Posted By Dan Greenfield on Aug 16, 2024 | 19 comments

EXCLUSIVE: Some things are worth waiting for. This is one of them…

The 1982 DC Comics Style Guide will be delayed from its August publication, likely for about a month or so. But don’t fret: It’s for good reasons.

See, the interest in the book was so intense when it was announced in May, that it was moved up from what had been planned for a holiday release. In the process, the folks at Standards Manual, which is publishing the book under a DC license, decided to upgrade the cover with custom colors to nail the precise look of the original, to make sure everything was just so. Other improvements have also been made.

Since you don’t want to rush such things, the books are now expected to come in from the printer in Italy at the end of September and then be shipped out to customers and dealers after that.

The Style Guide features glorious art by Jose Luis Garcia-Lopez, Dick Giordano and others, like George Perez. It includes an introduction by Paul Levitz and an interview with Garcia-Lopez by yours truly.

Since the anticipation is so high, you want something to chew on until publication, right? Well dig these 13 EXCLUSIVE PIX of the book being put together in Italy, plus a groovy little video. Neat!

The italicized play-by-play is from Standards Manual’s Hamish Smyth:

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In July we visited our printer in Verona, Italy, for the press check. The purpose of the press check is to inspect each page of the book as it comes off the press and make any adjustments to color as needed. Pictured here is the entrance to the plant, showcasing titles they have printed, including our 2021 title NASA title, The Worm. Graphicom specializes in high-quality artbook printing. We have worked with them since founding Standards Manual in 2014.

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Inspecting the dummy after arriving at the printer. The dummy is a hand-made blank version of the book using the same paper stock as the finished product. This gives us a look at the size, weight, proportions, binding, and overall feel of the book — before it is printed. It also gives the printer the exact measurements they need to construct the book’s cardboard mailer that is used for shipping to customers.

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The first thing we reviewed on the press check was a wet proof. This is a test print completed a few weeks prior to printing the book. Unlike a typical proof, which is printed using an inkjet, a wetproof is printed on the same offset press that will be used for the book, using the same ink and paper. We collated a group of images that represented all the main image types in the book and laid out variations of those images that we had adjusted in Photoshop, for things like color, contrast, and ink density.

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Each spread of the book is collated by the printer in a process called “imposition” and then printed on large sheets. We inspect each sheet to ensure as much consistency as possible. We are also looking for registration issues (the alignment of the four inks, CMYK) and any serious issues that have arisen in the printing process itself. This is the last chance to check the book literally while it’s printing. After we sign off on one of these sheets, thousands are printed in the span of approximately one hour before we move on to more sheets.

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The cover is printed in CMYK, plus one spot color. We selected swatches from a Pantone swatch book to create a unique spot color that combines Pantone Cool Grey 7C + Pantone 877C.

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A cover plot is a low-resolution color print of the image file that will be printed on the book. The gray swatch in the images is called a “draw-down” and is a sample print of our custom Pantone color that will be used on the cover. The black print is a bitmap image that will be used to print a UV spot gloss on top of the four-color image.

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The cover image was created from scans of the original binder. Many hours of work went into cleaning the scanned image and removing scratches that were found on the original plastic cover. An even longer process was undertaken to remove the existing background of the image to replace it with our custom PMS color. This allowed us to wrap the print around the sides and back of the cover board. The original image was masked by hand in a slow but accurate process.

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As sheets come off the press they are constantly checked by the press men against the initial sheet that we signed off on.

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Thanks, Hamish!

So, it’s not exactly like printing off your desktop, is it?

The 1982 DC Comics Style Guide, which includes art from later editions, lists for $95 and can be ordered directly through Standards Manual. Click here. They’re a small operation and any direct sales will encourage a follow-up edition or perhaps a paperback with additional material. Sales matter.

My backup recommendation is to support your local comics shop by buying it there. In any event, in this particular case, I do discourage folks from purchasing from discount retailers unless they have financial limitations that would make getting the book otherwise impossible. This is a very real case where voting with your dollars is important and if Standards Manual gets the direct business, it’s to the readers’ potential benefit.

(And no, there’s no boon to me whatever your choice is. My motivation is simply that I want more.)

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MORE

— EXTREME CLOSE-UP: Dig the Incredible Detail of the Upcoming DC COMICS STYLE GUIDE Release. Click here.

— INSIDE LOOK: The Source Copy of the 1982 DC COMICS STYLE GUIDE That’s Being Published as a Hardcover. Click here.