I'll be restarting my webcomic "Jackdaw" in near future and I've been thinking of changing the page format. So far it's been on ISO-friendly A4, but I find this format too long and not wide enough when I plan panel layout. I'd switch to Letter, but I'm thinking of publishing it someday and I'm aware that only three countries like that format. I kinda wouldn't like to end like one of my friends who was forced to redraw her whole comic to match her (German) publisher's guidelines. What's more, it also seems that publishers use a bit different formats than normal people.
Anyone's got a bunch of useful tips for me?

I'm not sure it'll help, but: black borders.
Page formats can be a little more forgiving with margins and borders etc.
Within reason that is. You don't have to be as extreme as the letterbox format of wide-screen movies on a 4:3 TV, but some subtle bordering can save a whole lot of faffing around with page formats, redrawing or panel rearranging.

Yeah, guess so, but I'm not doing them. I tried them when I began working on the comic, but they looked bad, so I changed to what it's like now.

Oh I don't really mean they have to be "black", what I mean is just expanding or reducing the widths of the border thing you currently use (I said black because that's the colour of mine), in your case it'd be that lovely reddish browny coloured on you have

But I like putting one panel in the background, so no margins there:P
Maybe I should start preparing pages in bigger format than I use, giving that panel blended edges in case I needed it this way? I'm not sure my computer can take any bigger canvas, though:S

Hmm, if you want the page slightly longer then perhaps american sized comics format? Generally american comics are reprinted in europe so it shouldn't be impossible to get that done on paper

How/where would you be printing it anyway? Europe? USA? Elsewhere?
Europe's more focused on A4 or similar iso formats (seen comics in A5 or B5 etc). If it's an american printer/publisher, standard comics.

According to Wiki:


Important thing: whichever format, if you want your art to reach from edge to edge of the page, you need to draw it larger anyway. Since pages WILL shift during printing/cutting, every printer (and so every publisher) requires additional margins which are usually 1/8th or 1/4th of an inch. Any art that's supposed to "bleed" off the page (meaning reach to the edge of it) has to also cover that area. This way any kind of shift in trimming will NOT leave you with white lines on the edges of the pages.

Hope any of that helps at least a little.

Um, wider Panels on A4 either turn out too narrow and too long or there's disproportional spacing between comic columns. It really kept bugging me.

I have no idea what standard comic format is, I never buy comics


First aim would be the US, since it has the biggest comic market, also the comic is in English, and I'm not going to translate it myself. But if I get a chance to publish elsewhere instead, why not?


Yeah, there's bleed, I remember about that

Guess I'll paint the thing in Letter format (+0,25" margin cut out from web version), and if I need to convert it to ISO, I'll just dump black margins on the top and bottom, it looks better than margins on the sides I would get from converting the other way. It's probably the best compromise here.

I can see DD butchered my wiki quote, heh. Anyway, the size is 6.625w X 10.25h, which is ROUGHLY proportional to 2x3 (roughly as it's actually a TINY bit longer). So I guess you could add another layer of panels on a page this way, haha.



Well, then it'll have to be as a graphic novel (which I'm sure you're aiming for anyway) because if it was in single issue format, well, the stores can be picky about those (they generally shun everything that's not either standard size, "golden age standard" which is slightly bigger, or square format).

Personally Im aiming for sizes proportional to 5x7.5 or 6x9 or 8x12, as this can be positioned on roughly any kind of paper (with the exception of square/almost square formats I guess, haha) if there's no bleed involved.



Yeah, had to mention bleeds as I messed up mine back in the day and had to extend art on all the pages that had bleeds (not that many pages luckily, but still).

An interesting thing about bleeds:
I've done a fair bit of commercial work for various kinds of printing and each printer always has their own print template setup with specific rules about the bleed width, where cutlines go and the border limit for text within the cutlines, not to mention different rules on minim DPI, how much and what kind of black to use, types of transparency, fonts embedded, linked, supplied separately, or in curves and outlines... file formats galore... and more. T_T

But anyway, I'm used to dealing with all their silly rules so when I was designing a set of wedding invitations for a friend I was prepared to be assaulted with more. I was resigned to it... That moment when you take the work that you've been slaving over and perfecting to your client's wishes for ages and then have to reformat it all to cope with the printer's requirements.
But all the printer said was "fine". No registration marks, no limits on how close to the edge the text could be, no limit on minimum point size for fonts and no, absolutely N O bleed what-so-ever.

After the second proof the things were perfect. All cut perfectly too. It was a beautiful job.

...I doubt you'd be as lucky with comic pages though, this was fairly high quality card stock, especially compared to the stuff comics are printed on.

Yeah, I'm aiming for graphic novel, but there's no chance it all goes in one volume. It reaches 300 pages by Chapter 4, and there's at least 3 times this much. I suspect it would best be printed one chapter per issue, but how am I to tell...


Wait, they might want fonts in vector graphic files, not ttf? :O
I might be in trouble because of resolution. My program has limit of 5000px to 5000px of canvas size (which my computer can't handle anyway) which makes it 300dpi max. Though Inverloch was in 300dpi too, and Sarah somehow managed to have it printed.

Also, reminded me:
"Dear Ms/Mr X,
There was a necessity to make a few corrections to the material you sent us:
- we replaced dialog on pages xx,xx,xx... as we believe the vocabulary used there would be too difficult and confusing for the readers
- we changed spelling of several names to make the pronunciation more obvious
- we deleted pages xx,xx,xx... because we found the scenes too brutal for younger readers
- we edited art on pages xx,xx,xx... to make it more acceptable for younger readers
- we removed the additional material at the end of the volume to make space for advertisements(...)"
I wonder how many people fell victim to this, two of these happened to my friend (the ad space and replacing dialog, though in her case the publisher thought the comic should be published as PG-rated and they were afraid that some dialog would prevent it from being approved as such (or sth like that, I have no idea how the system works in Germany), so they asked my friend to send them edited dialogs if she wanted to keep the PG-rating).

publisher/printer requirements...

I know (from reading various posts by people who worked for these publishers) DC and Avatar ask for 600dpi, Image takes anything 300dpi and up, probably so do smaller publishers too... on the other hand Japanese publishers demand 1200 dpi and French publishers want if possible that the b&w art is 1200dpi and color at least 300dpi (yeah, provided separately)...

I'll stick to RGB-friendly ka-blam for now, thank you :D (just keep your colors in the gamut and they'll look fine... hell, even those few spots where I went out of that range printed quite well too).

For pure true color drawings or photos, 300 dpi is enough. But for B/W drawings, you need 1200 dpi for good quality.
Comics are a mixture of both. So if you like good results, give them 1200 dpi.

I would suggest to create everything in high resolution. It is allways easier to downsize it for the web than to upsize it later for paper print.

Paper formats don't play such a big roll. If your drawings are good, the publisher will find a way to print it on paper. It helps to use allways the same format (no matter if A4, US-Letter or whatever), instead of creating a wild mix of different sized pages.

A new comic blockbuster book series like good old Akira? I remember reading all 14 or so books in my local comic store
A series of books has the advantage that you don't need to have everything to start publishing and hopefully earn money.
It has the disadvantage that you are bound to continue drawing. Deadline pressure can be killing stuff.

Finalizing anything before you know what your publisher's specs are is a bad idea either way. Like ozoneocean says, every printer will have different specs, and it can generally get really annoying. When I do commissions like CD artwork, I always ask for all of that stuff before I even start working - or, if the customer can't give me the info, I make sure they agree that it's their problem, not mine.

Scan at the highest resolution you can, letter on the un-cropped file and keep that with the letters in vector format as a separate file in case you need it. And generally, if you want to be flexible, don't use bleeds. Or as someone else has already said, since the standard US comic dimensions are often used in Europe for translated reprints, that's probably a safer bet than A4.