Binding your single-issue comics - making your own trade paperback

[Mladen]

Lets say you've got every issue of a particular series/run, and you've realised its a total pain in the ass to re-read it one day because each issue is in an individual little baggie and you have to read them all one at a time in an unwieldly fashion stacked around you.... I'd rather not spend the 30 bucks for a trade paperback of some comics I already own. This happens to me since I like to re-read my old comics but its ridiculously inconvenient to do so when the issues number above the teens.

I'm not somebody who gets all anal about keeping my comics in pristine mint condition (I like to read not collect), I don't think I'll ever bother trying to resell them since most of them aren't in high demand. To me (maybe not everybody), it sounds worthwhile to try binding them as long as its in a way that doesn't totally trash them or damage the covers.

The process doesn't look too arduous if its a relatively short series (less than 20 issues would be ideal), and is really cheap to do.
You take out the staples in your single-issue comics, and you use the staple holes to stitch them together with thread, which is the standard method of making hardcover books anyway (if you screw up, just break the thread and try again, the comics remain unharmed), and while you're doing that you're also 'stitching' in a band of cloth which connects the issues together. Then you just glue the cloth (not the comic edge) to the inside of a custom cover or whatever (Leatherbound or just some cloth glued over cardboard to make a hardcover).

Viola. You've just made your own custom Trade Paperback/Hardcover for the cost of some thread and bit of cloth, cardboard, and glue as well as a couple of hours actually doing it. If you put together an awesome looking hardcover, it'd look pretty sweet on a shelf (more so than a bunch of bags). Plus the comics aren't actually damaged since the glue isn't touching them, and the thread connecting them is attatched through the staple holes that were there the whole time. Librarians do it all the time with collected journals etc into bigger hardcovers.

This website neatly describes the process in full (its relevent to comic-books starting from the 'sewing' section).

Has anybody tried this themselves, or payed for a professional to bind their single comic books? It sounds worthwhile to me, I'm going to try it with some Crossgen titles... thoughts?

 

[Darthphere]

Ask JewishHobbit if he's still around.

 

[Elijya]

Jewish Hobbit has done this several times. He might pop in.

A professional looking binding will cost you more than a trade paperback will. I dunno about doing it at home, but it's not something I'd personally do.

 

[SouLeSS]

Doing it at home seems like a LOT of work the way the website explained. Like, wayyyyy to much work than it would be to spend 14.95 on a trade, or 19.99 on a digest.

 

[Steve Rogers]

How lazy have we become when taking a comic book out of a plastic baggie is too much of a pain in the ass?

 

[Elijya]

You know it's not that simple. Between parts and labor, the trades are cheaper.

Say an average tpb is $14.99-$19.99 with six issues a piece. Most comics are $2.99 these days, making some trades a bargain before we even get started. And even if you're a reader and not a collector as you say, what if the comics you want in a single volume go for $10 a piece or more as back issues? The only way it would be cheaper is if you get the issues at discount, buying them in cheap lots on ebay or in quarter bins, and that kind of limits your selection

 

[SouLeSS]

Well it depends on how you store your books. A friend of mine never cared about the condition of his books, so he just threw them all in a huge box, in different stacks. One stack for SIlver Surfer, one for Hulk, one for spiderman, so on and so forth.

Was kinda a shame too because he had the full first run of Silver Surver, but it's in absolutely terrible condition.

He randomly just grabs a stack and reads them. But then theres people like I am, where I have 6 or so longboxes that are stacked up with books bagged/boarded in them all catorgorized and put in order. It's a pain in the ass for me to read backissues, but then again, I hardly ever do, and the ones I do wanna read I have in trade form just for that reason.

 

[Darthphere]

You know it's not that simple. Between parts and labor, the trades are cheaper.

Say an average tpb is $14.99-$19.99 with six issues a piece. Most comics are $2.99 these days, making some trades a bargain before we even get started. And even if you're a reader and not a collector as you say, what if the comics you want in a single volume go for $10 a piece or more as back issues? The only way it would be cheaper is if you get the issues at discount, buying them in cheap lots on ebay or in quarter bins, and that kind of limits your selection

Also, the paper quality is a lot better in a TPB or Hardcover than in regular comic.

 

[trustyside-kick]

I've been debating about doing that with some of my comics. But I'm not sure where I would go to get this done. I'd rather pay someone to do it than risk myself messing it up horribly.

 

[SouLeSS]

That's when you take random books that you buy for one reason or another, or a run that you started but quit because it sucked.

You know, like Fantastic Four A Death In The Family, or Wonder Woman (current) 1-4...I'd never ever care if those got caught in a fire, so using them as test subjects would be just as well.

 

[trustyside-kick]

But, does anyone know where I can go to get them done at in the Houston, TX area?

 

[Red Mask]

For me, it's an exercise in craft. I like bookbinding as a hobby. I also don't like the cover designs of today's collections. In the old days new cover art would be done i.e. Asgardian Wars, Longshot, X-Men: From the Ashes. Now you're more likely to see one of the covers re-laid for the front. I usually choose issues I know I can't re-sell for profit. Or those that are more fun to bind.

Right now I'm planning to bind Green Arrow #16-21. I found the official hardcover too simple. So I've chosen a bright green book cloth. And I'm planning to lay out the covers into one accordian fold for the start.

I could bind the "Sound of Violence" storyline but it has an odd number of signatures involved.

 

[Not Jake]

But...these bound comics still have the ads and stuff. Seems silly. And kind of garage sale. Yeah, it's totally garage sale

 

[SouLeSS]

The only time I'd ever seriously consider doing this is if it was for a huge arching storyline that wasn't in trade form that crossed several books.


Like for instance if War Crimes didn't have TPB's that were done right, I'd consider buying extra copies of all the issues to make it into my own book.

 

[Red Mask]

But...these bound comics still have the ads and stuff. Seems silly. And kind of garage sale. Yeah, it's totally garage sale

Yeah, I noticed. So the official collected editions will probably be worth more money than the serial prints, right? Thus, it's an exercise in craft for me to bind them.

 

[trustyside-kick]

Well, I really do think it depends on the comic. Not every comic gets made into TPBs. And if it is a mini that never gets put in a trade, that makes sense of course as well. Course, I just don't know where I could get it professionally done.

 

[JewishHobbit]

I've had three volumes made thus far and I love them. In fact, I'll be sending out for more here in a few weeks. My suggestion is to have them professionally done. I've seen end results of prof. and do it yourselfers and the 'do it yourselfers' always leave something to be desired. I spent a lot of time looking at prof. binders and they are mostly very expensive, but then I found a place called The Library Binding Company and they are very affordable. It's $15 per volume (if the volume goes over 2 inches thick it's a bit more expensive. You can get around 25 to 30 issues in a 2 inch volume but you may want to consider less to minimize art loss in the spine). They have a minimum cost though (around $30 I think) per order, so you'd have to send out for 2 volumes to be made. You also have to pay for the price of return shipping. The 3 volumes I made cost about $60 to have them made and to pay for them to be shipped back to me.

A forum for comic book binding

Some examples of my stuff:

 

[Mladen]

I know that considering parts labor etc that a professional binding will cost me more than a trade. However, there's the nostalgia value as well of actually reading your original comics that you bought years ago. I've got a lot of alternate publisher stuff who've since gone bankrupt and the trades are now hard to come by or were rush-jobs and poorly put together anyway. and its hard to argue against the fact that Jewish-Hobbit's Spidey volumes look excellent on a shelf. If I could pull that sort of quality off myself (except for the gold-leaf text, which I have no idea how I'd do at home...) there'd be the added pride of having done it yourself.

JewishHobbit, maybe you're right about getting them professionally done, but I like a craft challenge so I'm going to test it out on a stack of one dollar comics at some point. That and I'm going to ask my university library where they get their books bound, I'm sure they could suggest me somebody who does theirs (I'm in Australia, so a binder based in the US isn't really pheasible for me considering postage costs).

Trusty-sidekick, try asking a university librarian there? I'm sure they have somebody local, who hopefully wouldn't charge you a lot.

Red Mask, the Green-covered Green Arrow binding sounds gorgeous. do you have any photos of the results of your own labors? I'd like to see how they turned out?

 

[Mladen]

Of interest:
Here they've bound 4 tpb together into one volume. That frankly sounds awesome, considering so many tpbs these days are really thin. Redundant? Maybe... But check out the cool printed cover on the volume.

http://p206.ezboard.com/fmarvelmasterworksfansitefrm10.showMessage?topicID=272.topic

 

[trustyside-kick]

I guess I could. The comics I was debating about doing this for are my older Aquaman comics. He only has a few trades out there, but aside from that I'd want to have certain comics like The Atlantean Chronicles to be in a hardback book.

Price isn't an issue for me.

 

[Mladen]

Price isn't an issue for me.

There is no price on nostalgia

 

[Not Jake]

I'll give you 10 billion dollars for it.

 

[Red Mask]

Red Mask, the Green-covered Green Arrow binding sounds gorgeous. do you have any photos of the results of your own labors? I'd like to see how they turned out?

I'm in the middle of job interviews now. So I have to put this project on hold. I do plan to photograph my progress.

 

[Red Mask]

I think I'll bind the Fallen Son mini-series. I was disappointed that they used the Civil War one-shot cover instead of the style of the original five covers. I'll also be adding the 2nd reprint of the death of Cap because it shares the same layout as the black covers. And it will allow the reader to actually see how he died before reading Fallen Son. So that's six issues total. Another accordian fold cover gallery, it will have the death scene cover as a start, then end with the shrouded body cover. Luckily I still have enough black book cloth for the job.

 

[Mandi-chan]

I think this is a very interesting idea, I didn't know you could even do this!Those prof. ones look great, I might consider this for my shorter series collections.