Jim Starlin's Marvel Cosmic Artifact Edition #1

It strikes me that many of you out there will have little to no idea what IDW’s Artist and Artifact editions are. You might even know what they are and be thinking, “At $125 a pop I don’t fucking think so.” Fair points all around, but these are important bits of history. They deserve an advocate and their place in the sun.

Let’s start with what these are. These editions are pretty much coffee table books. They are ultrasharp color scans of the original comic book art, reprinted at the actual size, roughly 12”x17” (the original art is shrunken to 10 1/8”x6 5/8” for standard comic book printing.) Even though there’s no color, the original art is color scanned to mimic the experience of viewing the original art in person. You not only get a good look at how the pencils and inks work together, but you can also see; editorial notes, paste-overs, art corrections. You get to see everything including tape, blue pencils in the art and margin notes. John Byrne and Terry Austin were famous for little side sketches and jokes in the margin whitespace. IDW also went through the trouble to print these books on paper that’s as close to the original bristol board as possible, so these editions actually feel like you’re flipping through a hardbound archive of original art pages.

IDW Artist Editions are complete stories, bound into one volume. You usually get 5 or 6 comics worth of stories in one book plus an introductory essay or two. Artifact Editions are a little different. These are themed, usually by artist, but they are situations where the entire stories simply can’t be had due to missing pages or uncooperative original art owners. There’s an astronomically cool Jim Lee Artifact Edition that is nothing but his DC covers. IDW fills out the space in these Artifact editions with lots of extras like advertisements by the focus artist, portfolio pieces, color and style guides. Things like that.

So far, IDW has scored a murderer’s row of artists for these books. The Artists Editions cover everyone from multiple Jack Kirby volumes to Jack Davis’ EC work, to newer guys like Jeff Smith, Walt Simonson and Dave Stevens just to name a few. The Artifact editions cover Bernie Wrightson, Jim Lee, John Byrne’s X-Men, John Romita’s Spider-Man, Early Marvel Star Wars, Miracleman, Frank Miller’s Daredevil and Dave Gibbons’ Watchmen.

Now to the real question. How was the Jim Starlin Artifact Edition? It’s great because it shows the progression of Starlin forcing himself to get better with each issue. In his introduction, he even explains why the progression is so pronounced. This volume actually answered a lot of questions I’ve always had about why Starlin’s early Captain Marvel work seemed almost sloppy in comparison to what came just a short time later during his run on Strange Tales and Warlock.

There’s a big down side to presenting Starlin’s early work in chronological fragments. The reason we love these early Starlin Marvel stories is the storytelling. Starlin created Drax the Destroyer and Thanos for these tales. He completely revamped Captain Marvel and Warlock, making them interesting again. You don’t get the whole story in an artifact edition. You just get fragments, and I don’t think that’s entirely fair to just show pieces, especially when the story is so much stronger as a whole.

Minor gripes aside, this is still an amazing package. These editions are pricey at $125, but it’s a fraction of what you’d pay for the original art. They’re an important historical archive of artwork that many of us would never get to see in our lifetimes. You get a lot for your money, and that’s truly the best measure of a coffee table book. Christmas is right around the corner kids, you could do worse than to ask for these books by name.