At long last, Lisa Sterle and Matthew Erman’s Long Lost will be released in its entirety as The Complete Collection by Vault Comics. Today, The Beat has all the details, including a letter from Sterle and Erman themselves, a first look at new cover art by Sterle, and the entire first chapter of the comic to read for free ahead of its fall release
Long Lost: The Complete Collection includes the first volume as well as the never-before-collected (and extremely in-demand) second volume. The story follows a pair of sisters who are pulled back to their hometown, Hazel Patch, through an invite from a supernatural creature—but that’s not even the worst of what they’ll have to face upon their homecoming
Long Lost is the story of two estranged sisters who are drawn back to their small, southern hometown after receiving invitations from an otherworldly creature. The pair is compelled to unlock the disturbing mysteries that are hidden in Hazel Patch in the hopes of uncovering the bizarre circumstances surrounding their mother, but they must deal with each other first
To celebrate the announcement of Long Lost: The Complete Collection hitting shelves, Sterle and Erman wrote a letter to readers about the history of the series and what it means to see the full story compiled for the first time
That this book exists is a miracle
It’s been ten years since Long Lost debuted. Ten years since Piper and Frances reunited and journeyed through Hazel Patch towards the reverberations of their childhood. Ten years since we were bombarded with questions about whether we were going to kill the dog in the story
Lisa and I have experienced so much in that decade. A global pandemic. The birth of our son. We have made literally thousands of pages of comics between the two of us: So much and so little has changed
We wouldn’t know Adrian and Damian Wassel, who started Vault, without this book, and without them you wouldn’t be reading this collection. To call Adrian a champion of my and Lisa’s work would be an understatement. There is literally no one else on planet Earth who has directly invested more into what Lisa and I create while still challenging and pushing us to be better. He has always—for reasons beyond me—been there for me. For Lisa, and for this book in particular, and for that we owe him our eternal friendship and endless gratitude.
“That this book exists is a miracle. We intuited basically everything, and we learned just as often as we fucked up while making it. When we did what we did, it felt like a magic trick. When the first issue of our first comic book went to a second printing, it felt like such enormous validation. We were here in this industry, with this book. Whatever it was, it meant something to the small amount of people that originally read and loved it (which is why you guys kept asking about the dog: you really just have to read on).
“One of those people was Gib Bickel, who came into our lives because of Long Lost. He showed us such warmth, kindness, and compassion. He took care of us and let us in the door of the comic book industry without hesitation. He proudly had a spot on the Laughing Ogre shelves for Long Lost and all our future titles
I’m heartbroken that Gib passed away before we could give him this collection. I know he would have had that same proud parent smile. ‘This is so cool,’ he would say, and he always meant it. He also always made fun of us for pulling our own books on our pull list, a habit we will never quit
This collection is for everyone but, in particular, it is for Gib and The Laughing Ogre
There would be more people like us if there were more people like Gib
Thank you for reading
Matthew Erman & Lisa Sterle
Below, check out brand new cover art by Sterle, as well as the full first chapter of Long Lost (click the thumbnails to enlarge)
Long Lost: The Complete Collection will be available this September from Vault Comics
