There is barely any new material in it for us die-hard Providence fans, but this week saw the first collected editions of Moore and Burrows’ Providence. The limited edition hardcover Providence Act 1 costs $19.99. It is limited to 6666 copies.
Facts in the Case of Alan Moore’s Providence already had the cover posted at the miscellaneous Providence covers page. Many Cinema Purgatorio Kickstarter backers have received a special Willard Wheatley variant cover edition for Act 1. That cover is also posted at the miscellaneous covers page.
The collection preserves the issue-by-issue pagination by taking the individual comics’ back cover Lovecraft quotes and placing them on the back of each cover page (though these cover images are now chapter pages.) Page-turn reveals, including the peacock feather seller at the end of the second chapter, remain the way Moore and Burrows engineered them.
The back cover of Act 1 does includes a heretofore unseen Jacen Burrows illustration of the shed where the invisible John-Divine Wheatley resides. On the wall, of course, are the crayon drawings that appear interspersed in issue four’s Commonplace Book back matter.
We have not done a painstakingly detailed comparison, but we did spot one very minor correction in the new edition. In Chapter 1 P15,p1, the word balloon has been shifted upward two stories. We had noted this on our nitpicks page – so, perhaps, someone at Avatar Press read through those? Though they only changed that one nitpick, apparently. Avatar fixed a handful of Joe’s Crossed Plus One Hundred nitpicks when that collected edition came out last year.
How about you, our sharp-eyed readers? Have you spotted any other differences, corrections, revisions in the new collected edition?
Facts in the Case of Alan Moore's Providence 
This seems pre-mature.
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I’m sure they want folks to find the series and buy the later issues as they come out instead of waiting for all of it to be collected.
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There’s also nothing strange about single arcs being collected. Happens…honestly almost always.
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You know there’s gonna be a super deluxe pricey drool-worthy hardcover in our future, right?
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Yeah, but given that these seemingly will be released, or solicited, each quarter…I don’t see Act III being released in HC until summer 2017 and maybe the hardcover in early 2018.
I’m getting all 4 releases.
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what’s done with all the variant covers? Are they included at all or no?
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Yes, Mine hasn’t arrived. What covers are included?
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Mine hasn’t even been shipped yet, but I saw one at a local comic shop.
Only main covers are included.
I figure they’re saving the juicy stuff for the complete collection
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No variant covers in the initial Act 1 Hardcover limited edition – just the regular covers. (One idea that occurred to me is that the covers are kind of not related to the issue itself, so it could make sense to collect them by theme or move them around to the issue that they most pertain to… we’ll see.)
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Yeah, given the plethora of covers it would make more sense to separate them into gallery categories in the complete collection.
Dream design would be a dust-jacket with an image similar to Act 1’s cover with the unjacketed design being the commonplace book’s outside design.
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See I’d disagree! with a few recent exceptions (I’m still scratching my head over Mrs. Forester on #8) I have found that the variants serve to enrich their issues dramatically! They tend to give us another perspective on the events contained within. Seeing the portrait covers for Robert Suydam or “Increase Orne” gives these otherwise pleasant and jovial characters the touch of menace needed to round them out. See my too-long ranting on about the pantheon covers for just how much I read into them haha! Although in retrospect I’m hard-pressed to find the issue-specific significance of each of the dreamscape covers.
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There’s enough variant covers to do a complete book just of those.
Which is a bit cynical. Normally I’d expect Moore to be above this cynical marketing crap the comics industry pulls. OTOH Avatar aren’t a large company, so maybe he accepted it as a necessary evil. As long as they’re not messing with the comic’s inside content, doesn’t matter so much.
The whole comic “investor” market is very silly, kinda mean to take advantage of the few people daft enough to do it. Then again, “Beanie Babies” were produced entirely for that, the market of people who think brand-new mass-produced items, still sold in shops, can somehow be valuable antiques.
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Damn. I think I’ve spent too much on all the variants I’ve got to justify buying anything other than the complete hardback at this point!
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I promised myself I would only double dip if the covers were good.
Act I? Fantastic cover.
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I have to express myself on this topic- I totally Iove Providence! Greatest thing going, just mind-blowingly wonderful n every way and I talk it up big time every chance I get. Love it. BUT I loathe the variant cover “scam”. I don’t loathe the artwork of course, just that I’m being asked (in a way) to buy the same comic book 5-6 times every single issue. I just refuse on principle and for monetary reasons as well. II even bought the ACT 1 collection, but not the variants. And I know I will buy the collected book some day and I am sure there’ll be one with everything collected there and that will be good enough for me.Meanwhile, crazy about the book as I am (and make no mistake about that) I just decided early to pass on the multiple covers.
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I’m gonna wait as well.
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I love the variant covers and would happily buy a book of them. I’m the kind of reader that half-destroys everything I read (I dog-ear! I highlight! I put stickies all over!) and I already managed to tear my Providence #2 cover. The collections will be my nice permanent items, and the comics themselves will be my readables. I do buy duplicates of books I really like anyway.
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But I can totally see buying all the variants just to be supportive of the series if you can afford it.
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Yeah, I agree–maybe Moore/Burrows will do even more Lovecraft stuff if their present work is supported enough.
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I received my Kickstarter ACT I hardcover with the Williard Wheatley cover. I love the series, and I love the variants. I don’t buy multiple copies, I simply pick the cover I like the best (in most cases), or end up with what is left on the shelf (in one case). I have the Cthulhu Mythos #1; Lilith Mythos #2; Regular cover #3; Williard Wheatley Portrait #4; Cats of Ulthar Dreamscape #5; Night Gaunts Dreamscape # 6; She-ghoul Women of HPL #7; Trolley 1852 -Dreamscape #8
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Hi, Timothy McCown Reynolds, how do you get the variant copies? My comic book shop here only has the “standard” covers and I like supporting that shop. Is there a way to order variants through my shop, or would I go online or what? Thank you!
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Go to Avatar’s website? Or Comic Cavalcade maybe? For the variants I mean.
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Oh, website might work. Thank you!
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At first I was only going to purchase the issue #1 variants, but based on the series being a total of 12 issues released over more than a year I succumbed to owning all of them. I’ve even grabbed some of the “weird pulp” variants as they become available via Mid-Town Comics.
I haven’t seriously collected in ages and I’m not normally a completist, but I am that guy who used to chase down those “non-LP” B-Sides in the days of 45 RPM’s. I’m not expecting the variants to rise in value but it seemed to me that a comic box representing “the full experience” of this short series might be a fun goal.
I’ve also been purchasing additional standard cover issues with an eye toward gifting them to a couple of friends when all 12 have been released. Ultimately it seems that my friends would be better served with the collected hard cover editions, so I grabbed a few of those this week.
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I find your completist madness appropriately Lovecraftian, and hope once you’ve collected them all you can find peace.
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It began to seem to me that the corners of all these covers could not be assembled into three hundred and sixty degrees. Their corners formed a hideous non-Euclidian geometry, and with each additional variant, strange and terrifying angles sprang forth from their squamous edges.
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This will keep me up at night….
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Hey Quint&Jessel-
I live in NYC, and all the comics shops I go to (Desert Island, Forbidden Planet, Midtown Comics) have been stocking the variants. I do think you can ask your local retailer to order them. They are the same price as the regular covers (excepting the Weird Pulp variants). I believe that you can get them from Avatar’s site.
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Thanks! I’ll ask the guy to order the ones with the covers I like!
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Am I the only one who can hear the rats scratching in the walls every time I pick up this tome?
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I thought that was just me….
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