comics and zine format/size

[ramsey everydaypants]

hey! i've been working on a big comic series, which i'll continue to work on all year (the idea is that i'm drawing 2 pages a week for my entire first year that i'm in philadelphia) and at the end of the project i plan to put it out as an epic zine. (i'm also posting two pages a week online. you can see those pages at http://www.everydaypants.com/year-one  ! it's a tumblr if you wanna follow it?)

 

the only problem is... i've been drawing the pages at 11x14. i normally make my regular zine (List) a normal half sized zine but i draw the pages at half size. i'm worried that the pages will lose a lot if i scale them down that small.

 

how do people feel about oversized zines? are they cumbersome? is it different when they're comics? 

 

for some reason in my head i know i have a weird aversion to them, like i like to keep my collection at half and quartersized, just for organizational and aesthetic purposes. 

 

i've also been thinking about putting it out myself as a book, but that would be really pricey at a larger size. 

 

does anyone have experience with self-publishing comics and have run into scale issues? i'm not done with the project until april but it's going to be an epic process getting 100-120 pages of comics together so i want to sort of research along the way so i'm prepared when it's ready to compile.

 

thanks!

[James N. Dawson]

I actually have sort of a fondness for newsprint tabloids and have been mulling over the idea of trying to publish one some day.
I guess they can be a little cumbersome, and do give you a little muscle ache trying to hold them open in my favorite reading position, reclining, but if the content's good, I'm usually willing to tolerate that.
I think Carrie McNinch, and a lot of other mini-comix publishers, reduce theirs and I don't think it detracts from the reading experience. I've always had a high tolerance for reduced material, text and art. (Of course I could be wrong. Maybe they just draw small. Or very big to compensate for the reduction.)

[Blake]

Hey Ramsey.  Great to see that you are doing this project. 

I've done some publishing work with Colin Upton and have seen his original 9x12 (possibly 8.5x11) pages reduce down to 1/4-letter mini comics without any problems at all.  I don't think you will have any problems with the art going from 11x14 to half-letter.  The only think you'll need to be mindful of is the text--make sure that it is large enough to still be a comfortable read when reduced, etc.

To answer the question about how we feel about oversized zines:  they are only cumbersome when trying to store them.  Otherwise they are actually fun to read, especially when it comes to artwork.  You are right, however, the costs to produce an 11x14 book is going to get wild relative to half-letter.  Maybe consider offering a limited number of "Deluxe" large editions in addition to a regular half-letter edition?

- b

[Dan C]

My understanding is that comics generally look better when they are drawn bigger and shrunk smaller. I understand that shrinking down really large pictures is how Chris Ware makes his comics so detailed and clean looking. I guess to make that work the images need to be scanned and printed at high quality. The other concern is just that the text is still big enough to read easily.