Blog - November 2007

WARNING: Below is a discourteous profile of what is purported to be a typical zine publisher. In today's highly-devolved charade of tolerance, one should not expect to encounter a public insult of this nature on an obscure website in cyberspace. Normally this sort of thing is reserved for the mainstream news media.

By proceeding you are agreeing you will not be offended by the following graphic image, language, thoughts, or ideas. Side effects may include dizziness, blurred vision, and in rare cases unrestricted backdoor trots. Enjoy!

Zinester

Daughter of Dracula
A new graphic novel, Daughter of Dracula, written by pulpster Ron Fortier and illustrated by Rob Davis has just been released. Described as erotic gothic fiction, the book sports a cover by Mark Maddox and is available for adults only through IndyPlanet. For more background on the project, check out the interview with Fortier and Davis on Comicon. If you'd like to discuss the work with Fortier, he's partnered with ComicRelated.com to create a forum for all of his varied projects, including this one. Check it out here.

Happy Thanksgiving Weekend - try not to get malled during the remainder.

Thanksgiving cartoon
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November 17, 2007
Free Online Shops

When I started looking for a easy way to open an online shop, Dan Taylor told me about a site called eCrater. After reviewing their services, I decided to give them a try and got up and running in short order.

eCrater provides a free online storefront that's hosted on their servers. When you sign up, you choose a store name that sits in front of theirs, in the URL. In other words, yourstore is yourstore.ecrater.com. The service is Web-based so after logging in you manage your store using a Web browser. No other software installation or Web hosting required.

The cost really is free. It's free to sign-up, free to open your store, and sale proceeds are 100% yours. The site offers a PayPal payment option. It's a good idea to provide this, but keep in mind, the PayPal service charges a small percentage of sales to process the transaction.

They also offer Google Checkout for free until the end of 2007. eCrater makes its money by offering Premium services to shop owners.

There are several small press publishers and back issue booksellers with shops on eCrater including:

Rick Bradford's PoopSheet Shop features a huge inventory of back issue mini-comics, zines, original artwork, recent alternative comics, and a Michael Roden benefit area. Rick also sells through an eBay shop.

Dan Taylor's Weird Muse Productions offers new mini comics published under the Weird Muse brand, back issue mini comics, original art, alternative and underground comix, and a Michael Roden benefit area.

Jim Main's Main Enterprises publishes a wide variety of zines for fans of Doc Savage, monster movies, small press artists (Gallery), comic books, weird pulp fiction (Dark Corridor), westerns, and several with original comics (Satyr, Phantascape, PPFSZT!).

Knickknack Factory shop offers comic books, books, magazines, knickknacks, music, and items from several other categories of pop culture and/or collectibles.

One other great feature of eCrater is their close association with Google. When you use Google's Product search results from eCrater shops are automatically included.

If you're looking for an easy-to-open, easy-to-manage online shop check out eCrater. I think it's an excellent choice for small press publishers.

If you like to explore numerous options, here are a few other alternative free/low cost services to visit:
Appee (UK)
Vstore
Esty

Jim Siergey Original Art for Sale
Alternative cartoonist Jim Siergey is back on eBay this week with another great batch of holiday themed original artwork from his comic series with author Tom Roberts: Culture Vultures and Cultural Jet Lag. Plus a nice spot illustration. Get your bid in, these auctions end on Nov. 19!

The Spirit Movie
In case you haven't already heard, The Spirit Movie website is live.

Satyr #7 Now Available
Main Enterprises announced the availability of their new comic anthology magazine Satyr #7. Contributors include: Don Marquez, the late Michael Roden, Bebop, Brien Wayne Powell, Larry Tisch, Jack Bertram, Carl Alessi, Kor Watkins, Dan Taylor, and Dave Farley.

Koky Collected
Ramblehouse publisher Fender Tucker has released two new books collecting the Koky comic strip by Richard O'Brien and Mort Gerberg: The Koky Dailies and The Koky Sundays.

Marcy Musings: Always the Same
Autobio cartoonist Jay Marcy takes a page out of the book of Harvey Pekar, and lets other artists illustrate his true life tales in his newly released 100 page paperback. Featuring Shannon Wheeler, Nelson Danielson, John MacLeod, Joe Meyer and a host of others, Marcy Musings: Always the Same is on sale now at Lulu.com.

Cruse Art Newsletter #3
The third issue of Howard Cruse's newsletter for fans and collectors of his original art was posted this week. Sign up here or download directly here.

Addendum to Last Week's Free PDF Linkage
Once you publish a list of something like free PDF files - as in last week's Blog entry - you're bound to hear about a few others that should've been included. With that in mind, here they are:

Before & After is a wonderful design magazine founded by John McWade. They're offering free PDFs on these topics:
Design a logo of letters
How to cool a hot photo
What's the right typeface for text?
No telling how long these will be available, so get them now! B&A offers subscriptions to their excellent magazine in PDF or print.

Adobe hired Howard Cruse to create some promotional comic pages for the launch of their Creative Suite Two (CS2). Here's a link to view them online. If you look carefully you can also download the whole package as a PDF file. But hurry, CS3 is on the market now, so there's no telling how long these will remain online. Top

November 10, 2007
Free Comics and Pulp Fiction PDFs

Below are links to the free PDF files I've run across over the last several months. (I haven't read every page of these freebies, so use your own content felicitousness detectors when downloading them.)

Comics 101
TwoMorrows Publishing is offering a 16-page PDF with excerpts from their regular titles. It's called Comics 101: How-To & History Lessons From the Pros

Bound By Law
Center for the Study of the Public Domain has released Bound By Law, a comic exploring the impacts of intellectual property on creativity - specifically, documentary film.

Calvin and Hobbes
Revenge of the Baby-Sat is a 295-page collection of Calvin and Hobbes daily and Sunday comic strips.

NBC's Heroes Graphic Novels
There's a list of Heroes graphic novels from season two on Wikipedia with links to download the PDFs.

Free-Comics.org
This site provides links to free online comic books and graphic novels in PDF, JPG, and Flash formats.

Astonishing Adventures Magazine
The first issue of a pulp-inspired collection of twisted tales of adventure and swift justice is yours for the downloading.

Jon Vermilyea
Free PDF files of Jon's latest comics.

Shiznit #1 & 2
Clamnuts offers free copies of their comic Shiznit in PDF.

Comics Comics
Get the second issue of Comics Comics' zine as a free PDF.

Unshelved
Free PDF collection of the online comic strip Unshelved.

Cat Suit
Steve Lafler is still offering a PDF of his wonderful Cat Suit comic.

Gesture Drawing for Animation
The Fatkat Animation Studio blog has a link to a PDF file of the 214 page book Gesture Drawing for Animation by Walt Stanchfield and several other goodies. Just scroll down to the links on the right.

The Dvorak Zine
The Dvorak Zine by Alec Longstreth, Frunch, and GCB.

HardVac.com
The folks at HardVac offer free PDF files of a whole line of comics.

Eats
Wide Awake Press is offering a free PDF of their great comic Eats.

ACA Journal
Yes, on the triple double-u you can even download free copies of the Australian Cartoonists' Association journal.

Thrilling Detective Comics
TDC offers a free PDF of Ron Miller's Velda Girl Detective comic by Raoul Molnar.

Comic News
Free sample copy of The Santa Cruz Comic News, a monthly journal of progressive editorial cartoons.

Rap Sheet
The Small Press Syndicate site offers PDFs of Mini-Comics Blues by Dan Nauenburg and complete issues of the SPS newsletter Rap Sheet on the Club Resources page.

Fearless Frankie
A free comic by Rob Sacchetto overflowing with zombie mayhem.

Other Small Press News
Lastly, the folks that publish the outstanding Hogan's Alley magazine have announced that individual copies of the new issue, #15, are now available for $8 postage paid. A few of the features inside are:
Smokin' in the Comics: A Visual History
The Story of Underdog, Tennessee Tuxedo and Their Forgotten Animation Studio
An interview with Brenda Starr artist June Brigman
Disney's Unmade Epic: Gremlins The Untold Story
Little Lulu: Queen of All Media
An interview with Brewster Rockit creator Tim Rickard
Racial Depictions in Henry
This is a terrific magazine and a great value. You can order, subscribe to their newsletter, and check out the Web Extras on their website.

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November 3, 2007
How to Make a Full Bleed Cover for your Zine

There have been some nice comments about how good the Media Report Comix looks, so I'll use it as an example for how to make a full bleed cover for your zine with crisp edges. Granted this approach is more work than simply folding the stapling, but the end result looks just like a commercially produced book. As long as you're doing this in low volumes, the extra time and effort is manageable.

It's a good idea to make an unprinted "dummy" of your zine before you start the layout. Include the right number of blank sheets, fold it, and then number the pages. Now unfold it and you can easily see how the pages should be Sample page arranged for printing. For example, a 16-page zine, the cover (page 1) and back cover (page 16) are printed on one side of the sheet and page 2 and page 15 are printed on the other side.

Media Report Comix was laid out with InDesign. Since a laser printer has fairly loose front-to-back image registration, the interior pages have generous margins - 1/2" on all sides, including the gutter. A wide margin like this will accommodate a front-to-back image shift of around 1/16" without being obvious.

Trim marks added to cover A laser printer can't print all the way to the edge of the paper, so position all the pages of your book in the center of the page-size you'll be printing on, horizontally and vertically. If you want the cover image to bleed (print right up to the edge of your cover) make sure the image extends 1/4" beyond the final, trimmed size on the top, bottom, and right-side edges. (The left-side is at the fold, so it won't be cut off.) As you're positioning the image also consider what it will look like once that extra 1/4" is trimmed away. You can add trim marks to the cover to make it easier to cut. Use .25 point rules or squares.

When your book is printed, staple it. For most zine it's really handy to have a long reach stapler like this one from Stanley Bostitch ($30). It even has a moveable page stop and ruler to make positioning the staple easier.

Eraser However, a regular stapler works just fine too. You just need one that has a base that pivots back out of the way. Get a block eraser and place it on your tabletop.

Regular stapler

Next position your zine with the staple spot over the eraser. Staple once and then repeat in a second or third spot along the zine's spine. Turn the zine over and fold down the staples tines manually in the centerfold of your book.

Trim the top and bottom Now you're ready to begin the trim. Be sure to use a razor sharp blade. The idea is to repeat the trim cuts as few times as possible to ensure clean edges. However, the thicker the paper and the thicker the zine, the more strokes you'll have to make. Trim the top and the bottom of the zine, but not the sides.

Final trim of the zine Next, fold the zine in half. Take care to ensure the newly trimmed top and bottom edges are square and the fold aligns with the staples. At this point you'll notice the pages on the right side of your zine are all sticking out at slightly different lengths. This is because the distance from the center of the fold varies for each sheet by the thickness of the paper. The center pages stick out the farthest, with each successive sheet receding very slightly. The printing industry jargon for this is "creep" (sometimes called gutter creep or page creep). The thicker the zine, the more creep. Trim the folded zine's right edge. This is the toughest cut as you're now cutting twice the number of pages as you did in the top and bottom cuts.

Final zine Sweet ass sweet - you've now got yourself a small press zine that looks every bit as good as a commercial job!

The frosting on the cake is the paper you print on. You can use standard 20 lb. laser paper, but if you want to take your zine up a notch, use something a little heavier. A glossy paper will provide the most striking print image, but the glossy surface is so shiny it can be hard to read. For me, the best of both worlds is a matte coated paper. I used a Mohawk, matte coated, 100 lb. text for Media Report Comix. Make sure your laser printer is rated to feed the paper weight you buy. A good quality laser printer will also have a paper setting for heavier paper as the fuser has to run at a slightly higher temperature for the best image quality on thicker-than-normal media.

Media Report Comix is available from the Midnight Fiction Shop.

New Zines from Main Enterprises Website

Dark Corridor #1
The first issue of this new horror, fantasy, suspense fiction and illustration publication features Michael Vance's offbeat tales The Zoo and Picked Clean; and Sam Gafford's Showtime! with artwork by Greg Woronchak, Dan W. Taylor, and Sam Gafford. Also inside is an illustrated poem by Brian Osborne and Armando Abeleda; and additional artwork by Larry Johnson, Michael Connolly, and the late Michael Roden. Front cover by Dan W. Taylor, back cover by Roger Foucault. $4.50

Zine of Bronze #3
The third issue of this zine for Doc Savage fans includes fiction by Arthur C. Sippo, MD, PPH; a "What if" speculative piece by Brendan Faulkner; Dennis Kininger's report on the Bantom books continues, photos of Doc collectibles; and Sam Gafford's look at the art of James Bama. Spot illustrations are contributed by Tim Faurote (who also did the cover), Dan W. Taylor, Jack Bertram, and Dave Farley. $4.00

Comic Fan #2
This issue features Dennis Kininger's article on the DC/Vertigo series Fables; Part 1 of the Jerry Bails interview by Lance "Doc" Boucher; Sam Gafford's "Sez Me" column on death in comics; Capt. America collectibles; Jim Main's piece on Jim Aparo; and loads of reviews from Allen Freeman, Caroline Tigress, Matt Levin, Michael Vance, Mark Allen and Dennis Kininger on mainstream, small press, indy and magna comics, plus anime. Plus artwork from Dave Farley, John Lambert, Larry Tisch, Dave Miller, Jack Kirby, Dan Adkins, Greg Moutafis, Rusty Gilligan, Joel Klampert, Tim Stiles, Larry Blake, Dan W. Taylor, and Michael T. Gilbert. $6.25

Jesse Reklaw, Movie Star

Compound Eye is an indie film with Jesse Reklaw (Slow Wave) and a small troupe of Bay Area artisans. You can read more about it and watch the trailer at the Compound Eye Movie website.

Bill Plympton's Idiots and Angels

Bill Plympton's work-in-progress feature-length animated film is Idiots and Angels. The feature's website will be updated in the coming weeks. All the artwork for the film is complete. To watch time-lapse footage of Plympton drawing some of the the artwork for the film, check out the webcam.

A Conversation with UPA's Tee Bosustow

Words & Pictures with hosts Bill Dodge and SW Conser, takes a loving look back at the brilliant and quirky UPA studio (started by Disney strikers after WWII) with animation historian Tee Bosustow. Tee's father Stephen helped found the haven for artists and oddballs, many of whom ended up blacklisted during the McCarthy red scares of the 1950's. Listen online or download the MP3 file here.

Dial P for Pulp

The second edition of David Drage's pulp fiction podcast is now online. It features news, reviews, and readings from and about all things pulpy. Website

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