The other day the mail brought an incredibly exciting package. I got my hot little hands on an advance copy of Stephen Kings The Secretary of Dreams. I almost pee’d myself.
This fantastic reissue of some of King’s classic work is a must have for any King aficionado or lover of horror inspired art. I have never really seen anything quite like this collection. What Cemetery Dance has done is take 6 of King’s best short stories and had artist Glenn Chadbourne add incredible artwork to give the stories a life like you could have never imagined. The stories represented are:
Home Delivery
The Road Virus Heads North
Jerusalem’s Lot
Rainy Season
The Reach
Uncle Otto’s Truck
How they have done is as follows. Every other story is completely represented in graphic form. The others all have amazing cover art and are filled with full page artwork. So, Home Delivery has the cover art and full page artwork and then Road Virus is a complete graphic representation of the story, and so it goes for all six stories. Every word of King’s work is there it is just incorporated into the graphics. It is really quite breathtaking.
For King fans the stories are well known and stand on their own merits so the real story here is the amazing artwork of Glenn Chadbourne. Amazingly intricate and painstakingly drawn the art pieces are beautiful and you’ll find yourself staring at them for hours.
According to the materials that came with the book Mr. Chadbourne spent over two years working on this project and it shows. I really can’t represent in words just how amazing this book is. You MUST own this book. No kidding.
Here is the official line from Cemetery Dance on the project:
World Fantasy Award winner Cemetery Dance Publications, critically acclaimed artist Glenn Chadbourne, and New York Times bestselling author Stephen King are proud to announce The Secretary of Dreams, the master of horror's first unabridged graphic short story collection!
Featuring a half-dozen classic tales of terror personally selected by King, this collection presents his stories for the first time in the tradition of the pulp horror comics. Spanning close to 250 oversized pages, the hundreds of illustrations and full comic panels from acclaimed Maine artist Glenn Chadbourne transform The Secretary of Dreams into a work of art. Not one word from King's stories has been left out -- instead they've been brought to life by hundreds of pen and ink drawings by Chadbourne! The featured stories are: "The Road Virus Heads North," "Uncle Otto's Truck," "Rainy Season," "The Reach," "Jerusalem's Lot," and "Home Delivery."
This exclusive Cemetery Dance title will feature an oversized deluxe trim-size and is available in three editions: a slipcased Gift Edition limited to 5,000 copies, a traycased deluxe Limited Edition limited to 750 copies signed by King and Chadbourne, and a deluxe Lettered Edition limited to 52 copies signed by King and Chadbourne and housed in a deluxe traycase.
There are no other editions planned of this title, which we plan to ship in the spring, but King has already selected six more stories for a second volume that will be announced in 2006, and Chadbourne is hard at work on the illustrations!
If you want one of these bad boys you had better get your ass moving now. The Limited Edition sold out within 5 minutes of becoming available. Pretty cool.
Click here to head on over to Cemetery Dance and stake claim on one. You will not be sorry you forked over the dough.
