A01=Glenn Fleishman
archival
art
artifacts
Author_Glenn Fleishman
Bill watterson
Breaking Cat News
Calvin and Hobbes
cartoonists
cartoons
Category=AB
Category=AKLC
Christmas
coffee table book
comic strip
comic strips
comics history
design
digital
Doonesbury
eq_art-fashion-photography
eq_bestseller
eq_isMigrated=1
eq_isMigrated=2
eq_nobargain
eq_non-fiction
fans
For Better or For Worse
Funky Winkerbean
funnies
funny
funny pages
Garry Trudeau
gift
history
holiday
humor
illustration
interviews
Nancy
never before seen
newspapers
Non Sequitur
Peanuts
printing
production
research
secret santa
Syndication
techniques
visual
visual arts
Wallace the Brave
webcomics
white elephant
Zippy
Product details
- ISBN 9781524898779
- Weight: 1275g
- Dimensions: 274 x 218mm
- Publication Date: 03 Jul 2025
- Publisher: Andrews McMeel Publishing
- Publication City/Country: US
- Product Form: Hardback
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“No one, before now, has written a history of the comic strip as a technological artifact—not, at least, in such depth, and on such a sound foundation of research.” – Michael Chabon, author, The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay
If you love comics, you’ll love this visual history of comic strips featuring all of the methods, techniques, and wizardry that made the funny pages such an important staple of American life. Featuring interviews with dozens of the century's most famous cartoonists and hundreds of rare archival images.
How Comics Are Made covers the entire history of newspaper comics from a unique angle—how they were made and printed. This book combines years of research and dozens of interviews with cartoonists, historians, and production people to tell the story of how a comic starts with an artist’s hand and makes it way through transformations into print and onto a digital screen. You’ll see reproductions of art and artifacts that have never appeared in print anywhere, and some historic comics will appear for the first time ever in any medium in this book. And you’ll find out about metal etching, Dragon’s Blood (a real thing), flong (also a real thing), and the massively, almost impossibly complicated path that original artwork took to get onto newsprint in the days of metal relief printing.
The book is divided by time and transitions, from the start of consistently appearing daily and weekly comics in newspapers:
Each section features interviews with artists, reproductions of original cartoon art, printing and coloring artifacts, and the way cartoons appeared in print—or on screen.
If you love comics, you’ll love this visual history of comic strips featuring all of the methods, techniques, and wizardry that made the funny pages such an important staple of American life. Featuring interviews with dozens of the century's most famous cartoonists and hundreds of rare archival images.
How Comics Are Made covers the entire history of newspaper comics from a unique angle—how they were made and printed. This book combines years of research and dozens of interviews with cartoonists, historians, and production people to tell the story of how a comic starts with an artist’s hand and makes it way through transformations into print and onto a digital screen. You’ll see reproductions of art and artifacts that have never appeared in print anywhere, and some historic comics will appear for the first time ever in any medium in this book. And you’ll find out about metal etching, Dragon’s Blood (a real thing), flong (also a real thing), and the massively, almost impossibly complicated path that original artwork took to get onto newsprint in the days of metal relief printing.
The book is divided by time and transitions, from the start of consistently appearing daily and weekly comics in newspapers:
- The Early Days: From the Yellow Kid in the 1890s to the 1910s
- Syndication in Metal: When it became affordable to make hundreds or thousands of copies of daily strips to send around the country (or world), from the 1910s to 1970s
- Flatland: Newspapers’ switch from relief to flat printing and the shift to purely photographic transformations from the 1950s to the 1980s
- Pixel Perfect: The transition from photographic to digital, from scanning to digital creation, from the 1970s to 2000s and through the present day
- Webcomics and Beyond: Look, ma, no ink! Digital comics read online and sometimes put on press to make books
Each section features interviews with artists, reproductions of original cartoon art, printing and coloring artifacts, and the way cartoons appeared in print—or on screen.
Glenn Fleishman is a printing and comics historian and a long-time technology journalist. A regular contributor over decades to publications that include the Economist, the New York Times, Wired, and Fast Company, Fleishman spent a large part of his career reporting on what was just over the horizon, like ubiquitous access to wireless data and the rise of tiny satellites. He has appeared on All Things Considered, Morning Edition, Marketplace, and the BBC's Last Word. The editor and project manager of the three-volume Shift Happens history of keyboards, Fleishman splits his time now between intensive studies in material printing history from the 18th to 21st centuries, working with self-published authors to edit and produce their books, and writing hands-on advice for technology users. A two-time Jeopardy! champion, he lives in Seattle.
