Bernie Wrightson's Freak Show has convoluted publishing history. First published as a serial in Heavy Metal magazine in 1982, it was subsequently published in graphic novel format in France, Spain, and Denmark just to name a few. Image Comics took a shot at it also.
.The above harcover edition was printed in the Netherlands in 1997. It reprints the interior artwork very nicely on high quality paper. The text is all in English. It also includes all of Bernie's illustrations for Stephen King's The Stand
plus the portrait of Randall Flagg that was only included in the limited edition portfolio. This hodgepodge also contains an "Incomplete Bernie Wrightson Checklist" (which is very incomplete, I'm not sure why they bothered to print it) and a small color reproduction of the painting "The Meltification of the Fish." This hardcover edition also includes the plate reproduced below. This book is a nice, and slightly schizo, package of Bernie Wrightson art.
Freak Show, by Bruce Jones and Bernie Wrightson.
Houthaven Publications, 1997.
ISBN:90-73508-15-0
2 comments:
Hard to say why, but Freak Show disturbed me more than anything else Wrightson ever did.
As I recall it had no tongue-in-cheek, but was genuinely tragic an horrible.
Maybe that was it.
That's a good point. I always thought that story was a little more dark than usual. His work usually has a strong element of (black)humor in it.
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