Book on comics printing process seeks crowdfunding

Midweek Update: "How Comics Were Made" seeks Kickstarter backers

You ever wonder how those beautiful, often-hilarious comic strips made it to your doorstep each Sunday?

Find out about the process of creating and printing newspaper comics from the 1890s to today in Glenn Fleishman’s “How Comics Were Made.” Those interested can back its creation on Kickstarter right now through March 28.

“If you love newspaper comic strips, you will love my new book How Comics Were Made: A Visual History from the Drawing Board to the Printed Page,” Fleishman writes. “I’ve combined years of research and the diligent collection of unique comics printing artifacts with dozens of interviews with cartoonists, historians, and production people to tell the story of how a comic starts with an artist’s hand, and makes it way through transformations into print and, more recently, onto a digital screen.”

As you might expect, printing techniques evolved a great deal over the century-plus covered in the book.

“You’ll also discover the modern twists and turns as printing shifted from raised metal plates to flat ones, and hot lead was dumped in favor of photographic reproduction. Then, two more major transformations disrupted the state of the art, as scanning and digital coloring became an option for cartoonists, and, finally, the rise of the internet,” Fleishman writes.

Curious? You can check out a sample chapter here. More info, and the rewards for backers, can be found at this link.

Matthew Price, matthew@matthewlprice.com, has written about the comics industry for more than two decades. He is the co-owner of Speeding Bullet Comics in Norman, Oklahoma.