My do-it-yourself Miracleman TPBs

E

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I really like Miracleman. I want the TPBs. But they are very hard to find, and cost an arm and a leg if you can find them.

So I made my own.

I'm lucky to have access to a very nice color digital printer and a padding press, so I took the scans I downloaded of each Miracleman issue and put together several publications in InDesign - the 4 TPBs as they were issued officially, one for Apocrophya, and one for #s 23 & 24 with the leaked uncolored, unlettered pages for #25 that never came out.

I found a guide online for binding books which worked very well, using a padding press and Gorilla Glue. I modified it by gluing cheesecloth to hold it together even better. Gorilla Glue is amazing - add cheesecloth to the mix and it's as good as a regular TPB. I didn't use signatures (where they cut the book up into sections which are like saddle stitched without the stitches and glued together. The books were just printed 2-sided, jogged carefully, and padded.

Here's a couple pics:

miraclemantpb01.jpg


miraclemantpb02.jpg


They aren't completely trimmed yet because I haven't created covers yet; I haven't settled on a cover design and want to make them uniform. But you get the gist of it here. I have the first 3 books padded, the 4th is drying, and the rest will be done afterward. The gluing is done in layers - the first layer is thin, and I add cheesecloth to it. After it dries I add another thin layer and another piece of cheesecloth. After that dries I put on one final thin layer to hold everything together.

I'm surprised at how well it turned out. I prefer reading TPBs to reading issues or reading scans on a computer, so this is much more preferable for me. I plan on eventually getting all the issues but I only have the first 4, and they aren't exactly cheap themselves.
 
I would do this, but it must use up a hell of a lot of ink.
 
I would do this, but it must use up a hell of a lot of ink.

You can't do it on an inkjet or laserjet printer. Besides costing way too much in ink like you said, the paper most likely couldn't handle having that much ink on both sides.

Like I said, I'm fortunate that I have pretty much free access to a high quality digital printer, which uses toner, not ink. Having them printed commercially would cost somewhere in the neighborhood of 50 cents to a buck per page (per side), so that is pretty much cost prohibitive too, as a few of these books run over 150 pages. Some places offer discounts for large volumes but it would still be expensive.
 
I guess I'll have to steal one then... :twisted:
 
I hate you.



























Make me one.

Please.
 
I'll see what I can do, since you asked.

It's not one though, I think there are 7 altogether.
Nah, I was kidding. You don't have to do anything.
 
That's pretty cool, E.

I, however, have no use for it since I have every original issue of Moore's entire run! Bwa-hah-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha!!!!!

I did it for the Gaiman issues as well as Apocrypha.
 
I really like Miracleman. I want the TPBs. But they are very hard to find, and cost an arm and a leg if you can find them.

So I made my own.

I'm lucky to have access to a very nice color digital printer and a padding press, so I took the scans I downloaded of each Miracleman issue and put together several publications in InDesign - the 4 TPBs as they were issued officially, one for Apocrophya, and one for #s 23 & 24 with the leaked uncolored, unlettered pages for #25 that never came out.

I found a guide online for binding books which worked very well, using a padding press and Gorilla Glue. I modified it by gluing cheesecloth to hold it together even better. Gorilla Glue is amazing - add cheesecloth to the mix and it's as good as a regular TPB. I didn't use signatures (where they cut the book up into sections which are like saddle stitched without the stitches and glued together. The books were just printed 2-sided, jogged carefully, and padded.

Here's a couple pics:

miraclemantpb01.jpg


miraclemantpb02.jpg


They aren't completely trimmed yet because I haven't created covers yet; I haven't settled on a cover design and want to make them uniform. But you get the gist of it here. I have the first 3 books padded, the 4th is drying, and the rest will be done afterward. The gluing is done in layers - the first layer is thin, and I add cheesecloth to it. After it dries I add another thin layer and another piece of cheesecloth. After that dries I put on one final thin layer to hold everything together.

I'm surprised at how well it turned out. I prefer reading TPBs to reading issues or reading scans on a computer, so this is much more preferable for me. I plan on eventually getting all the issues but I only have the first 4, and they aren't exactly cheap themselves.
WOW OMG LOL u''re so INDIE!!!111ONEONE!!!

Here have a Moldy Peaches album!!!!!!!!!!!11
 
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