I Am Legend (54/54) - PC copy of the letterpress Suntup Lettered Edition (2020)

For this final entry for I Am Legend in this series, I wanted to pick out something special to highlight. 

While not the most important copy of I Am Legend in the archive, this is definitely the most expensive, and as a result, was looking to be the only publicly offered version of the book that the Archive would have to forego owning. For better or worse, all 26 copies had been spoken for (at a $3500 listing price!) before I could even given it consideration...

From the Suntup Press website:

The Lettered edition is limited to 26 copies and is a full goatskin binding featuring a handcrafted wooden stake affixed to the cover which is laser engraved with the title. The spine is foil stamped, and endsheets are hand marbled on acid free Fabriano Ingres. The edition is printed letterpress on Hahnemühle Biblio mouldmade paper featuring a deckled fore edge. Title, chapter and section pages are printed with an additional spot color, and the edition is housed in a quarter leather clamshell enclosure with a marbled paper cover.

It certainly is a beautiful book, very nicely designed, and all the more unique due to the laser-etched 'stake' mounted on the front of the leatherbound cover. 

So you might be wondering, how did I come to own the copy you see here — it was through a surprising twist of fate. I happened to see a listing in a Facebook group for a PC (Publisher's/Presentation Copy) of the lettered edition, and it was offered well below the lettered editions retail price. While not inexpensive, it was likely the most affordable copy I would ever find, and so for the sake of the archive, I pulled the trigger. 

While it would have been nice if this edition been able to include a Matheson signature (the author passed in 2013, but existing signatures are sometimes incorporated to allow for posthumous signed editions), the fact that it was printed letterpress makes it a unique piece of art.

A number of premiums shipped with the book, including an Art print, bookmark, and in this specific case, a note from the publisher thanking the recipient for their support of the press. 

Here's one last look at the hand-marbled endpapers (and traycase wrap).

Check back Wednesday for our final Godzilla post, and Friday for our final Creature from the Black Lagoon post. Whether you followed the blog as each new post was made, or if you discovered it after the fact, I hope you will enjoy reviewing the items shared from my collections!

I Am Legend (53/54) - A full length play in two acts by John Mattera and Geoffrey Cunningham (late 1990s)

As has been evidenced in great detail over the past 12 months, the I Am Legend Archive is not limited to just the library of editions of the book from around the world.

Whenever I come across a unique associational item, I'm compelled to pick it up. So when I saw a listing for a play adaptation of the novel on eBay, I didn't hesitate acquiring it, operating under the assumption that it was an unsanctioned adaptation.

Had I gone to greater lengths researching it as internet resources became more readily available, I would have found several references to co-author John Mattera mentioning he "had the privilege of working with Richard Matheson on producing a stage version of I Am Legend." Now, as far as I know, this play has never been produced. I have been unable to find any evidence to support that it ever was, and it was not mentioned among Matheson's play adaptations in The Richard Matheson Companion. 

Needless to say, the fact that the play appears to have been written with the approval (if not active participation) of Richard Matheson, makes this script all the more important to the Archive. Unfortunately, by the time I found all this out, John Mattera had passed away.

It's interesting to note the number of principal performers specified (6 women and 3 men), given the nature of the story. But clearly, there was more to the play than just Robert, Ben and Ruth; flashbacks would come into play including Virginia, Kathy, Freda Cortman — and in a deviation from the novel, the inclusion of a Cortman daughter, Mandy. The dog, however, is optional?

I have included the first few pages below to share how things are established. Rest assured, the entirety of the script isn't just Ben Cortman shouting, "COME OUT, NEVILLE!"

We're in the final month of I Am 54, but hang in there as we wind down our celebration of the 70th anniversaries of I Am Legend, Godzilla, and The Creature from the Black Lagoon. Check back next week for the final item from the I Am Legend Archive in this series!

I Am Legend (52/54) - 1st Corgi British edition (1956)

While I have referenced the British editions of I Am Legend from Corgi in a prior post, I have not yet featured any of those in this series, an oversight I will correct today.

Corgi (Look for the Corgi dog — your guarantee of quality) released the first British edition of the novel in 1956, two years after its debut from Gold Medal in the US, and a year after their neighbors to the South released the first foreign translation. 

The first edition cover art, by John Richards, would introduce a concept that would carry over much more prominently in the next several Corgi reprints: a staked woman — possibly Neville's wife, Virginia:

While at first glance the covers to these 1960 and 1962 editions appear to be the same painting (artist unknown), upon closer examination it is easy to spot differences in the details. It's not clear if it's actually the same artwork painted over, or a completely different painting. In one of my greatest I Am Legend regrets, I did not take advantage of an opportunity to purchase the cover painting for the 1962 paperback (underneath which may have been the painting on the left) for what now seems to be a paltry sum of $1200. In the early days of the internet, well before eBay and Amazon, it was listed for sale by a UK seller in a bookselling forum (along with a copy of the book). I held out thinking the price might eventually be reduced; unfortunately it sold before that ever happened (after which I developed an appreciation for the difference between can I afford to and can I afford NOT to). It's particularly painful in that I imagine a closer inspection of the original artwork might have answered this long-standing question (one that I was completely unaware of at the time, having not yet acquired — or even seen — a copy of the 1960 paperback). I hope that someday the artwork will turn up on again the secondary market, even though the chances of it selling at a similar price are highly unlikely.

It's also worth pointing out that two years prior to this cover, John Richards painted the cover to the Creature from the Black Lagoon novelization!

Richards had painted quite a number of other classic sci-fi titles, including several by Ray Bradbury, and later on, two of Matheson's short story collections. I'll wrap up this post highlighting an interesting similarity between his 1955 cover to Bradbury's The Illustrated Man and Matheson's collection, The Shores of Space:

We're in the final month of I Am 54, but hang in there as we wind down our celebration of the 70th anniversaries of I Am Legend, Godzilla, and The Creature from the Black Lagoon. Check back next week for another item from the I Am Legend Archive as we countdown to the final entries in this series!

I Am Legend (51/54) - Tony Gleeson Framed Cover Art Print #3/50 (1995)

 

Tony Gleeson's art for the Science Fiction Book Club Hardcover was the first literal artistic representation of I Am Legend that I was exposed to; compared to the more abstract Walker hardcover the Santa Clara library had. I imagine the inclusion of the bonfire in the background provided another subconscious link to Night of the Living Dead. In 1995, while in Los Angeles for the annual paperback show, we stopped by Dark Delicacies and I saw this piece on display — signed by the artist and numbered out of 50 copies. 

We're in the final month of I Am 54, but hang in there as we wind down our celebration of the 70th anniversaries of I Am Legend, Godzilla, and The Creature from the Black Lagoon. Check back next week for another item from the I Am Legend Archive as we countdown to the final entries in this series!

I Am Legend (50/54) - Soy Leyenda (1960)

The first Spanish language translation (by Manuel Figueroa) of I Am Legend arrived in 1960 from Minotauro in Buenos Aires, Argentina.

One of the readers of this edition was undoubtedly Mario Gómez Martín — a student filmmaker at the Escuela Oficial de Cinematografía (EOC) who in 1967 shot a 36-minute reasonably faithful adaptation of the novel. Some of the visuals suggest that Martín may have also seen El último hombre sobre la Tierra (The Last Man on Earth). The film surfaced online for a limited time in 2020, in Spanish only. I was able to translate the onscreen titles and some of the dialogue, and employed someone to assist with the translation of the remainder of the dialogue. All so I could do as detailed a write-up as possible of the adaptation for bare•bones. 

Fortunately, I wasn't the only one to secure a copy in that limited window, and the short film is now available for viewing on YouTube with English subtitles. It's worth checking out for the sequences that Martín captures Matheson's text so faithfully.

Come back next week for another item from the I Am Legend Archive!

I Am Legend (49/54) - Screenplay by John William Corrington and William Peter Blatty (1970)

A good 35 years ago, I purchased this draft screenplay of I Am Legend from a collectible book dealer who knew I was a huge fan of the novel. 

The first thing to strike me was that the film had gone into production under the novel's title, and I would later even acquire press materials referencing that original name before Warner Brothers rechristened the story The Omega Man. 

Two things about the screenplay authorship caught my eye. First, the initial effort was solely credited to John William Corrington. No sign of his wife Joyce, with whom he would ultimately share screen credit. But even more interesting was the credit to William Peter Blatty. I have never seen another copy of this revision of the screenplay, nor any other version with Blatty's name on it. At the time of this draft, 9/1/1970, the publication of Blatty's novel The Exorcist was still nearly 9 months away! (For the record, the use of the word "and" as opposed to the use of an "&" between their names indicates that Blatty worked independently, and not with Corrington. Of course that still doesn't explain the absence of Joyce's credit, had she worked on the screenplay with her husband.)

The opening scene is not far removed from what appears in the finished film...

... and the same is true of the film's conclusion.

This revision does include a scene referenced in the film's closing credits — featuring Anna Aries as the "Woman in the Cemetery Crypt" — which confirms that the scene was in fact shot, and excised after the credits were prepared for release. Sadly the deleted footage has not yet turned up. Perhaps, as would become a legacy with I Am Legend, it was deemed that the image of a dead child (in a world where almost everyone in the world had died) somehow crosses a line. 

 Check back next week for another item from the I Am Legend Archive!

I Am Legend (48/54) - A Última Esperança sobre a Terra (1984)

I previously highlighted the first Brazilian Portuguese translation of I Am Legend, Mundo de Vampiros from 1958. The next known to me would not arrive until 1981, as part of Francisco Alves' Masters of Horror and Fantasy series, under the direct translation Eu Sou a Lenda. The cover creatures almost prefigure the infected from the Will Smith film; and while Neville is not represented, it's worth noting that the dog is!

I was surprised that just three years later, the same publisher would reissue the same translation under a different title: A Última Esperança sobre a Terra (The Last Hope on Earth). That was the title used for The Omega Man in Brazil, so it would seem they were going for a broader audience with the new edition. It's interesting that despite the new title, the cover art (by Antonio Jeremias) is not evocative of the Heston film at all — to me it looks like James Franciscus as Neville and a Claudia Cardinale as Ruth? And what's with the Russian architecture on the skyline? All that said, it is one of the more eye-catching cover paintings on a foreign edition.

 

Cover art and title notwithstanding, the two editions are otherwise nearly identical. The blurb on the back is actually a passage from the ending of the novel — SPOILER ALERT!

And as these copies came to me by way of Matheson's personal archive, both are signed by the author.

It's also interesting to note that the copyright page explicitly states that the books are not to be sold in Portugal or Portuguese-speaking countries — strange given that Brazil is a Portuguese-speaking country!

Check back next week for another item from the I Am Legend Archive!

I Am Legend (47/54) - New York City Film Premiere Belstaff promotional display (2007)

This large folding double-sided tabletop display is from the New York premiere party for I Am Legend. 

As noted in last week's post, the New York premiere party was put on in association with Belstaff.

Will Smith's Robert Neville wears a Belstaff jacket and carries a Belstaff messenger bag in the film. For the record, I was not compelled to procure either of those rather expensive items following their appearance in the film. 

 

But I do appreciate this display piece!

 Be sure to check back next week for another item from the I Am Legend Archive!

I Am Legend (46/54) - New York City Film Premiere, Red Carpet and Party Tickets & Invitations (2007)

Though unable to attend the premiere of the Will Smith film on December 11, 2007, I was able to procure this collection of tickets and invites to the event, held at Madison Square Garden.

This includes three general admission tickets to the film...

... two Red Carpet access passes to Madison Square Garden...

... and a ticket to the party at Hiro at the Maritime Hotel. 

The invitation is the coolest part of this collection, folding open with details on the screening and the pre-screening cocktail party at Nick & Stef's Steakhouse. 

 Though I had to settle for the midnight screening at our local theater on December 14, 2007, it's pretty cool to have these items in the Archive.

Check back next week for another Premiere-related item in the Archive!