Remember when Blank Verse launched as a physical book back in December of 2019? Me, neither.

I always wanted to make comics since I was in junior high. I would read “how to draw manga” books and study the formatting, penciling, inking, screen tones and all that nonsense. It was my number one goal back when I was a squeaky little 14 year old to make a comic and have it printed. In 2019 I had finally achieved that goal when Blank Verse, the first REAL comic I had worked on and seen through from start to finish, was sent into a self-publishing company and 20 or so copies were mailed back to me. I had finally done it; my comic was in print and I got to hold it in my hands.

The excitement would die quickly after, as that was the only 20 or so copies that would ever exist. The process of printing through this company involved submitting an InDesign file and they would print EXACTLY what you sent them. It was a straightforward process and their costs were very fair, but I felt like so much of it was out of my hands. The cut that the company took of each book sold was 50%, and they didn’t pay out until your hit $25 in overall profit, which I still have not achieved to this day. I was more than happy just to see my comic printed, and I rode the wave of excitement from having my first book printed for as long as I could, but then when I got back down to earth I had to figure out what was next.

I wanted to make another book, but I didn’t want to do that whole process again. It left me feeling empty and unfulfilled to begin with, so the thought of starting it back up wasn’t something I looked forward to. Instead I started to get another idea; “What if I just printed my own comics from home?” It sounded dumb, because I knew that the quality wouldn’t be as good and I would have to spend a fortune on the tools to do it, but that didn’t make me want to do it any less. So I started doing some homework on it - reading about different paper types, weight and brightness, saddle stitching and staple binding versus perfect binding, cutting and so on. After a week or so of reading, I decided to pull the trigger on it. I am already 4 episodes in on a 5 episode chapter of Blank Verse, so now would be the best time to get into printing since I would be able to go straight into it with a new comic once I had learned the ropes.

And that’s exactly what I am doing.

This is going to take a while to learn, but I’ve got the tools to print now and am going to see what I can do with it as we move forward. From the looks of it we might be able to have art prints up to 8.5x11 in size and staple stitched comics in the near future. That’s the goal and I will keep you posted as I go.