "Best European Book" — Flight of the Raven by Jean-Pierre Gibrat
  • 2019 — "Best European Book" — Corto Maltese by Hugo Pratt

Eisner Award

Nominations