Comic Book Binding

[JoeGuy]

I was asking for advice and feedback on and off throughout last year on some custom binds.
I finally got them back today. The custom binds were done by Hollingworth & Moss in Leeds, UK.

There are a total of 8 books, so the posts and pictures would need to take up a whole page honestly.
I'm going to post them over 3 days, starting today, to avoid the first ones getting buried.

So, I get to start with the 2 Superman books today, which I easily asked the most advice about.
They were done with a mix of trades & single issues. As many ads / back covers were removed as possible.

These are the front covers.




These are the spines.




And these are the back covers.



They are monsters. These books are mapped chronologically, from Byrne's Man of Steel up to Action Comics 1000.
There was no way to fit all that in two books, so it had to be key storylines, moments, milestones etc.

[JoeGuy]

To make the story flow and work, I took some advice and added explainer pages or recaps.

So, for example you can see the Golden Age, Bronze Age & Silver Age got recap pages, while
some series were too important, like Death and Return or Infinite Crisis, so those pages tell you when to take a break and read them.




The events that were more specific to Superman got pages like this.




While big DC Events got more elaborate pages like this.

[JoeGuy]

Volume 1 starts out with a mix of Secret Origins and Man of Steel.
They work great together if you remove one page from Man of Steel #2.

You can see the Credits and Table of Contents here for the books mapping.



Storylines like Eradication, Death & Return, Our Worlds at War, Identity Crisis, Infinite Crisis, Final Crisis, New Krypton
etc. couldn't fit and got recaps or suggestions at the right moment to read them.

For things such as Lois and Clark marrying, I tried to condense it, without missing the big stuff.
So, Lois finding out his secret identity in AC #662, his proposal in Sup' #53, Lois' quest to come to terms with marrying Superman in Sup' #118 and the Wedding Album issue etc are in there.

Otherwise it was about capturing his major moments. His relationship with Batman, his exposure to Kryptonite,
his decision to kill Kryptonians in Exile, his major villains and their best arcs, losing his powers and the reintroduction of Kara to continuity etc.


Volume 2 follows in the events of Flashpoint, so we have some New 52 stories.
It's mostly just recaps and Men of Tomorrow, until we get to Convergence and the birth of Jon Kent.

You can see the Credits and Table of Contents here for the books mapping.



Stuff like Flashpoint, H'el on Earth, Rebirth and Dark Nights Metal etc. couldn't fit and got recaps or suggestions at the right moment to read them.

After Convergence, you follow the Clark family (OG Superman) and the 'death' of New 52 Superman.
There's a solid chunk of Rebirth stories, the continuity fixes with Reborn and we end with AC #1000.

[JoeGuy]

I get to post 4 more books today. These were the most straightforward of the 8 books.

The first 2 are for Batman.

These are the front covers.




These are the spines + an example of the Table of Contents Pages.




And these are the back covers.




They aren't as ridiculously huge as the Superman books. They collect all the non-DC, publisher
crossovers between Batman and other characters, in 15-year chunks.

[JoeGuy]

The following 2 are for Hellboy.

These are the front covers.




These are the spines + an example of the Credits Pages.




And these are the back covers.




The release of the paperback omni's really made the mapping easy.
I just concentrated on making the books look as accurate and legitimate as possible.

[Raffi Ol D'Arcy]

@JoeGuy, very cool books! Great job.

[northjason]

Really nice!

[JoeGuy]

@Raffi @noethjason

Thanks

The final 2 books I had custom bound were Spider-Man books.
Which are actually my first Marvel custom binds.

These are the front covers.




These are the spines.




And these are the back covers.

[JoeGuy]

The Superior Spider-Man volume was definitely the more straightforward of the 2.
It starts out as you'd expect and follows chronologically until the end of the 2018 series.

You can see the Credits and Table of Contents here for the books mapping.




The only difficult part was fitting in the team-up titles, which absolutely break the flow and make no sense if you just map it by release.
So, I had to smooth out the mapping slightly to time the team-up stories to just before or after certain events.


The Spider-Verse story was a bit more complicated if I'm being honest.
The story spans all of Spider-verse, The Clone Conspiracy and Spider-geddon.

You can see the Credits and Table of Contents here for the books mapping.




Fitting all the tie-ins, event issues etc. took some smoothing over and it wasn't possible to just break up trade-paperbacks and map it out.
Many times, the final pages were on the back of a different issue's cover page, which also wasn't the next issue chronologically.
So, I had to create nearly 30 double-sided custom pages for orphaned pages or covers.

[Petrus7]

The Superior Spider-Man volume was definitely the more straightforward of the 2.
It starts out as you'd expect and follows chronologically until the end of the 2018 series.

You can see the Credits and Table of Contents here for the books mapping.




The only difficult part was fitting in the team-up titles, which absolutely break the flow and make no sense if you just map it by release.
So, I had to smooth out the mapping slightly to time the team-up stories to just before or after certain events.


The Spider-Verse story was a bit more complicated if I'm being honest.
The story spans all of Spider-verse, The Clone Conspiracy and Spider-geddon.

You can see the Credits and Table of Contents here for the books mapping.




Fitting all the tie-ins, event issues etc. took some smoothing over and it wasn't possible to just break up trade-paperbacks and map it out.
Many times, the final pages were on the back of a different issue's cover page, which also wasn't the next issue chronologically.
So, I had to create nearly 30 double-sided custom pages for orphaned pages or covers.

An amazing project. It is clear to me that it is a passion project. If may I ask. How much did you pay for one book? I checked the website you mentioned about, but I would be grateful for approx. cost of one book.

[JoeGuy]

An amazing project. It is clear to me that it is a passion project. If may I ask. How much did you pay for one book? I checked the website you mentioned about, but I would be grateful for approx. cost of one book.

Sure. I basically pick everything except a dust jacket, so graphic cover, ribbon, head/tail bands, at least 4 content pages, end pages etc. Which works out at just about £30/€35

The only thing that swings the price is shipping. If you only get 1 book done that's possibly ~£12 each way. But it's still £12 if you send 3 books. So my attitude is to get at least 3 done at a time to offset the shipping.

I got way more than 4 content pages on average and shipped 8 books, so realistically it was closer to £42/€50 with shipping both ways.

[Petrus7]

Sure. I basically pick everything except a dust jacket, so graphic cover, ribbon, head/tail bands, at least 4 content pages, end pages etc. Which works out at just about £30/€35

The only thing that swings the price is shipping. If you only get 1 book done that's possibly ~£12 each way. But it's still £12 if you send 3 books. So my attitude is to get at least 3 done at a time to offset the shipping.

I got way more than 4 content pages on average and shipped 8 books, so realistically it was closer to £42/€50 with shipping both ways.

Thank you. The pricing is very reasonable. Which type of binding did you choose? Thank you in advance

[JoeGuy]

I tried both glued and oversewn. The ones in the picture are oversewn.

I like the oversewn better, the pages lay flatter and the spine looks nice with the curve.

[Gotham Thrasher]

Congrats Joe ...those turned out real nice! First time seeing art on cover books from Hollingsworth and moss...hope you get a chance to re - read them soon!

[JoeGuy]

Congrats Joe ...those turned out real nice! First time seeing art on cover books from Hollingsworth and moss...hope you get a chance to re - read them soon!

Thank you.