Bad to the Bone & Too Cool for School

Here's my newest batch of Slick books fresh from the bindery. Pictured above is my first Slick book, Smooth Move, Slick, along with two brand new books, Bad to the Bone & Too Cool for School. Previously on my blog, I made a post explaining in detail my process in making these books. (Click here) Once again, I'll divulge the steps it takes to make one of these digest-sized books.

This is how it all started. I used to draw my comics on notebook paper. I would start with a 5-subject notebook, and I would fill it up with Slick comics. That's about 170 pages of comics. I was an industrious 12-year-old. 

First, I scan and adjust the artwork in Photoshop. Yep. That's notebook paper, folks. And blue ink. I would draw these using both black and blue felt tip pens. For the first year of drawing Slick, I didn't even pencil my artwork. I would just draw directly on the page. WITH INK. Crazy. Above is the first strip where I penciled the art first, then drew the inks. 

Then, I layout the book in Indesign. The image size is 8.5" x 14." I layout three books per page. This allows me to print three books per print run. I print the pages on my HP color laser printer.

After that, I design and layout the cover. I draw the artwork on my Wacom tablet. I also printed this on my HP laser printer.

Here's the other cover. Once all the pages and covers are printed, I take them to Insty Prints, a local printer and bindery, and they trim and perfect bind the books.  

TA-DA! Insty Prints does nice work. For something I printed on my home printer, the books look very professional. The perfect binding (or square binding) really makes a difference.

Finally, I put them on my bookshelf with some of my old favorites. 

I've really enjoyed working this project. When I was a kid, I dreamed that my Slick comics would be collected in book form. It's a lot of fun making this childhood dream come true. I have a lot more old Slick comics, so there will be more books in the future. Stay tuned.