Both Vanguard Productions and Dark Horse have announced a reprint of White Indian. One will almost certainly see the light of day; the other may not.

From Dark Horse’s October solicitations:

THE CLASSIC COMICS ARCHIVES VOLUME 1: WHITE INDIAN
Frank Frazetta (A)
On sale Dec 1
FC, 200 pages
$49.99
HC, 7″ x 10″

The longest comic-book run of Frank Frazetta’s career! First appearing as a backup feature in Durango Kid in 1949, Dan Brand–known as the “White Indian”–is a colonial-era city boy whose life is marred by tragedy. When the death of his fiancée sends Brand through the wilderness on a trek to kill her murderer, he also begins a journey that will transform him into a hardened pioneer survivalist. The powerful sequential work of Frank Frazetta is in the spotlight in this collection, with all interior pages scanned from original comic-book issues and digitally cleaned.

• This collection reprints all of Frank Frazetta’s White Indian work in an affordable hardcover format!

Here’s a tiny JPEG of the Vanguard cover:

Notice how Frazetta’s name is absent from the Dark Horse cover and prominently displayed at the top of the Vanguard cover: I doubt that was simply an oversight on Dark Horse’s part… Frazetta’s name is also absent from the cover of the Dark Horse Thun’da reprint, which, btw, is available in stores now.

Anyway, here’s the news about the Vanguard Productions reprint, as reported at ICv2:

Vanguard to Release Frazetta’s ‘White Indian’
Complete Collection
Published: 07/12/2010, Last Updated: 07/13/2010 05:30am

Frazetta Management and Vanguard Productions announced that Vanguard will be releasing all of the Dan Brand/White Indian material, originally published in the 1950’s by Magazine Enterprises, as part of its new Vanguard Frazetta Classics line. White Indian represents Frazetta’s longest artistic run on a single comic feature.

The Complete White Indian Collection is Volume 2 of the Frazetta Classics line. Volume 1 will be The Complete Johnny Comet which will feature dailies reproduced from Frazetta’s own personal proofs and Sunday pages collected in color for the first time as well as a new essay by William Stout (see “Vanguard Plans Adams, Frazetta Books”). Vanguard Publisher J. David Spurlock said, “Both volumes are well into production now with more Vanguard volumes to come.”

Seems straightforward enough — except that, according to Rich Johnston at Bleeding Cool, Vanguard publisher David Spurlock has made a statement, on the record, that appears to assert Vanguard’s exclusive right to the Frazetta material:

Vanguard [writes Spurlock] will release WHITE INDIAN Vol 1 by Frazetta, and Dark Horse will do WHITE INDIAN ARCHIVES Vol 2 of all all the other White Indian material.

[More details about Spurlock’s statement here from Chris Marshall, who, it turns out, is the intrepid blogger who “got it from the horse’s mouth.”]

Now, as far as I am aware, Dark Horse has not yet confirmed (or denied) the arrangement, though, of course, if Frazetta’s White Indian material has dropped into the public domain, it won’t matter what sort of exclusive contract Vanguard signed with Frazetta before he died, Dark Horse will be free do as they please. Truth be told, however, I really don’t know what’s going on between Vanguard and Dark Horse.

(Why Dark Horse would want to publish a Frazetta-less hardcover sequel to another publisher’s Frazetta reprint is beyond me!)

What I do know for sure, however, is that Frazetta fans will soon have at least one, and possibly two, hardcover reprints of White Indian to add to their collections within a few months. So, hooray for that!

UPDATE (added 11 August 2010):

Wherein I answer the question, “Where have I seen those covers before?”

The Dark Horse White Indian cover was the cover of White Indian #11, published in 1953:

The Vanguard was the cover of the White Indian reprint published by Pure Imagination in 1981. Here’s a scan of the copy that usually sits on a shelf, along with a lot of other books, mostly by Corben, about a metre and a half from my keyboard:

Looks like Vanguard had the drawing recoloured for the new reprint. Big mistake, IMHO. (Anyone know why they changed the redcoat into a bluecoat?)

ANOTHER UPDATE:

You’ll have to read the discussion in the comments section of this post to find out why the following is important. The full page is page one of White Indian #11:

What fun! Now I get to file this post under “Connections“!