Supplemental: Anatomy of a Comic

The Anatomy of a Comic

We've probably all read comics. But how many of you know how a comic is physically put together? In this feature, we take the example of an untrimmed issue, and show you how the pages are put together and printed.

This example is issue 70 of The New Thunderbirds, an untrimmed version of which I was fortunate enough to obtain back in 1994. But to help explain, I need to first define pagination, and the difference between what are usually referred to as visual or printer spreads.

A visual spread is what you see when you open a comic, magazine, book or any other publication, and the pages are in the right order: page 2 is next to page 3, and then the next spread is pages 4 and 5, and so on. Printer spreads, to the uninitiated, can by quite confusing. If you take a newspaper, and separate all the pages, you'll see that this is no longer the case. In a 32 page issue, page 2 is suddenly next to page 31, and page 3 with page 30. This is pagination, the way the pages are put together. A simple rule of thumb is that you add one to the total number of pages (in this case 32), and the total of the two page numbers should equal this figure: so from the centre you have pages 16 & 17, then 15 & 18. The second, equally important, rule is that the even numbers are (almost) always on the left, and odd numbers on the right.

The next misconception is that all the double sided and paginated spreads are printed as separate sheets, put together and folded. The untrimmed issue does not comprise of eight double-sided spreads but two large sheets, with eight pages per side. Below is the layout of these sheets, and the four sets of spreads still follow the rule of pagination. And yes, the top pages of each sheet are upside down as you view them. The reason for this becomes obvious as they folded back down to make the untrimmed issue:

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Sheet One, Side One
Space Patrol - The Website

And for clarity:

Sheet One, Side Two

And for clarity:

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Sheet Two, Side One
Space Patrol - The Website

And for clarity:

Sheet Two, Side Two

And for clarity:

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Unusually, in this case, the issue has two centrespreads - the first is Graham Bleathman's superb cutaway of the Angel Interceptor launch system and Amber Room. This forms part of a pull-out 'Spectrum Fact File', a semi-regular feature of the comic at the time, revealing a second spread of that week's latest daring-do adventures of Lady Penelope.

The first fold to the two sheets is vertically, between (as you look at the first sheet) the covers/centrespread and spreads 8/25 and 24/9. With the second sheet now folded inside the first, these are now folded horizontally between the top edges of two spreads so the centre pages appears to be on the reverse of the covers. And if you take your trimmed issue 70 (or any other issue, for that matter) and open it out at the centre, this is how it appears. All the pages are now in the right order, ready for the final fold that makes it appear like any other issue should. But before this happens, the issue is stitched, which is the print term for adding the staples that hold it all together.

Now folded, a sharp guillotine trim to the top, bottom and outer edges, and the issue is ready for stacking and distribution to the shops...

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Shaqui Le Vesconte is a graphic designer and artworker of some fifteen years experience, and currently works in print management, so there's the vaguest of possibilities this feature is both accurate and informative.

Version 1.1 - 01.05.05

All text © The Gerry Anderson Complete Comic History, and its respective writers, and may not be reproduced without permission.
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