John Byrne's Fantastic Four Artist's Edition

 Cover for John Byrne's Fantastic Four Artist's Edition

 Title Page

 Credits Spread

 Table of Contents Spread

First Story Spread

Shown above are the various spreads designed for John Byrne's Fantastic Four Artist's Edition. I remember a friend telling me, that the thing he enjoyed most about the earlier issues of the Fantastic Four, was the science angle. Reed Richards, was a scientist and the stories and adventures revolved around space exploration, and unexplained phenomenon. When designing the book, that was the direction I went in. I created flow charts and graphics that would look right-at-home in a science textbook. I also tried as much as possible, to incorporate the number 4, either using the number literally or breaking things into quadrants. Isn't that fantastic?

Rebound Design

Cover art to Gil Kane volume 1

Cover art to Tony Salmons volume 2

Bound volumes

 Covers of other volumes

Bound in comics

Spines of books lined up

When I don't have real jobs, I look for projects to keep me creatively flexing. On line, I came across information, on a book bindery. They take comic books and transform them into hardcover books. The bonus is, you get to design your own covers, and add design pages to the contents. Perfect! I actually looked for comic books I could have bound, just for the sake of being able to design a series of books.

Instead of putting book collections together based on characters or story-lines, I put them together according to artists. That's really the only reason I would buy comics anyways, is for the art. I suppose some people would be horrified at the idea of taking decades old comics, and dismembering them. Not for me, that was actually the fun part. I could cut out and remove stuff I didn't want in my books, and then reassemble according to my taste. It's much more practical, and now, more user friendly.

But of course the real reason for doing all of this, was to give me more opportunity to design books based on my design preferences. I liked figuring out a template for the book design. Every book has a unifying design, and they look great on a shelf together. I also designed unique title pages for each book. Somehow, when you reinvent formats, the material becomes fresh and new. Going through these bound volumes, is almost like seeing the material for the first time.

I'm already working on seven more collections, and getting them ready for the bindery. I will have to delay sending them for a little while, because I actually have real work to do!