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Never Comes Tomorrow

I made a graphic novel about my parents and I need help making handbound copies for each of them.

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Never Comes Tomorrow

Never Comes Tomorrow

Never Comes Tomorrow

Never Comes Tomorrow

Never Comes Tomorrow

I made a graphic novel about my parents and I need help making handbound copies for each of them.

I made a graphic novel about my parents and I need help making handbound copies for each of them.

I made a graphic novel about my parents and I need help making handbound copies for each of them.

I made a graphic novel about my parents and I need help making handbound copies for each of them.

Frank Santoro
Frank Santoro
Frank Santoro
Frank Santoro
2 Campaigns |
Pittsburgh, PA, United States
$950 USD 37 backers
36% of $2,600 Flexible Goal Flexible Goal
Highlights
Mountain Filled 2 Projects Mountain Filled 2 Projects
Overview
I'm passing the hat. If you want to use PayPal please go to https://fundrazr.com/d1Gjk6?ref=ab_16oi89

thee Rowhouse Residency 

I'm passing the hat. If you want to use PayPal Go to http://fundrazr.com/d1Gjk6?ref=ab_16oi89

The Rowhouse Residency in Pittsburgh has been going on for a little over a year now. It's really mutated me. Having "my school" operating and having students come through my door and see me working on my book has changed me. What's the book I'm doing, you ask? I'm doing a comic book memoir about my parents for my French publisher. It will come out in France in a few months.

Since late last year I have been working on this memoir. Well, for years really in stops and starts. Then when the school, the residency, got going last year it really settled me down into a solid routine. My job, as I saw it, was to provide an example to the residents of how to use time and make comics over a longterm schedule. Deadlines and having a daily practice is the name of the game for me and the school. And that is precisely what I was able to communicate to my students in this first full year of the residency.

I made my soft deadline of July 4th 2017 and am now working on revisions as well as the French translation. See, it comes out in France first. In French. But I wrote it in English. So now it is translated and I am re-lettering it in French.

Meanwhile, my parents, want to read the book. They know I have been working on this book for a few years. They're ready. Did I mention that they are divorced and don't talk to each other? Yeah, so there's that. 

So, I sat them down separately and read the book to them. They hated it! Well, not really, but if this is the movie of their life, both of them couldn't help talking back to the movie screen. And I had to be the annoyed usher who told them to keep it down while the movie was playing. Seriously. 

OK, they didn't hate it. But how would you feel if your child drew a comic book about your life when you were 19 years old. Lots of embarassing stories get told. That's just the way it has to be.

Truth is, they loved the book. Well, they loved the unbound original art pages, which are what I carefully presented and read to them. And each asked when they could read it "as a book" and have a copy of the book.

I'd like them to read the book again - in private, in their own homes. I'd like them to be able to flip through the pages and reflect on the memories of our family. This is really made for them, and by presenting them with these printed versions I hope I can make that clear them.

I explained to them that it has to come out first in French and then it will be published in English "in a couple years".

My Dad asked, "I have to wait two years before I can read it as a book?" I replied yes, essentially, it will be roughly two years or so before it is published in English." "Bummer", he said.

Indeed. 

So, here we are. 

I have a good friend is an expert bookbinder. They said they could teach me how to make a handmade book that looks and lasts better than any book currently made by a machine. "Kettle stitch" they call it. Apparently this was how all lenghty books were made, by hand, by stacking the signatures and sewing them in a "kettle stitch" fashion. Now when you get a great big book bound at the overseas printer, it often falls apart after one reading. Most book bindings are done with glue. If it is small enough you can "saddle stitch", which is oftena fancy expression for stapling. So, if you can staple it because it is too thick, you usually settle for a glue binding. Well, I'm only going to settle for a kettle stitch, and that is going to take time and money.

Money to hire my friend to teach me how to do it and then of course my time to do it. However, it dawned on me that this is precisely the skill I should be offering my students and residents here at the school. There are many small press printers, but only a few small press binders. Maybe we could take a different approach simply in order to avoid glue bindings for larger works. It might work.

So, I'm passing the hat. I don't have any money to spare for such a personal project. The crowdfund money for the house from a few years ago is still propping up the house. This money will go into making two copies of the book, one for each of my parents. Any leftover money will go into bookbinding materials for the residency.

I'm asking for $2600. Here's the breakdown: Ink for my home printer is $600. Bookbinding materials are $100. Hiring my friend to teach me how to "kettle stitch", nine 3 hour sessions, is $900. My time for doing this project, which might take 6 months, is $1000.

RE perks: Each PDF is carefully curated with my favorite posts and includes a new intro by me. I've been writing about comics and posting comics online for many years, but sometimes I worry my online archive isn't accessible or well maintained. I don't want the Cold Heat blog, which I've maintained since 2008, to disappear if Blogspot is deleted tomorrow! So a secondary goal of this project is to produce a more polished, archival version of the online work I've made over the years. I think this is an important part of my artistic output and so I'm excited to reintroduce it to my fans.

If 200 people buy one $10 pdf, I'm set. Lots of good stuff to choose from. All available immediately. 

Thanks for looking. Over and out.

Frank Santoro

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All Four pdfs
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All Four pdfs

$30 USD $40 USD (25% off)
All four pdf collections, you get Layout/Color Workbooks, Best of Frank's ComicsComics, Best of the Cold Heat Blog and Best of Travelogues. All four for 30 bux. Read the full description of each below. Not enough room to describe how good of a deal this is- you get thousands of pages of material that I've left scattered over the digital landscape.
Included Items
  • Layout and Color Workbooks pdf
  • Best of Frank's ComicsComics
  • Best of the Cold Heat Blog
  • Best of Travelogues
Estimated Shipping
August 2017
23 claimed
Layout and Color Workbooks pdf

Layout and Color Workbooks pdf

$10 USD
All of my key writings on comic book layouts and color theories. This is "my book" on comics theory collected here for the first time. Hundreds of pages of material. Plus "Notes on Scroll Comics". From the introduction "I may not have the distance on the material collected here because I still use it everyday in my teaching. And in my own process."
Included Items
  • Layout and Color Workbooks pdf
Estimated Shipping
August 2017
1 claimed
Best of ComicsComics pdf

Best of ComicsComics pdf

$10 USD
This is the best of my writings from the ComicsComics blog, 2007-2011. From the introduction "People who didn't like Cold Heat (my PictureBox comic with Ben Jones) would often like my writing about comics and then through those "common ground" conversations I could often win that person over to at least look at my work in a different way."
Included Items
  • Best of Frank's ComicsComics
Estimated Shipping
August 2017
4 claimed
Best of the Cold Heat Blog pdf

Best of the Cold Heat Blog pdf

$10 USD
This is the "Best of" my Cold Heat blog. This is the good stuff. From Andrew White's introduction "The material on this blog captures Frank at an interesting point in his career. He had done some teaching work, but was not yet well known as an educator. As the blog moves forward in time, you'll see that begin to change."
Included Items
  • Best of the Cold Heat Blog
Estimated Shipping
August 2017
0 claimed
Best of Travelogues pdf

Best of Travelogues pdf

$10 USD
From the introduction "I moved from NYC back to Pittsburgh in 2007, and then to New Mexico in 2010, and in between I kept going to NYC for the summer and blogged about it all in my way. Lots of operatic pathos and willful suffering for one's art. A parade of mishaps and mistaken identity, city to city, year to year. I drove 24,000 miles in 2012."
Included Items
  • Best of Travelogues
Estimated Shipping
August 2017
1 claimed

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