Here I was all ready to sink my teeth into the upcoming Bernie Krigstein Atlas comics reprint, when instead I got this weighty surprise at the mailbox last night. And I do mean WEIGHTY! A two-volume The Crypt of Covers: The Complete EC Covers Compendium is a monster. Over 600 11×14.6 pages in a box, this thing blows up ever EC cover to small poster size. And brace yourself when picking it up. This package is dense.

I will try to get a review up next week some time, in part because just a cursory leaf-through of this beauty pushed it to the head of my holiday book review line. And I thought my site regulars would appreciate a tease.

Wow! They do mean “Complete.” The first volume is dedicated to pre-New Trend titles like the biblical, kiddie, early Western and Crime titles. The peerless EC historian Grant Geissman provides a 20+-page intro. The second volume includes the New Trend and New Direction titles as well as later reprints and ancillary bits.

Originally slated for release this month, it has been pushed into early January. More on this anon.