Comic Book Binding - a New Way to Read Old Comics

I've collected comic books off and on for almost 30 years. You would think that means I have all these great books I can retire off of. Unfortunately, the comic glut of the 80's and 90's really produced an amount of overprinted books, and with so few people buying the actual issues anymore, there are still plenty of back issues to go around. Many collectors' that do still enjoy reading comics have gravitated toward the hardcover collected edition, or trade paperback. I too fall into this category now. Many young people have gravitated toward manga.

I decided I wanted to have my cake and eat it too. I have 8 boxes of comics, many of which are titles I really like yet have never been collected into a trade paperback or collection of any sort. One of the interesting side effects of going through this collection was to make the decision to go with a project I've been debating on for almost 3 years, and that was comic book binding, to create bound volumes of my comic collection.

Comic binding is not necessarily a new idea, in fact the average person can see any amount of periodicals bound at their local library, but the overall collector mentality of many still tends to lean towards keeping every comic book hermetically sealed when not being read in the hopes they will someday make great profit. I don't work that way anymore. I've returned to the essence that comics are disposable entertainment just like any other magazine, with the exception that they retain an amount of re-readability.

This is where comic binding comes in. There are many binderies with various price ranges, but for my first four books, I went with the highly recommended Library Binding business in Waco, TX. It cost me only $15 a book to get these titles done. Just to have some great storylines in a more concise format rather than fish them out of boxes was worth it alone. I went absolutely no frills with standard lettering and I still think they came out fantastic. The lining up of the panel lines with the publisher came out nice and I experimented with various color combinations for the lettering and the buckram covers, as well as lettering placement.

This means I can now have series or story arcs bound together and put them on the shelf right next to my mass produced trade paperbacks and graphic novels. There are some really great resources for comic binding ideas in various places, and as I experiment with my own collections, I would love to create a "how-to" guide for specific titles and what I did to achieve it.