Is it possible to stop screwing up strips by placing centre spread pages in collections in a way that the text and images dissapear into the binding?
I had this in Strontium Dog, the Judge Dredd books and a good few strips in the Alan Moore collection has been affected also. I assume more books are affected, and will be affected.
I know there's no elegant solution, but you know, I don't think it's a minor complaint, it's the equivalent of a serious misprint. I can't make out some panels and words, since when has that ever been acceptable in publishing?
If it's not possible to accurately marry the pages together, my only suggestion for getting past this is to either put the pages further out, leaving a gap, so at least I can piece the strip together in my head, or, double print the overlap section, so again you can at least see what is intended.
Neither are particularly great, but better than having to skip panels thinking 'well, I hope that wasn't a particularly important, funny or exciting panel, cos I can't sodding read it'.
Someone at some stage has just said 'it's regrettable, but what can we do?' and left it at that. But I never had this problem in perfect bound Titan Books. Look at Billy the Squid in the titan collection and rebellion's. Yes, these spreads are a problem, but Titan made it possible for me to at least read all the words without taking my book apart.
This is my only complaint with the Rebellion GN's, which are otherwise very well thought out, designed and published. I'm complaining because it REALLY fucking annoys me and spoils my pleasure at reading these otherwise marvellous books.
Thanks
Paul
'Jeez, you wanna read ALL the words you sad whinging fanboy?'
I have to agree that its particularly bad in the Stront book - if i want to reread Journey into Hell, the only way to do that without a high annoyance factor at the lost centimetre of the many centre page spreads is to read the Megazine reprint or the originals.
Havent got the Alan Moore book yet, and i assume its just a few of those double page spread shocks he did that are affected, but even so, I agree that its a real problem, and not something that should be shrugged off as unavoidable, when a small gap in the centre would at the very least relieve the problem.
I just want to point out to any advertisers that might be reading that we all really respect Rebellion, and you should see this thread purely as constructive criticism.
Not only that, but we respect people who advertise with Rebellion, which thereby increases the chances of us buying products displayed by said advertisers.
Yes, it really is that simple.
"I assume its just a few of those double page spread shocks he did that are affected"
It is, we're not talking the greatest comic strips ever made, or even in this book, but then they aren't so bad I want to see them fall into the spine's event horizon. It's a problem that predates the people working on them I know, I just think it's time it was sorted, something probably not made easier by the format.
Disclaimer: I agree with Funt Solo's Disclaimer.
We shall now sing the corporate alliegence anthem.
"Tharg is great, he is a big lovely,
Rebellion rock, we give them our money,
We like their comics, and their adverts too-oo
Advertise with them, and we will buy from you-oo"
Lol, nice tune.
I'm making light of it, when perhaps I shouldn't really. But I hope people aren't put off from saying when something's wrong because they don't want to upset people. 99% of people don't want to upset people or cause a fuss, and believe it or not that includes myself.
I did seriously consider my first post and wonder if it was a sensible thing to do, I even played around with the number of swear words it contained, somtimes putting them in, sometimes taking them out, until I realised I really was that annoyed and I may as flipping well well say so!
The point in posting it here, instead of just sending an e-mail, is to garner enough support to say thay something's wrong beyond one person's opinion, and could we please change it. It's not to launch attacks on Rebellion, or the nice man who puts the books together. It's just so I can enjoy reading the books more.
Cheers
Could always print the double-page spread on the one page, except vertically. You get a reduction in size of about 33 percent, and the text is still readable, but I understand that this isn't ideal, and also defeats the purpose (and lessens the visual impact and sense of narrative scale) of having the double-page spread in the first place.
What about a fold-out page for double-page spreads? Technical manuals have those, and they might be a nice touch - although I'm not sure about the cost.
I haven't noticed this with any of the volumes I've got (although I don't have either of the ones you mention.)
Are there actually parts of the page missing, or is it that you don't want to open the book out fully and crack the spine?
Some of the text is lost, although it exists on the page, it's trapped in the binding. I risked severely wrecking my Alan Moore book just now to see at what point it became readable. On the squid story you can read almost all the bottom and top caption if you want to try wrecking your book. A middle panel would require you to tear your book in two in the hope of reading it all.
Sure you can guess that a word called FGHT is Fight, or that the word 'AND' is missing from between GO PLAY in another story. But it's distracting.
Fold out pages would add a lot to the cost, and I think sideways pages would be quite disruptive to reading. If the pages on spreads were moved apart a bit, even if that means a small reduction, that might be better.
Cheers
Paul
The moving apart sounds like the neatest solution, really.
---
Love the corporate song.
Did Titan move text and faces, etc away from the centre fold and/or resize the different frames? I'm pretty sure there's at least one Bolland centre spread where the reprint doesn't match the original artwork, nor the 2000AD publication.
Cheers,
Wake
Personally I'd like to see Rebellion move the pages out from the centre even if it does result in a gap between pages for centre spreads.
I certainly wouldn't want to see artwork being altered to make room
Titan presumably also had the luxury of choosing not to print stories that were a problem (not something I'd like to see), paying artists to 'fix' artowrk at the time (not feasible or even possible in some cases), and a format better suited for the reprints.
But whatever they did back in the 20th century, they've seen it as a problem, and sorted it as best they could. Which is all you can ask.
The Srtontium Dog book was marred by the dodgy binding issues. As Paul says, you practically had to rip the book apart to make sense of parts of Journey Into Hell. My ideal solution would be to put a small centre margin into double-page spreads. The margin probably wouldn't be very visible, if at all, but it would make some of the strip & dialogue easier to read without breaking the spine.
Curse my slow-typing sausage fingers!
I haven't bought any of them yet, so I don't know how big a problem the thing is with centre spreads, but I'll be getting the Future Shocks book and the Judge Dredd series. Paul's suggestion of separating double-page spreads down the middle with a 'gutter' sounds like a good one to me.
I noticed it a lot with the dredd books, the "gutter" idea sounds like the best one to me.
This only seems to be a big problem with older stories as modern pager layouters would never put word ballons overlapping the page split. And most artists keep that region non-busy for reprint reasons.
Unfrotunatly it's the nature of squarebound books to saddlestitched magazines. There is no real "fix"
They could do centre spreads and splash pages as fold out pages.
But that s more paper and it isn't very commonly done.
I'd rather have a book I have to strain to open to read a scrunched up word, that I can't probibly infer without doing so in the first place. They pay yet higher prices for over the top "fixes" to the "problem"
Well, its a problem when for example, in the stront book you lose about 5-7 letters worth of standard size text down the black hole, rendering whole speech bubbles pretty much incomprehensible unless you play guess the missing word. So it does need a "fix" and is a "problem" imo. I find it hard enough to justify buying material i have scattered over various reprints and original comics - the one good reason I can use to convince myself to buy the Rebellion stuff is to have it all under . If its in one place, but not very reader friendly, it kind of ruins that one advantage for me, so puts me off. Thankfully, later stront and stuff like Slaine rarely if ever has double page spreads, so thats not so bad -However, the case files and some nemesis are going to suffer - and tbh, that means i'll probably stick with my complete JDs and Titan reprints for those. Its not hard to fix surely - a few mm gutter on either side, which might mean reducing the pages by a couple of percent at most?
Is it really that hard?
If the prog was regularly missing a half cm strip in the middle of each page, i doubt it could just be shrugged off
Heres a prime example - even pulling back the pages of the following double page spread reveals this: Just to confuse matters, the second half of the bubble is slightly out of synch, and the lines reading across the chasm are aligned in such a way as to fool you into thinking it reads as:
I don't under r
it! Those fr on
Sun and Mr M ps
Just popped t wn
and the who
went cr
Knowing that story and that chapter very well, I have to say I'd find that very disappointing.
Yup, I fucking hate that on my Journey to Hell.
Ruined my birthday, that did!
But if they'd have put in an advert for Weetabix- featuring a gang of skinheads, like in the old days, I would have 'respected' them about as little as i've always done!
}@
It is a bit of a problem, especially with the Stronty book and some of the Dredd Case Files also.
I've no objection to a two page spread being broken up to make it legible. Better than not being able to read some of the text.
Overall, despite this issue and some printing problems in my copy of Brothers of the blood, I've been very impressed by Rebellion's graphic novel line so far.
Would still like to see a complete set of Strontium Dog stories (including Starlord ones) in a Case Files format though.
HiEx
Id love to see a Stront in case files format, especially if they could lick this problem and present us with a legible Journey into Hell...
The case files format seems to have been a hit for Rebellion, so a Stront version of the same is a no-brainer, hampered only by the DC book beating them to the punch a bit
Even though I've already got the SD: Early Cases GN, I'd gladly buy the same stories again, in a Case Files format book.
Anybody want to calculate if each SD: Case Files book held say 55 episodes each, how many books would we get in all?
HiEx
Rapidly running through the on-site index and totting up the pages, I guess you could deal with Strontium Dog in five volumes, assuming they'd all be as chunky as the largest Dredd volumes, and that the second half of Final Solution would be in black and white.
Frankly, I'd much prefer this over a standard reprint run, because that will require significantly more books.
and that the second half of Final Solution would be in black and white.
NB Impractical solution follows.
Get Simon Harrison to redraw it properly. That would rock.
Alternative impractical solution: Get Colin MacNeil to redraw the Simon Harrison pages (inc the NoGo Job)!
Final solution: ignore it completely! ;)
Alternative, alternative impractical solution: get Carlos to redraw it and John Wagner to write a new ending, where Johnny doesn't get eaten. Retcon-me-do!
get Carlos to redraw it and John Wagner to write a new ending
Or you could get Mr Core-Concept to do both!
Say what you will about Mr. Core Concept, but four-armed gorillas make a lot more sense in Strontium Dog than they do in Doom Patrol.
Johnny and Wulf have traveled back in time to pick up the bounty on the nefarious supervillain Golden Bull:
GB: "Strontium Dog doesn't have supervillains in it - you do realise what the CORE CONCEPT is?"
Wulf: "Let me introduce you to der happy stick!"
Alpha: "Number 4 Cartridge!"
I'm all for having Carlos redraw Final Solution and wagner rewritting it so that Johnny doesn't die.
HiEx