In an article in the 'Arts and Leisure' section of Sunday's New York Times Ben Schwartz surveyed the current wave of classic comic strip reprint volumes paying particular attention Frank King's Gasoline Alley strip, which is being reprinted (as Walt & Skeezix) by Drawn & Quarterly -- a reprint that is based in large part on the personal collection of cartoonist Joe Matt (Peepshow).  Schwartz quotes the contemporary cartoonist Seth (designer of the Complete Peanuts series for Fantagraphics) describing the new audience for these reprints: 'There's a younger audience that...grew up reading, say Eightball, as teenagers.  So they're well prepared for this, and it's not a big stretch for them to embrace comics history.'

Schwartz also reeled off some pretty impressive sales figures for these reprint volumes -- Fantagraphics sold over 100,000 copies of the first volume of The Complete Peanuts and regularly sells between 10 and 16 thousand copies of its Krazy Kat reprints (published as Krazy & Ignatz).  IDW sold out the first 7,500-copy printing of The Complete Dick Tracy, which IDW's Ted Adams characterized as 'a 1930s police procedural about a cop who does whatever it takes, it's not vanilla.  It's The Shield.'

In his article Schwartz correctly indicated that a key element in the success of these reprint volumes is the participation of modern creators such as Seth (who designs The Complete Peanuts) and Chris Ware (who designs both Krazy & Ignatz for Fantagraphics and Walt & Skeezix for Drawn & Quarterly.  New volumes for most of the series will be available this spring including The Complete Peanuts 1963-1964 in May from Fantagraphics, which is also publishing The Comic Strip Art of Lyonel Feininger in April and another Krazy & Ignatz collection in August.  IDW has a second printing of Dick Tracy Volume 1 due in February followed by Volume 2 in April, while Drawn & Quarterly is releasing Walt & Skeezix Volume 3 in June.