As fans of author/cartoonist Dan Clowes are well-aware, some of his best work has never been collected into fancy, hardcover books (or even less fancy softcover books). While much of the work Clowes is famous for was originally serialized in his comic Eightball, much of what appeared in Eightball has remained in the serial comics format. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing – graphic novels make sense thematically, but I don’t know that it is totally necessary to make “best of” books except to introduce people the author’s work (and to give people like me something to buy and then try to get signed). There have been a couple articles recently about the Love and Rockets paperback collections that argue that the collections eliminate much of the thrill of reading L & R in its original serial format – that the stories, grouped together in separate volumes by author, lose a lot when they are separated from the multi-author, vital atmosphere of the original comic.
We all know that I’m no format elitist, having argued for the coexistence of e-books and print books, and being a collector of comics as well as fine press publications. However, something about Eightball #23, also known as The Death Ray, also known as the greatest single-issue comic of all time, just begs for a deluxe edition. One has been in the works (supposedly) for a long time, and I’ve seen pre-publication photos of a French version in the traditional European “album” format, but I wanted to give this comic the treatment it deserved, so I went about making a deluxe portfolio to house it. I only made two copies – one for me and one to give to the author at his book signing tonight – and they were pretty labor-intensive.
First, a friend scanned the front and back covers, and I printed out a cover pastedown as well as an interior colophon page (cover pastedown is Canson Infinity Arches Aquarelle; interior is Moab Entrada Rag Bright) using the Epson printer (Chance Press’s ace in the hole). The bookcloth is Italian-made Canapetta, which I love for it’s texture and weight (this is the same cloth we used on the CPR hardcovers – I just wish it came in more colors). The interior pastedowns are Fabriano Murillo, and the spine is Fabrian Tiziano and Canford card taped together (the triangle is also Tiziano). This is a big portfolio – 13″ x 9.75″ – and it was a good learning experience working with something this large. There are considerations I hadn’t thought of (like how to weight the books or how to bray the glued parts down to the bookboard effectively) that didn’t come up when we were working with smaller-sized books. Still, they came out better than I expected, and Mr. Clowes was very appreciative of his copy, if not maybe a little confused as to why someone would go to the effort to make something like this.
Unfortunately, we can’t make any more of these to sell, because they reproduce Clowes’s art without authorization. When we do our self-indulgent Chance Press Bibliography in a few years, it will be fun to separate it into stuff we made for people to buy and stuff we made only a couple copies of for fun but still attributed to Chance Press. That way, completists (I know a few of you are reading this and getting pissed that we keep making stuff you can’t buy) will be able to track down all the available releases, while everyone else can see examples of what Justine and I come up with just for fun, to amuse each other. (And really, on a sappy note, there has to be a part of Chance Press that stays with us, because CP is one of the things that brought us together and is growing along with our relationship. So while we love binding and releasing books, there’s also this part of CP that we don’t want to release into the world, because we want it to be ours. So while it will be impossible for someone to collect all of the one off’s, the different-colored bindings for presentation and author copies, and the like – at least while we’re alive – it’s part of what makes CP what it is.)
And at least we show pictures, instead of keeping all this good stuff a secret!
Front cover
Interior
Close-up of interior pastedown