The Library of American Comics


The 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. The company is an imprint of IDW Publishing.

History

Background

, 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.

Publications

The goal of all The Library of American Comics collections is to preserve classic American newspaper comics, in definitive archival editions. By framing each comic strip series with informative essays to present the series next to its historical context, both in relation to other comic strips and to the historical events of their time.
In April 2018 the number of titles published by The Library of American Comics was above 180.

Format

All the books The Library of American Comics publish are of the hardcover kind with sewn binding, the large majority also comes with a dust jacket and sewn linen bookmark. Book size and reproduction color depend on each series.

Recognition

Nominations

Eisner Award nominations
Harvey Award nominations
Eisner Awards
Harvey Awards

EuroComics

Publications of EuroComics

Recognition

Harvey Award
Nominations
Nominations