Sunday, January 13, 2013

Comic Book Binding Update 1/13/12

Got the call the weekend before Christmas that my books were done and ready to be picked up. So, Gage and I decided to head up to Herring & Robertson the day after Christmas. All I had ready to get bound was my Curse of the Spawn run, so with that we made the trip up to Brisbane in the rain.

The binding for Ascension was at first a little odd with the tan with red lettering, but it grew on me the more I looked it over. This binding was the easiest, out of all the stuff I brought down, to acquire the single issues for. There were some things I  did leave out: a few variant covers and sketch versions of certain issues, but overall I think this binding will look good on my self and stand out enough to make people take a second look when they see it. I'm just looking forward to reading a book with some of David Finch's amazing early art work.


The Crimson binding came out nicely. Black with red lettering, and a nice blood red book mark really added to the whole look of the volume. I was really excited when I saw how nicely the black blank pages looked too. I know a lot of people just get everything bound in black, but I prefer to have a cover color reflect the title inside. This binding definitely fits that.

Something I found that was cool about this binding was the fact that the first issue inside has Huberto Ramos's signature, so when you open the book it feels like the creator gave a stamp of approval.

There are a few things I learned from this binding:

1) Glue the variant covers together if you can to avoid repeating the back of the cover page, but you could also just print up the covers you can't find and include them in the back like a cover gallery.
2) Preview, prelude, 1/2 issues, and specials are sometimes tricky to find spots for so do research.

I'm happy with this bind and I can't wait to see how well I did with the ordering of the titles. Fingers are crossed.


My fingers are also crossed for my first multi-volume comic binding of the 1990's Guardians of the Galaxy. This series was a tough one to put in order due to the fact that a cross over happens at the end of the first volume, the team jumps around in time and some things just didn't seem to add up when I attempted to put them in order.

I did my research on this one and even double checked my mapping to be sure. Well now I have it and despite the different sizes of each volume I'm happy with how these books came out

The most important thing I can recommend to anyone working on muli-volume bindings is do the research. There are literally millions of comics out there and even though your little book might be a very small portion there might be something you miss.
With Guardians of the Galaxy there were a few appearances that warranted being in this collection. In addition there was a spin off mini series that was associated with this run, which I would have missed out on if a friend hadn't mentioned it to me.

I also tried putting a table of contents in with this binding and it came out nicely. My table of content layout skills will hopefully improve with other volumes, but it does help to let people know what is exactly in each volume.


I think overall I am happy with how all of my bindings turned out. Now the bigger question that is looming over me is how well I did on the mapping and ordering of the comics inside each volume. I'll just have to dive in and get to reading to find this out.

11 comments:

  1. I think that the Crimson book looks really nice. The more you post pics of your bound editions, the more I want to give it a try.

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  2. As it seems like the Savage Dragon HC will never be released, I would start with my Dragon collection. I've got some B&W books from my early days of collecting (Cat & Mouse, The Realm) that I'd also love to have bound. Recently, I think that it would be fun to put together a run of books from the DnA cosmic days (Annihilation, Nova, GotG, etc.).

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    1. I've been tempted to do a Savage Dragon bind too, but that one would take some digging since I haven't collected a lot of the issues. I would wait on the DnA Annihilation, Nova, GotG binds. With GotG coming to the big screen I think Marvel (aka Disney) will put out some nice hard covers or omnibuses of that stuff.

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    2. I'd also be tempted to have some my favorite Crossgen series bound - Negation & Scion being at the top of that list.

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    3. I would say go for those, but I don't know if Herring and Robinson has a Crossgen logo custom die. You might have to check that out first.

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  3. Dude I think you've got a problem. J/K, this is the geekiest radest thing going.

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  4. You don't find that with such fat-ass bindings it doesn't interfere with being able to see/read the art towards the spine?

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    1. As with all larger bindings you do lose a bit towards the spine, but it only really causes problems with splash pages. It doesn't bother me that much, because the whole binding takes up less space that the books do as singles.

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  5. This indicates that the comic books business is booming where various industries such as Marvel and DC comics have made their millions. All the services in the world are going digital eradicating the need for comic fans to access shops to read the books. old marvel comics

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