How to Make a Mini-Comic the LazyComix Way: By Randy Gentile

Web Comics are getting more and more popular. Even mainstream comics are getting into the act.  The most obvious reason people are doing web comics is because it’s a cheap way to get your work in front of as many people as possible. With all the talk today of the “Death of Print” more and more people are turning to web comics as a means of distributing their work to the masses.

Turn back the clock to before the advent of the web comic and the cheapest way to get your work out there was the Mini Comic. And with web comics blowing up and print apparently dying one thing that I’d hate see go away is the mini comic. So here’s where this tutorial comes in.

What is a mini comic? Well, that’s where it gets tricky. Some say it’s the size of the comic that determines weather or not it’s a mini comic or a ‘zine. Some say it’s the content that’s the determining factor. And what’s a ‘zine? Well, again, it’s tricky and if you ask me, all this mini-comic vs. ‘zine stuff is a waste of time that doesn’t make much sense at all.

Getting technical about it defeats the purpose. At the end of the day a mini comic is a quick and dirty way to make a comic book and it’s the “Do-it-Yourself” aspect of it that means the most. All you need to do is draw your comic and head on over to your local copy shop. And yeah, I know I simplified it a bit because there are a lot of steps along the way. After having made a few mini comics in my day I’ve picked up a few tricks that I think could help any of you mini comic rookies out there.

Before I get started, and I can’t stress this enough: The way I make mini comics isn’t the only way and certainly isn’t the best way, but it works for me. The main reason I’m doing this little tutorial is to inspire someone out there to make their own mini and by the end of all this, I hope I’ll have done just that.

And away we go.

My Studio Computer Desk

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

1. My wife bought me this little TV/DVD combo a while back and it’s been indespinsible for me. I watch/listen to movies every time I work. This particular showing was of the classic 1973 film The Exorcist by William Friedkin.
2. A cup of Coffee
3. A smoothie my wife made me.
4. Some Toys.
5. My Mac.
6. The beginnings of my mini comic

Obviously you don’t need items 1-5 but this is how I make my mini comics, right?

Before we go any further there’s an exercise that I did before making my first mini comic that helped me when it came to putting the book together.

Grab and old comic you don’t care about and take it apart.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

7. Old comic I don’t care about.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Open up the comic to the center and find the exposed staples. There will most likely be 2 of them.

8. A staple

9. Another staple

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

10. Carefully pull both staples up and apart as shown.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

11. Flip the comic over to the cover side and pull the staples out.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

12. Once the staples are out you can spread the book apart and you’ll wind up with what are roughly 11” x 17” pieces of paper.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

13. Upon looking at one of the big pages you’ll find that each one contains 4 pages of art.

The Notes Stage

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

14. The Notes. Before I start I jot down on a piece of paper everything I want to fit into my mini comic. It’s here that I begin to figure out the most important part of putting the mini together: The page count. If you look closely you can see that I was originally going to make it 32 pages, then I scratched that idea and went down to 28 pages. In the next stage I knocked that number down to 24 pages. You’ll notice that I’m going down in increments of 4. If you took apart an old comic, as I mentioned earlier you’ll notice that if you throw away one piece of paper you’re actually throwing away 4 pages of art. So if your comic is 4 pages long you only need one piece of paper. If it’s 8 pages long you need 2 pieces of paper and so on and so forth. If you’re mathematically inept like me, you’ll find a calculator handy when it comes to page count.

15. The Page Grid. After I work out my page count in my notes I make a grid. Each box of the grid represents one page. Within those boxes I write down what will be on that page. Pretty simple.

16. The Dummy Book. From there I grab some paper and make a dummy book.

17. My filthy keyboard. I honestly have no idea how it got that dirty. It’s not like I’m digging a ditch in here.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

18. My Dummy  Book. I can’t stress enough how important this step is. Grab some scrap paper and fold it in half evenly. With 4 pages of art per sheet you use as many as you need to make up the page count of your book. My book is 24 pages so I used 6 pieces of paper.

Everything feeds off the Dummy Book and it’ll go through a million changes as you work out what will be on each page. This book also shows you how pages will line up. Do you have a big cliffhanger on page 4 with a big reveal on page 5? Then maybe you don’t want pages 4 and 5 to be on a spread like you see above. Put that cliffhanger on a right hand page and make the reader turn the page so that your big reveal hits ‘em right in the face! Also, if you have a double page spread you’ll need those pages to line up correctly. It’s easy to make sure they do in your dummy book.

This is also a good time to talk about the size of your mini comic. You can make a mini comic any size you want but the simplest method to use is one of two options:

Option A: 11” x 17” (tabloid size) page folded in half (giving you an 8.5” x 11” comic once folded, basically a full-size comic)

OR

Option B: 8.5” x 11” (letter size) page folded in half (giving you a 5.5” x 8.5” comic, this is what most people consider traditional mini comic size)

If your budget is a concern, go with Option B, the letter size… remember “cheap ‘n dirty” is the name of the game with mini comics. If you want your book to be more like what you see on the shelves of your local comic shop, then go with Option A.

After you’ve worked out your page count, lined your pages up in the dummy book and decided what size paper you’re going to use it’s time to move onto the next step.

Here I’ll show you how to put together your book in Photoshop and if you don’t have Photoshop, I’ll show you an easy way around that as well. I’m not going to get into how to use Photoshop in a “Photoshop for Dummies” sense because if you have any working knowledge of the program you can figure out the details of how I lay my pages out.

The most important thing in this step is the establishing of guides and copy safe lines that will allow your pages to lie out evenly and to not get cut off at the copy shop.

I’m printing an 8.5” x 11” mini comic that will be folded in half so I open a letter sized page in Photoshop and draw rulers. First I split the page down the middle (at the 5.5” point) then I draw rules that give me a 0.25” gutter space or “safe line” to the edge of the page.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

An important thing to remember when printing your comic at a copy shop is that almost all copy machines cannot print with a bleed… meaning the printer can’t place ink all the way to the edge of the paper. Every copy machine is different. Some can print very close to the edge (around and 8^th of an inch to the edge) while others can’t. I suppose you could ask the folks at your copy shop how close their machines can print to the edge of the page but I’ve never bothered. Instead I give myself that 0.25” gutter or “Safe Line”. Don’t let anything important go into the gutters. You certainly don’t want your word balloons getting cut off, right?

I’ve found that I’m erring on the side of caution with a gutter that big so if I do have to go into it a bit, it won’t get cut off. Although I wouldn’t try going any further than an 8^th of an inch into it.  Again, avoid doing so at all and you’ll be fine.

Earlier, I talked about pagination and you can see here that I’ve laid out pages 16 and 9. I save my files so that the file name shows me what page I’m looking at. Page 16 on the left and 9 on the right.

For every page I need I create a jpeg file just like this and put them into folders.

 

 

 

 

 

 

You’ll see that in folder “001” I put files “NYComixMag002-023” and “NYComixMag024-001”. These pages are going to be printed together as one double-sided print. The same goes for the rest of the folders. When I’m all done that means there will be 6 letter-sized pages that once put together in book form, will give me 24 pages. (Again, see pagination in part 1 of this series)

From here you can go a number of directions but before I get into that let me give you an option for laying out your pages if you don’t have Photoshop.

First of all bring your original art and your Dummy Book to the copy shop. Say your art is on an 11” x 17” art board. If your art is straight black and white (no gray tones) use the black and white printer. It’ll save you a lot of money. If you have a full color art or art with gray tones, using a color copier will give you higher quality prints. Black and white copiers (most of them) can’t print gray or gradients of black to gray. It’ll try but it won’t look good. Using the color copier will give you the grey tones your original art has.

The easiest way is to ask someone who works at the shop for some help. Copy machines can be confusing. Basically you want to reduce your 11”x17” page down 50% to become a 5.5” x 8.5” image.

After you’ve done this for every page of art you’ll cut them out and tape them (according to the pagination you’ve figured out with your Dummy Book) to a blank Letter Size piece of paper. When you’re done you’ll wind up with what I did in Photoshop. Only with a lot more work and a lower quality image, unfortunately. Remember, every time you make a copy the resulting image loses quality.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Once you have your pages all set, start making copies. Again, ask the folks that work at the copy shop to give you a hand when it comes to making the double-sided pages. I bet you’ll find that being you’re making a comic book that they’ll be happy to help. They’re usually making copies of people’s resumes or baby pictures or something as equally boring so a comic book is a welcome sight.

Getting back to those of you who choose the Photoshop take your files and put them on a disc. Take that disc to your copy shop and have them print the book for you. Make sure you stay at the shop and show them exactly what is on the disc and how to print it. Putting it into the folders like I did makes it easier to understand. 1 folder equals 1 double-sided print. From there you can even ask them to collate (or properly paginate the book) for you. You can even ask them to staple the thing together. It depends on how much you want them to do for you. (And how much money you want to spend.) I suggest you ask them to print one book for you before they go ahead and print out 50 copies of your book (or however many copies you want).

After you’ve got your prints you’re ready to put your mini together.

Lay your pages out starting with the first page on the left, page 2 next, etc.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Go on down the line and before you know it, you’ve got all the pages for your mine lined up in a neat little stack.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Now you’re going to fold your comic. I use a Sharpie to make a nice tight fold. I’ve seen folks use all kinds of tools for folding… the bottom of a spoon works well too.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

So there you are. Just to play it safe, flip through and be sure all your pages are lined up correctly.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The cover.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

They say never judge a book by it’s cover but the truth is people do. For my mini comics I use a heavier cardstock cover. It just feels better in your hands and gives your mini a more polished feel. You’ve probably noticed that I have a blank black cover. More on this later.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Take your folded interior pages and drop them into your cover.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Now you’re ready to staple.

If you were a Mini Comic Thor, this would be your Mjolnir. (How the hell do you pronounce that word, anyway?)

It’s a long stapler. I don’t know where I aquired mine, but I love it. You can pick one up online here for like 20 bucks and if you’re planning on really getting into the mini comics game, you’ll find it indispensable.

You can staple by hand by poking holes through every page and then sticking the staple in and then pushing the staples closed and after doing that twice you’ll go buy a long stapler.

The tough part of stapling is getting the staples to hit nicely on the spine of your mine. I suggest practicing a few times. Use the ruler on the stapler to help you line it up.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

So getting back to my blank black cover. A few minis back I started printing my cover image on a sticker and then sticking that to my cardstock cover. I like the way it looks so I’ve been doing it ever since. You don’t have to do this and it’s an extra step you can avoid by just printing your cover image right on the cover. I print 2 on a page to save money.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Then I cut my sticker out like so.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

You could print right on a big sticker and just peel and slap ‘em on but I’m cheap and I printed on regular paper and then used double sided tape to adhere the cover image. Be sure to use good tape or even glue, you don’t want these things peeling off. The second sticker you see there is my inside cover blurb about who I am, what I do, blahblahblah.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I stick these bad boys right on the page and after that I threw my logo on the back for good measure.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

And there you have it. A mini comic.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The next step is to get your mini into as many hands as possible. Leave it on a table at the coffee shop. Leave it on the seat when you get off the bus or mix it into the magazines at the barbershop. Be creative and have fun.

Thanks for reading and I hope I’ve inspired some of you to keep the tradition of mini comics alive.

–randolph