The First Kingdom

This First Edition, First Printing copy of The First Kingdom by Jack Katz, with an Introduction by Theodore Sturgeon was published in 1978 ny Pocketbooks, a Simon & Schuster division of Gulf & Western Corporation of New York. Its ISBN number is 0-671-79016-1. The book, which measures approximately 9.25 inches wide by 13 inches tall by 0.5 inch thick, contains 193 pages dedicated to the first six "books" of the 24 "book" epic of the graphic novel he began during the era of the underground comix. The remaining "books" were to appear in later publications.

The book is soft bound in stiff paper covers, with the title and a full color illustration on the front and a brief outline of the story superposed on the same colored illustration, as on the front face, on the rear face.. The information in the introductory pages i to xiv contain, among other items, a map of the lands covered in the story, a table of Contents, a Preface by Jack Katz, and an Introduction by Theodore Sturgeon. The book's illustrations are all in black & white. With the exception of the first page of the book being semi-detached, the book's text/illustration pages and cover are in fine condition.

The illustrations accompanying this description show the front cover, the table of Contents, and three 2-page spreads of text and illustrations.

Jack Katz (born September 27, 1927)is an American comic book artist and writer, painter and art teacher known for his graphic novel The First Kingdom, a 24-issue epic he began during the era of underground comix. Influenced by such illustrative comic strip artists as Hal Foster and Alex Raymond, Katz attended the School of Industrial Art in New York City. He began working for comic-book publishers in the 1940s, during the period fans and historians call the Golden Age of Comic Books. Though continuing to work in comics through the 1950s, his slow pace and highly detailed, idiosyncratic art style prompted him to leave that field for 14 years. Circa 1969, he returned to mainstream color comics as well as to black-and-white horror-comics magazines, and after a move to California embarked upon The First Kingdom, a serialized work that later became considered a precursor to, or an early form of, the graphic novel. He completed it in 1986, and went on to write and draw further works in that vein, and to teach art. [Wikipedia]