Have you ever wondered how a comic book is actually made? We're not talking about the writing or art process. We're talking about the actual physical production of a comic at a printing press. Visions of shows or movies involving newspapers might come to mind and it seems it is kind of similar to that.
LANTERN CITY #1 is on sale this week. Created by Trevor Crafts and co-created by Matthew Daley and Bruce Boxleitner, it's a story set in an original Steampunk world.
Sander Jorve just wants to keep his wife and son safe. Living in the brutalized lower class of Lantern City means living in near constant darkness, the enormous walls of the city always looming overhead, while the upper class enjoys the elevated, interconnected towers and airships above. When Sander’s brother-in-law, the persuasive activist Kendal, convinces him to infiltrate the brutal ranks of the Guard, he’s set on a dangerous path that will test his abilities and beliefs, all in the name of making a difference for his family and his caste.
The comic is on sale this week, May 13. It's co-written by Paul Jenkins and Matthew Daley with art by Carlos Magno.
Matthew Daley and Trevor Crafts visited the printing press to watch their comic get printed, bound, and packaged. If you've ever wanted to see what it was actually like, check out this video produced by Archaia and BOOM! Studios. You can also watch the videos (and future installments) on VIMEO.
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Matthew shared his thoughts on the experience and took a bunch of pictures.
Ink Hits Paper - Matthew Daley
When Filip Sablik, President of Publishing and Marketing at BOOM! Studios, pitched the idea that Trevor Crafts and I could travel to Richmond, VA to watch LANTERN CITY #1 come off the presses, we were thrilled at the possibility, but didn’t really know what we would see there. I expected that we’d find ourselves in a boutique printing press where someone would open up a file, press print, and after a few minutes, an assembled comic book would magically appear.
Not. Even. Close.
We walked through the front doors of Cenveo, just after 7:00am on Tuesday, April 28th. Cenveo is a bustling printer that works around the clock to produce magazines, journals, catalogs, and comic books. Lots and lots of comic books. Under the banner Comic Focus Factory, they print more than one million individual comic books each month from BOOM! and other publishers.
I figured that we’d arrive just around the same time as the employees, but we walked into a massive, fully engaged work floor that was brimming with stacked boxes. Employees were busy with individual tasks: pulling assembled comic books off of the archaic-looking machine that places the cover on, trims the edges, and staples it together; packaging comic books into boxes; labeling the boxes; organizing the boxes into regional shipment areas.
The factory is enormous, what felt like a few city blocks in total. The printing of the interior pages happens in a world of its own. The printing press, which can print 20,000 issues in less than 30 minutes, is straight out of a Stanley Kubrick film. Rolls of paper, weighing over two tons, are loaded by machine to one end of the press, then the paper is fed through at breakneck pace, passing through four different inks: Cyan, Magenta, Yellow, and Black, finding the perfect balance to match the incredible work of our colorist Chris Blythe. The color combinations are all determined by computer, and that station looks like a music engineer’s console. The paper rips through the different inks and then goes through a heater that keeps a constant temperature of 350 degrees. All the while the comic book is in one endless sheet of paper, not looking like a comic book at all. The paper is then sent upward and along a path that eventually feeds it through to an enclosed section that folds and cuts the paper into what is a recognizable form, though not a perfect interior—the edges are long and uncut; to read the issue, you would need a pair of scissors. Those individual books are carried along and dropped into a device that packages them into bundles and prepares them for the final stage. The paper travels a few hundred feet from when it begins on the roll to when it ends up in the bundle—and it only takes a few seconds.
The printing press area was operated by four technicians who made sure that everything was printing properly, especially in regards to color and alignment, by pulling issues off the press constantly. They, along with everyone else at Cenveo, were extremely generous with their time and knowledge. I’m certain that our excitement seemed odd to them, since they are around comic books all day, but it is probably rare to have creators see their creations come off of the line.
Once the interior pages were finished, it was time to see the covers printed. Covers are printed on paper large enough to fit six covers (both front and back covers). The system is similar to the big press, except each sheet runs through more inks. Three guys operate the cover printer and, much like their coworkers on the web press, they are constantly testing for color and alignment. The covers printer does not cut the covers, so they must be taken to yet another part of the factory.
In one of the smaller areas of Cenveo, a number of tasks are taking place: plates for the printing press are being printed, covers are being cut and folded; it also happens to be the quietest area of the factory. Watching the covers being cut was fantastic. The man that operated the machine—really nothing more than a guillotine for comic book covers—grabbed a fat stack of covers and loaded it into the cutter, lined up the papers, pressed a button, and whack! A long blade came down and sliced through the thick papers. The sound of the paper cutter is like nothing else you have ever heard, like a combination between a zipper being pulled and a squeal. From there, the covers, still flat, went to the folding machine. We couldn’t believe that there was a machine that’s sole purpose was to fold comic book covers. But in they went, and were folded one after another.
After a very long day, it was time to return to the front of the factory where we first entered. The bundles of interiors were introduced to their eventual cover by the machine we first witnessed in action. The interiors rode along a belt as the covers were dropped on top, then sent along the section of the machine that stapled them and trimmed the interiors. When we held LANTERN CITY Issue #1 in our hands for the first time, the very real comic book and Trevor and I had been working on for so long, we were overwhelmed with a sense of pride and joy.
It was such a gratifying experience. It gives an entirely new perspective and appreciation for the way in which an idea can go from our heads, all the way to a finished product. I said to Trevor a number of times through the day, “I feel guilty for buying so many digital comics.” We love comic books and comic book shops, and digital comic books are great, but there is something special about holding the printed version and letting the pages flip past your fingers.
It takes a lot of people to make a single issue of a comic book. Most readers know this in a general sense, but it takes seeing the process to really understand it. There’s the creative side, from writers and artists and editors and letterers and colorists and graphic designers; then there’s the business side, with marketers and PR, distribution, and retailers; and then there’s the printers, where the dozens of people at Cenveo were responsible for making the final stage happen flawlessly. Trevor and I are going to continue to chronicle the creation of LANTERN CITY over the next few months with full episodes and interviews with all the people that make it happen. It’s important that we all see the work that goes into each and every book we read.
And besides, Lantern City is our first time creating a comic, and you never forget your first.
LANTERN CITY #1 is on sale May 13. Check out the preview for the issue.
