Making Indie Comics 101

In the Beginning... Everyone's gotta start somewhere...

Becoming a comic book publisher was never my intent when venturing into comics long ago. All I wanted to be was an Inker. I wanted to crack open that bottle and inhale the intoxicating fumes and endlessly and patiently protect the white space from involuntary ink blotches that magnetically find their way to my blackened fingers. MMM... Those were the days...

But as fate and necessity would have it, I became not only an Inker, Letterer, Colorist and Graphic Artist. I became a Publisher. After years of submissions to various publishers with little to no press time, I said "To Heck with it" and decided to Publish on my own. Printing your own Indie Comic book is a very rewarding process and definitely worth your time and trouble.

You see, what I have found over the years of working in the Indie Comic scene for nearly a decade now is that it is impossible to do just one job in comics. The more you can do on your own means less time waiting for others or dealing with their problems.

With a little dedication you can produce and publish amazing comic books on your own with all levels of skill, time or financial investment. Partnerships are important in this process as normally one person can't do everything (unless of course you're Jack Kirby). And it's important to focus your time on the part of comics you like doing the most (inking in my case), otherwise you'll go crazy.

While I publish comic books for my own imprint, I'm always helping friends out with their books whenever I can. Getting your name on a credits list in any book is worth more than gold in my book. You have to love comic books and making comics to survive.

So it's my hope that I can somehow help you avoid the bumps, bruises and breaks by sharing my experiences and methods in running a comic book publication. Everyone's situation is different, so I'll try to be as inclusive as possible, of course I'd appreciate whatever commentary anyone would like to add. I'm not an authority by any means, nor do I claim to be. But I know what works for me and what doesn't. I don't make allot of money at this, on the contrary, everything I make goes back into making more comics. It's a passion, not a paycheck.

The Hub pages that follow will walk you through my whole process of how to make an Indie Comic book. I'll share what I know about the topics of:

The Comic making process

Script writing

Page layouts

Pencilling

Inking

Lettering

Coloring

Prepress and Page Layout

Comic Book Marketing

Digital and Paper Comics

Manga Studio EX

Printers

Making your own comic books from scratch

You can find Hub pages for each of these subjects in the links section below ↓

I'll also show you the manual and digital methods I have used. Currently I create all of my books completely in a digital format. I primarily use Manga Studio EX, but also use Adobe Photoshop, Illistrator, Indesign and Corel Painter in various combinations.

Hopefully you will find these topics useful to help you along your road to publishing your own comic books. Good luck with your adventures!

Your Friend and Fan,

Mike Rickaby
CE Publishing Group

© 2011 Comic Enterprise Publishing Group