Fantagraphics Releases First Remastered Images From ‘Love And Rockets: The Covers’

Fantagraphics Books has confirmed a September 2013 release date for Love And Rockets: The Covers, the eagerly anticipated and first ever full-color compilation of cover artwork from the legendary alt comics opus by Los Bros Hernandez.

The oversized, 144-page softcover collects all 50 covers of the original Love And Rockets run from 1982-1996, including the various collected editions, and in most cases without logos, barcodes, issue numbers and so forth so as to present the work of Gilbert, Jaime and Mario Hernandez as prestigiously as possible. As it was originally scheduled for release in July, Fantagraphics gave fans of Maggie, Hopey, Luba and all the Love And Rocketscast an early look at the publisher's efforts to remaster the work for this luxurious volume.

Love And Rockets: The Covers editor Eric Reynolds opens the book with a brief explanation of the remastering process:

For this special edition, every effort was made to restore the work in such a way asto showcase the artwork itself, "de-cluttering" the pieces of extraneous elements - logos, bar codes, issue numbers, prices, etc. - that often obfuscated details, so that the artwork could be newly viewed as the potent images that they are. Also, virtually every cover herein was newly recolored to the original specifications to improve fidelity.*

* The few exceptions to these objectives were the result of either the logos being embedded into the original design in such a way that removing them proved illogical, or no original files existed that would allow us to replace the information underneath the logos. In the few exceptions where the original color is used, it's because a quality black-and-white file to recolor proved too difficult to find.

If the following ultra high resolution examples are any indication, Fantagraphics labors have not been in vain.

(click images to enlarge-the-hell-out-of)

Right? Here's some more images from Love And Rockets: The Covers, which can be pre-ordered now from Fantagraphics, where you can also still pick up the complete series in paperback collections.