Chandler: Red Tide

Chandler: Red Tide

Chandler: Red Tide (1976) Painted cover by writer-artist Jim Steranko
Author	Jim Steranko
Illustrator	Jim Steranko
Cover artist	Jim Steranko
Country	United States
Language	English
Series	Fiction Illustrated Vol. 3
Genre	Graphic Novel, Historical Fiction
Publisher	Pyramid Books
Publication date	1976
Media type	Print (paperback)

Chandler: Red Tide is a 1976 illustrated novel, an early form of graphic novel, by writer-artist Jim Steranko.

The digest-sized book combines typeset text with two same-sized illustrations per page, utilizing no word balloons or other traditional comics text conventions. A hard-boiled detective novel in the film noir style, its protagonist is a private detective named Chandler (an homage to author Raymond Chandler) who is hired by a man who claims to have been poisoned by the same people responsible for a notorious gangland slaying. As Chandler tracks down witnesses, each begins to turn up dead.

Packaged by Byron Preiss Visual Publications and published by Pyramid Books, under vice-president Norman Goldfind, in 1976, Chandler was written, drawn, and colored by veteran comics creator Jim Steranko. There is an introduction by crime novelist and former San Francisco private detective Joe Gores, and a foreword by Preiss. The original cover price was one dollar.

Preiss said the book was "created to retail at American newsstands alongside hundreds of other paperback offerings". The mass-market edition (), which Preiss said had a "50,000+ press run", was the third in a series from the publisher, and also known as Fiction Illustrated Vol. 3. (See image at left.) It was supplemented by a separate edition for bookstores that was double the dimensions of the newsstand edition. Steranko, through his company Supergraphics, additionally offered the latter in a limited edition of 750 with a signed and numbered signature plate.