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Technically,it is far easier to put together a comic album of new material than it is to put together one of Golden Age strips -whether UK or US GA.

New strips it’s simply scan-resize-convert to pdf-upload.

With Golden Age comic strips it just ain’t that simple! 

Firstly,you are dependent on other collectors scans and so long as they are a reasonable size no problem.   However,when you are talking about comics that are 50 or 60 or even 70 years old it is a far different matter.  Remember that these were cheaply printed “throw-away” kids entertainment available for 2  to 6 pennies in the UK or 10 cents in the US.  The paper can look good but be as brittle as brittle can be or stapled slightly off centre.  Combine the two and it’s not a comic you really want to manhandle a lot.

This is a big problem.  In reprinting GA strips there were certain considerations:one was to make the books affordable.  It would have been wonderful to have full colour but the cost would be too high and so it was decided the books would be in black and white.  So,lower cover price.

The strips were selected.  Easy.  Then the snag.  Because of the age of the comic no collector,no matter how generous,is going to rip apart his valued comic which,let’s be honest,he may have paid a small fortune for.  It would destroy the book.  So when it comes to selecting the strips to reprint you have the problem that some pages are going to be slightly or noticeably crooked.  However,you never hear GA fans on any group protest:”Those pages were crooked.  You ruined it for me!”  GA fans know how rare the books are and how lucky they are to see them -even as scans.   In fact,a crooked page is not something that will put a true GA fan off.

As a publisher I look at the crooked page and it annoys me.  As a GA fan it doesn’t -even in black and white this is a printed version a fan can hold and read and not get boggle-eyed by looking at online scans.

Simply converting a colour page to grey scale is not all it entails by any means.  Lettering and printing can be off or faded so it needs to be adjusted brightness/contrast.  In some cases a single page may need to be altered using brightness and contrast 2-3 times.  Now if you consider that there might be 10-15 pages that need this sort of work doing you can see it takes time.

In fact,it can take 5-6 hours to make 4-5 colour pages suitable for printing as black and white.

 Then you have the other “basic chores”:re-sizing pages and then converting the whole to a pdf file which is the easy bit. 

It would be easier if I had the original pages or copies of the books themselves,of course..but could I tear up a GA comic to scan?  I doubt it!

Of course there are other problems and they seem to show up in UK comics exclusively:sellotape repairs,foxing on the pages [mould spotting],huge tears across pages and even scribbling.  So far I have managed to cover all of these up and I think I’ve done quite well.  One collector who sent me a scanned strip that was awful -sellotape,foxing and even rips,emailed me to say he was glad I’d found another copy to use -he wouldn’t believe it was the scan he’d sent me!!

Oh,and then we have the colour.  Black and white would be nice but UK war-time comics were printed on odd papers and ink shortages meant purple,orange,red and even green inks were used and some of it so faded that on first glanced I’ve just shaken my head and said “un-use-able”!  But I’ve worked on the pages and not done too bad a job!

So,there is my moan.  Then why do all this? My name is Terry Hooper and I’m a comic geek.