Batman: The Killing Joke is set to become the world’s first giclée-printed comic book. The process, originally developed for digital prints of fine art, will be used for the Avant-Garde Edition, which was created in collaboration with Croatian publisher Amaranthine Books’s new imprint Argent Comics. It will have a limited print run of just 47 copies.
The Avant-Garde Edition will be released in a casing based on the camera the Joker uses in Alan Moore and Brian Bolland’s infamous 1988 comic, and include both the original coloring by John Higgins, and Bolland’s 20th anniversary recoloring. It’ll also come with a wearable strap featuring art from the comic; a Joker playing card; and a new introduction signed by Bolland himself.
In a blog post discussing the genesis of the imprint and the project, Argent states they use a custom silver paper, that allows images to reflect light. Their name derives from “argentum,” the Latin word for silver, and similarly, the decision to only print 47 copies (which has more to do with how cost-prohibitive the process is than anything else) refers to the metal’s atomic number.
No retail price was shared, but fans interested in acquiring a copy can sign up to Argent’s newsletter for updates on the official website. The imprint also announced another collaboration with DC, offering a black-and-white release of The Killing Joke, is in the works: this edition will use “letterpress on [a] 100 percent cotton mold-made paper. This is not ink sitting on a page; it is a sculptural relief pressed into the fiber.”
Check out more images of the Avant-Garde Edition in the meantime below:
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