Category Archives: slipcover

Recreating Mars… and Other Amazing Locales

Every copy came with an original plate!

If you stumbled upon a case of metal printing plates for some of the most seminal works in American publishing, what would you do? Sell them on eBay? Create plate crafts on Etsy? Well, if you were Jim Gerlach you would create a publishing company from scratch, learning everything you needed to know about printing and bookmaking to accurately recreate these lost treasures of history. We called Jim up to discuss his books, their history, and his plans for recreating some of the best loved works in English literature.

The Latest Addition: Boxed edition of A Princess of Mars

What was originally just a recording of a conversation so I didn’t have to take written notes struck me as perfect content for a Book Judgement podcast episode. It shouldn’t have been unexpected. I’ve produced over 560 episodes of The Fanboy Planet Podcast, so it was relatively simple to turn the recording into the streaming episode available below. You can listen to the episode at the bottom of this page (just click Play) or download to listen to it later (on a plane, or somewhere you don’t have an Internet connection.)

The Martian Legion, one of Book Judgement’s first reviews!

So enjoy learning how the original Edgar Rice Burroughs (did you know he was self-published?) books came to be, and how one guy lucked into building and extending an amazing set of collectable recreations of those historic works.

One additional treat from the ERB Books site, this video showing the printing process used in producing  Back to the Stone Age.

More on the production of the book is available here.

Mentioned in this Episode

Ric Bretschneider
February 2020

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Squidder…

squidder

I backed the Kickstarter for Ben Templesmith’s The Squidder graphic novel in the somewhat reserved position of simply pledging for the hardcover version.  Now they’re letting us upgrade to the slipcover edition if, after having seen much of the work in e-book format, we’re having remorse for not doing so originally.

I felt I was strong enough to resist, but I made the mistake of checking out the video preview of the slipcased edition.

Yeah, this guy knows how to sell me on the upgrade. I think it was when he mentioned the book’s smell.

I’m doomed.

THE SQUIDDER – Update 13 from 44FLOOD on Vimeo.

Ric Bretschneider
September 6, 2014

The Star Wars – Boxed Deluxe Edition Special Unboxing Review

Great book presentations can come from anywhere. Comics for example.

Last year, Dark House press took a somewhat notorious, very early draft of George Lucas’ Star Wars and serialized it in comics.  The comic series is probably the closest that rendition this early Star Wars history will come to in a visual media.  The story is very different from the one we saw in Star Wars: A New Hope, characters, aliens, technology, even the force itself changed in subtle to extreme ways.  It’s an entertaining read for any Star Wars fan.

Evernote_Premium

The Star Wars franchise has a long history in the comic form, the individual movie serializations and additional stories made up for the time between films and were quite successful for Marvel comics.  More recently, Dark Horse comics has taken the Star Wars Expanded Universe into some amazing storylines far beyond the film canon.

And it was really no surprise that Dark Horse put a tremendous amount of effort into a boxed edition of the collected seminal work. This set of three volumes of material is presented in a sturdy and attractive cloth-covered, foil lettered and embossed box, the design repeated for the three volumes enclosed.

I suspected it would be a fun “unboxing” review to record for your enjoyment, so here it is…

The Star Wars: Boxed Limited Edition – Unboxing Review

You can find this edition for sale now, but I’d act on it soon because who knows when it will sell out!

Ric Bretschneider
September 4, 2014

Crime Stories from The Strand

I’m pleased to welcome our first guest post, by the prolific Hugo Award winning Christopher J Garcia. You can read more of Chris via his numerous fanzines and podcasts and undoubtedly occasional posts here on Book Judgement. I’m sure not all will be so criminal. -Ric Bretschneider

Crime Stories from The StrandIMG_2211
1991 London Folio Society

Review by Christopher J Garcia – AKA @johnnyeponymous 

Why would you wrap a beautiful work of art in a plain bronze wrapper? It’s like the way Brighton Pavilion would cover over the lovely wallpaper and trim of one time period with the drab paint of the next. Sadly, that’s exactly what the folks at Folio Society have done with their release of Crime Stories of The Strand.

You remember the Strand, right? That hugely important English magazine that was the most important periodical from 1900 to the start of World War I. It was so popular that there was an American edition as well. HALF A MILLION copies a month. Imagine that happening today. It was an unstoppable jugglenaut of a magazine! Now, the London Folio Society put together this lovely collection of stories, ranging from Arthur Conan Doyle and G.K. Chesterton, to a certain Agatha Christie.

And the cover, a lovely puzzle-themed, two-color piece with exemplary cross-hatching and woodcut line work. It’s a marvelous work, lovely, giving off an Edward Gorey-like vibe. David Eccles The purple-blue of the hardcover shows through the black-and-gold printing and it’s spectacular.

Then the fools put a dull gold hard book box around it!

Unsleeved

Why would you do that? There’s literally nothing on the case! It’s a dull gold box which gives no impression of what’s inside. The spine shows two chunks of gold background indicating the title and Folio Society. THAT”S IT! They completely obscured the incredibly beautiful image with that lame lamé case. It’s an unfortunate decision, and I’d keep it on the shelf not in the slipcase if it wouldn’t feel like it were no longer Mint In Box!

The choices for binding and hardcover board choices are pretty solid. The binding does have a certain stiffness to it, which leads to a cracking sound, perhaps aided by the fact that the whole thing is compressed every time you put it back into the dull gold slipcase! The outer fabric is the ideal cover tone, in that purple-blue that reminds me of pipe smoke in Grandpa’s den. The endpapers are in a lovely wine and is the perfect counterpoint to the purple-blue.

The typeface, Ehrhardt, is clear and feels somewhat antique, but not overly so. In fact, it feels Modern. Not contemporary, but solidly, and notably, modernist. I love that!

The book was designed by David Eccles, including the text and the binding, which shows in his artworks, which are not only line drawings, but also some beautiful stipple art. I love Stippling!

All in all, it’s a wonderful product, sturdy, with heavy paper and richly inked text. The edge coloring is in that same wine tone, which is only done on the top of the book, though it really doesn’t matter, BECAUSE IT’S COVERED BY THE BREAKING SLIPCASE!

It’s clear this work has been a labor of love, and obviously well-done, as you would expect from the London Folio Society!

Christopher J. Garcia
July 9, 2014

Buy to support this site…

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An Unboxing of “The Fifty Year Sword”

(This post was originally published in my standard blog.)

I’m a big fan of books. Not just the stories, but the book construction as well. From bindings, paper choice, typeset, typography, layout, it’s all interesting to me.

Mark Z. Danielewski is most famous for House of Leaves, an inventive experimental work of layered stories and typographic morphing of most everything we think of as the printed page.

In this video I do a short review of House of Leaves for those who are not familiar with the work (and to allow those familiar with it to berate and chastise me for “getting it wrong” I suspect) and then do an unboxing of his latest work The Fifty Year Sword, which comes in a unique box and exhibits some of the same traits found in House of Leaves.

I hope you enjoy, and I hope those trying to make a purchase decision on this book are aided in their decision making.

 Buy to help support this site…

previewRic Bretschneider
June 24th, 2014 9:30PM

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