Original Art Sundays No. 225: Table of Contents Designs

Wow, what a rough couple months! Working two FT jobs and preparing to move!
I have a little time to breathe now. No comic work to speak of to post (about 10 or so pages in the rough stage, too crude for public consumption). I'm working on a large work, ideally to be funded by the Faculty Support Grant at the art college where I continue to teach as an adjunct.
Meanwhile, I've been working on binds- preparing some comic books to be sent out to be turned into hardcover books. The end result can be quite satisfying. I've been designing some Tables of Contents to go along with the books, and I'd like to offer some now.

 Night Force is a book I've been wanting to collect for some time now. Very smart horror title, it had its third incarnation a couple years ago, but the original run by Marv Wolfman and Gene Colan will never be eclipsed. Since the logo has that big blocky style, I opted to keep the text centered and use only a small support illustration. There will be a full page B & W illustration facing the title page.
When planning these, it's important to allow for trim. Most comic binds are trimmed by the binder (at the option of the person placing the order, of course!), which means one can lose any text or image that crowds the border. I have a clean printout of this, and I'm reasonably certain I've given it enough air.
The central character, Baron Winters, made a couple small appearances in other titles, but since this book is already 35 issues thick (about 10 over standard), I decided to omit them. Is it cheating to call it an Omnibus then? Perhaps so, but it's my book!


The Roger Rabbit Table of Contents was just fun! Here, the image was more important than the credits, so I opted for simple listing of the titles involved. Again, there were editorial decisions as to what got included. I could have scanned and reprinted the graphic novels Return of Doom and Tummy Trouble at comic book size, along with the handful of Roger Rabbit stories that ran in Disney Adventure Digest, but it seemed counterproductive. I went with what we call a "straight bind" of just the two primary titles. Taking the masthead from the letters pages in the main title, and the dancing image from one of the stories, the layout suggested itself easily.

This is a book I've been working on for years. It won't be a particularly thick book, only about 4 or 5 issues worth of material, but it's a very important book to me. The Scarecrow of 
Romney Marsh has fascinated me ever since I first saw him on Disney's Sunday night show (which aired the same day the Beatles first appeared on Ed Sullivan!). I stumbled on the Blevins comics in Disney Adventure Digest, took about three years to find them all, and through a friend who attended a con where Blevins was appearing, commissioned a Scarecrow piece, which is used here as the primary illustration.
This will be a gilt-edged book with custom art on the cover. It will be housed in a shadow box, which will also contain a DVD case, which will hold the Disney Scarecrow films, the Hammer film Night Creatures (another take on the character) and a CD of music from the TV episodes. I have this one about 2/3 of the way ready to bind.
My mad plan is to send a bunch of these out in the next couple weeks, so the finished binds arrive at my new place, making one less box to pack. I currently have 12 books I'm almost ready to send out, including Night Force and Roger Rabbit. The ideal is that one replaces a library of difficult to file and manage floppies with a handsome library of bound editions!
Next: sketchbook work or finished pages...

Best Comics of 2014, No. 6 : Serenity: Leaves on the Wind

Running behind my self-imposed schedule, as I'm prone to do, but we persevere!
Today's entry is a reprint of my review from Goodreads, with a couple points expanded and some cool images thrown in.

Cover art for issue 1, without copy

When I see a Star Trek film, even the embarrassing ones,I feel like I'm revisiting old friends (hey, your friends can embarrass you and still be your friends). Yeah, I know it's fiction, but there's a level of familiarity and comfort that welcomes me into the story.
Multiply that by 10 for this book.
If anything, Serenity: Leaves on the Wind is more meaningful in that respect. We get to catch up with the lives of characters we've grown to appreciate and care for, characters we've not seen for a while, in a well-written story that's completely consistent with both on screen and in print predecessors. Kudos to Zack Whedon for carrying on Joss's story!
The art is tight yet fluid, and integrates well with the text.
The story actually began in Dark Horse's 2012 Free Comic Book Day flipbook. The Serenity side was titled "It's Never Easy" and featured a prequel to the events in Leaves on the Wind, including showing Zoe's pregnancy. The prequel art, by the very talented Fabio Moon, is consistent with Georges Jeanty's work on the miniseries proper, though I find Moon's work a bit more quiety aggressive (if that makes sense). I've included representative pages of both in this article. You be the judge!

Moon's art on the FCBD issue

However, from the standpoint of comic binding, this series is somewhat frustrating. Some of Dark Horse's best stories in the Firefly/Serenity arena are only available in small hardcovers. This means they can't be rebound without gutting the book.
But that's a minor concern for most folks. Serenity: Leaves on the Wind is a remarkable achievement. It's touching and tender, action driven and philosophical. It's consistent with its source material while being fresh and new.
My one regret is that Inara is not in this story. We learned during the reunion special that, as many of us suspected, Inara has a fatal disease. In pre-press for this series, Whedon said that was a story that would be told another time. I hope so, as I'd like to see more, but only under the right conditions.
After completing this miniseries, I'm torn on hoping for more. I'd rather see measured doses of quality stories than a glut of mediocrity. As long as they're of this quality, I'll take as many as I can get, but the quality has to come first. If that means we have to wait a while, so be it. I waited months between the final two issues of Watchmen. I can wait for this if I have to, despite my eagerness to learn Inara's fate.

Continuity page from issue 2, spotlighting
Jayne's character

Variant cover for issue 1

Note on reading and process: I read this as floppies, not as a trade. While it may pose frustrations for some, I recommend this approach for Firefly/Serenity material. It feels more like watching new episodes, and having to wait to find out what happens is exciting!
It's worth noting that a hardcover was released in November 2014, for those of you who prefer to read it all in one fell swoop!
Next: Best of 2014, No. 5, as the Doctor is in... sort of...

In a bind with the Aztec

I've been exploring the possibility of having some of my comics hardbound as a step towards honing my collection.
One of the titles I've been looking at is the 1980s Eclipse book Aztec Ace. Good writing, precise and ornate art, and just a smart, fun read.
Here's the Table of Contents I've worked up for the book.

Basically happy with the work. I think the text crowds the logo just a tad, and the logo masking is iffy in a couple places. But as long as it prints clean, we're golden.

And so is Ace!

ADDENDUM, A DAY LATER:

One of the comic covers is damaged and needs replacing. It will only cost a dollar or so, but I don't have time to run around for it today, so the bind is postponed yet again. Insert growling noise of frustration here!