So what signature-related extravaganza could Kevin Cook dazzle us with for Autograph Hound Super-Sunday?
How about an array of Michael Connelly autos progressing from fuller signature to the squiggly “MC” I’ve mentioned here before?
Kind of like a reversal of those images of early ape-like dudes evolving up into Neanderthals and finally Home Sapiens.
Back to the Stone Age kind of stuff.
Now, a Super-Sunday or two back I showed you what Connelly’s signature looked like during his first ever autograph session in a bookstore, for his first book The Black Echo (1992).
That auto was authentic as hell — even hand-dated.
While Kevin has his Connelly collection all signed — and many other authors he collects all signed — he had to work some magic to get the early firsts signed, autographed much as they would have been inked at the time. A chrono-series of progressive signatures. Give him credit — who else would even think of such a thing?
Kevin lugged those first firsts over to Otto Penzler’s The Mysterious Bookshop during one of Connelly’s visits and told them what he wanted.
“Yes, the early signed Michael Connolly books were all recreated signatures done a decade or so ago at The Mysterious Bookshop on one of his stops there. We used the Dennis McMillan limited editions as a guide, so to speak, as to what his earlier signatures were like. What he did for me was sign a series of his books showing how his signature went from a full ‘Michael Connolly’ with The Black Echo to the present just ‘MC’ as he gradually shortened how he signed.”
So, the first run of these signatures are simulated — they’re the real deal, genuine Connellys, but not signed in the correct historical moment. The Black Ice (1993). The Concrete Blonde (1994). The Last Coyote (1995). The Poet (1996).
The last three signatures aren’t “recreated,” but appear on the limitation pages of the Dennis McMillan limited editions of Blood Work (1997), Void Moon (1999), and City of Bones (2002).
Kevin notes that after 2002, “From then on Connelly has basically signed the same ‘MC’ up until the present.”
