Beginners Guide to Custom Comic Book Hardcovers 

Very happy to hear it helped!

Very happy to hear it!

Thanks so much!

@@thecomicarchiveNo problem. I'm expecting about 12 custom binds from Houchen soon. Would love to come on and do a video with you.

@@thecomicarchive i had no idea Comic binding is a form of art 🙏🏻

instablaster...

Awesome! Glad to hear it. What’s your favorite bind that you’ve gotten done?

@@thecomicarchive I still haven't done one yet. Recently I've considered hunting down Shade, the Changing Man and doing a bind for it.

Thanks so much!

I’ve bound magazines as well and it’s a great way to preserve them and leave them readable.

I’ve tried to do things kind of half way between what you described. Like for a JLA bind I usually did more than one arc in a book but tried to break things up in a somewhat natural place. The volumes didn’t match size perfectly but they are close enough that it doesn’t bother me.

I think that using the base options you’re looking at about $25 from most binderies.

Absolutely! In fact that’s most of the books that go through Houchen have done. They do a lot of binding for schools trying to extend the life of their books.

Oh absolutely. I have some that are as short as 10 issues.

I haven’t ever broken up a book page by page. If you want stuff reordered or if you want certain bits taken out many binderies ask that you do that before you send in the books. Houchen does do graphic covers and dust jackets. You can design them yourself, have Houchen do that, or hire a third party to design.

I think volume. 1 of those invincible compendiums is getting really hard to find. This would be a pretty good way of getting that in hardcover. Plus you could add in stuff that wasn’t included. I know that some folks have added in the spin offs and making exceptionally complete invincible sets.

Thanks so much! As far as printing technically yes, as you can bind pretty much anything on paper. Just be ready for the cost, high quality printing can quickly rack up the bill.

@@thecomicarchive Thank you, I'll keep that in mind in my search.

@@thecomicarchive Are there binders who accept Paypal?

I don’t know a full run down but I have paid for binding at Herring & Robinson with PayPal.

It’s possible. I have a couple of books where I mix them together. The only thing to keep in mind is that sometimes the paper size can be a little different between collections and single issues.

If you want them to be cleaned up a little then definitely have the binder trim the edges. It will make everything clean and uniform. They take off a very small amount and it should effect the reading experience. I personally go for fine to VF copies and have them trimmed when I bind single issues.

@@thecomicarchive thanks! Do you have a binding method preference?

I personally love smyth sewn binding as it allows the pages to open fully. But if you are using trade paperbacks you’ll need to use glue binding such as dfab. If you don’t mind a little gutter loss I know a lot of people prefer glue binding because you can bind more issues together and remove ads.

@@thecomicarchive thanks!

I don’t see any reason why it wouldn’t work. Binderies have a lot of experience preserving books by upgrading them from soft to hard covers. They do it a lot for libraries. I’m not sure if they do the embossing like are on those dark horse books, but there’s still plenty of fancy things that can be done.

@@thecomicarchive glad to hear it’s possible as I have a good amount I’d like to turn into omnibus like “I am a hero” so I appreciate it

Another question would be, if there was a comic or manga that never made its way to the west but found the scans online, how can I get it printed on decent paper or is there a company that can do it for me?

There aren’t any companies I know of that will do that for you because of issues of legality. From what I’ve heard these ventures are fairly expensive to pull off, though I haven’t looked into them very much.

@@thecomicarchive Yeah, that’s understandable seems I’ll have to explore that side in the future haha. But overall thanks for answering my questions!

I’ve done both. For a long time I was really into not having mine trimmed for the same reason. But lately I’ve been getting them trimmed because there wasn’t too much lost and it feels really nice in the hand.

@@thecomicarchive I'm currently working on collecting all 36 issues of the maxx. Planning on binding two books out of them.

That’s awesome. I love the Maxx. I had my issues bound a while back. They were trimmed and I think it turned out great.

@@thecomicarchive that's awesome, I wish I could see your maxx binds

I don’t but I know that a lot of people do. I would check with whichever binder you are working with what they prefer.

Binding your comics does ruin them. They're essentially worthless afterwards. Why sweat a staple?

I mean I’ve seen plenty of custom hardcovers sell for good money on eBay. But you’re right that if you have a valuable comic I wouldn’t bind it. Custom hardcovers are more about making a book you’re going to read over and over and I’m not reading my amazing Spider-Man 298 over and over again.

The Comic Archive I wanna know what type of binding works best for the square bound comics, because I’m buying up doubles of all the Appleseed comics that I can find and bound it into a omnibus set.

Alex Braun you have two options, glue or oversewn. The glue you’ll use will be either DFAB or PUR. PUR is really for when the comics have a glossy finish on the cover. Oversewn will also work and is super durable. Really up to you as both options are great.

They do all sorts of sizes. I think they have a surcharge for books above a certain size, but obviously in the case of manga that isn’t a problem. I’ve gotten that size bound before myself and it’s not a problem for them.

@@thecomicarchive sweet, that means I now know what the first book I'm going to get behind is going to be, it's going to be the obscure manga series Dinosaur King based on the trading card game of the same name, it only had two volumes released and has some truly excellent art, and since I already have the two volumes I can start prep work and then send it in, although I gotta make sure I put everything together right and get it bound the right way, that may be a bit tricky cause it can be easy to mess something up with something like this I imagine, also do you have I recommendation on the kind of mind I should use on this project, I'm thinking defab but I'm all new to this so I'm not sure

I think for manga you are going to want to use dfab glue binding. If the cover is glossy switch to PUR glue.

@@thecomicarchive awesome thank you so much, I'll go with dfab for this project then and hopefully get it done in the near future, thank you a tone for the help

@@helious5056 how did it go?

The most I’ve gotten was five trades in one book for Transmetropolitan. The best way to think about it, since issue count and paper quality have such an impact, is the thickness in inches. The biggest one I’ve done is about 2.3”.

They’ve been good on the books I have. Probably varies a little from binder to binder. They aren’t as flexible as a sewn binding but you still get a nice one.

@@thecomicarchive ok I was curious because I was on the houchen site and it says that the oversewn doesn't lay as flat and has more gutter loss than the glued which is pretty much the opposite of what ive read elsewhere

It’s important to note that oversewn and smyth sewn are really different. Oversewn is pretty close to glue binding. Smyth sewn is what is used for omnibuses that marvel and dc put out. Smyth sewn opens the most and has basically zero gutter loss. Any type of glue binding, as well as oversewn, do have gutter loss and in my experience they are pretty similar in the amount. Neither glue bindings or oversewn will lay flat.

To be honest I’m not sure. You can reach out to them easily to find out.

Good for you buddy