The Queen Is Dead
Back in the day I was a “reporter.” I put that in quotes because, obviously, I wasn’t. I had a strange job at a Canadian newspaper where I was like a dumb mascot; doing stupid stunts, making cartoons and videos and political jokes and giving terrible advice in an advice columns. One day I might write a thing about how all that happened.
But! I bring it up because one of the events I had to cover in 2009 was Prince Charles and … I want to say Princess? … Camilla’s trip to Canada. It was very exciting in the sense that I didn’t have to go into the office for a week. I had to wear a suit, so I got one from Goodwill that was three sizes too big for me, and I needed to give live updates, which meant the paper had to lend me one of their Blackberrys, which was the size of my head. I was quite the sight, fast walking down the street in a jumbo suit banging away on that thing. Like a businessman!
Anyway, I needed to tweet and get material for several small comics that would run in the paper. Easy peasy. For several days I joined a stupid amount of media as we travelled around Ontario, following two old people on their working vacation. I had to sign some papers that said I agreed to not come within 15-20 feet of the royals, which was like, okay, they come to MY town and I’M the one who has to stay away from them? What horseshit.
Many times I got a couple of feet away from them because I hate being told what to do and I’m an idiot. At one point, during a royal visit to the Winter Agricultural Fair, which smelled like the aforementioned horseshit and also syrup and old butter, I extended my hand to shake Charles’s, but he was accepting a tea towel with his face on it or some bullshit. Later I would understand what it was like to be a royal when comic fans would bring me tea towels with my face on them, though my tea towels were always weirdly stained when I got them.
The thing that stuck out from that assignment was the Royal Media Bus. I always made sure to sit in the back with the travelling contingent of British media, guys whose only job was to follow and report on the royals. It was fascinating. They talked about the royal family the way you’d imagine American sports journalists would talk about football. Who was going to have a good year (never Andrew), rumours about which cousin was set to marry which cousin, stuff like that. It really messed with my head. I understood that the public wanted to hear about these royals, but the idea that it was an actual career job to follow a bunch of people around to ribbon cuttings because of the family they were born into, and then tell people about the cut ribbons just made me incredibly sad.
Of course then I realized that I too was on that bus doing exactly the same thing except covered in a sheen of doodles and irony and jokes. So my sadness got deeper.
Anyway, that’s the same sadness I feel with the Queen’s passing.
FUN!
Look, I’m Canadian! I’m surrounded by this shit for some reason! At least Kagan got some money from this whole thing. First She-Hulk and now the Queen?!
Anyway, the only King I’ll be kneeling to is the King of the Podcasts: MANGASPLAINING!
Joshua at Polygon did a really nice write-up on our little book club! It was very sweet. Also, it may be the first time I’ve read an article about something I’m involved with in years?? What can I say, I break all my rules for the mangang!
Speaking of the mangang, you should really be subscribing to David Brothers’ newsletter. This past week’s edition had some really great thoughts about conscious love and the Tower of Babel. Not the classic Justice League story that I referenced in Batman 127, you heathens! The BIBLE one, featuring God’s OCs (original characters).
Fuck, I just had the great idea to do a Sandman Endless story about them as Image Comics Founders.
ARE YOU OKAY
It’s a house moving week, to get even deeper into the forest, so I’m quite tired.
Okay! I’m going to answer a subscriber question!
Hey chip, do you have any tips for printing a book? Are there any surprises you discovered when printing some of your early books?
-Regular Sized Max
Most everything has changed since I was printing comics, so I’m not sure if I’ll be much help. What hasn’t changed is the fact that the printers are there to help you. They don’t want your product to look shitty, so make sure you have a dialogue with them when you’re putting it all together.
My early comics, like Monster Cops, were black & white, which was an easier thing to manage. There was a period where I printed the FCBD books for the Toronto Comic Arts Festival, which was a nightmare, because they were in full colour and have multiple cartoonists submitting work. But the biggest things I learned were:
Lettering should be 100% black, no extra colours or it’ll get fuzzy. You want lettering to be crisp and readable.
If the lettering is on top of a colour, make sure the lettering is set to overprint. That means the colour will be laid behind it and the black will be printed on top of it. Otherwise it’ll print the colour with white knocked out where the lettering goes and you run the risk of white halo around the lettering.
Your total ink value should never exceed 300%. Like, say I have a rich black colour that’s made up of cyan, magenta, yellow, and black. If I make all those values at 100% of those colours, the ink load will be 400% and that’s just gonna soak the paper.
Adding Batman will increase your comic’s sales by 65%.
Okay! This was supposed to go out on Friday but UGH moving so here’s this week’s beauuuutiful Kaptara update from Kagan and Hassan!