Anthony Browne’s King Kong - SIGNED

Anthony Browne’s King Kong. 1994 first American edition hardcover. 92 pages, very nice condition. SIGNED.

Anthony Browne's King Kong is a picture book retelling of the story of King Kong as conceived by Edgar Wallace and Merian C. Cooper, written and illustrated by Anthony Browne. It was created and published with approval and permission from the Cooper estate in 1994. While the copyright text clearly states that the book is adapted from the film's novelization, which had lapsed into the public domain, it also depicts and references scenes and concepts from the 1933 film. For these reasons, RKO Pictures is credited in the copyright information, making this book a rare collaboration between rightsholders to the Kong character and story.

This spectacular retelling of King Kong is a first in every sense: the first time this classic black-and-white film has ever appeared in illustrated book form; the first time this dark and mysterious story has been conceived in full color - and its first time in the fresh, new, format of a graphic novel. Anthony Browne, one of Enhland's most celebrated illustrators, admits that King Kong, the greatest of all gorilla stories and the most potent influence on all his work, was surely the book above all that he was destined to do.

King Kong, as everyone knows, is a huge and terrifying survivor from another age, trapped with other "extinct" creatures on a remote island in some kind of time warp. But this awesome beast, worshiped by the island's natives and the equal of its prehistoric dinosaurs, is no match for the cunning of an ambitious urban showman, who sees the magnificent animal as a megastar attraction and sets put to capture him - even at the sacrifice of a beautiful, blonde actress. The pursuit and entrapment provide endless thrills, but when King Kong is ultimately put on public show in New York, heartbreaking scenes that the lead to, perhaps the most famous of all movie climaxes: the great ape defying the civilized world from atop the Empire State Building - a majestic but truly tragic victim of mankind's greed.