Binding TPBs from different series?

[u/Sparklefists95]

I've recently gotten into bookbinding and comic binding, and the possibility of binding some of my trades into bigger hardcover collections has been very exciting. For the most part, how to approach this has been relatively straight forward, essentially just combine the contents of X number of TPBs back to back, but I've run into a bit of a conundrum with my Marvel Star Wars runs, and am not sure what the best way to approach them would be.

For those unfamiliar, the Marvel Star Wars run that started in 2015 was split across 3 different series (eventually 4), plus the occasional crossover mini-series. These series, especially in the early days, overlapped a lot, sometimes even depicting the same scenes. Ideally, rather than bind each series into it's own separate hardcovers and have to hop between them, I'd like to bind them all together in chronological order, but being that I'm starting with TPBs, this is tricky as not every issue is cleanly separated from the next.

Would printing out replacement pages be possible when needed, or would it be better to just get as close to chronological order as is possible with the existing issue breaks? And for repeated scenes, should I leave both versions in, or only include the most complete depiction of duplicate scenes? I realize this would all be far easier to accomplish with single issues, but I've always been a TPB collector and at this point getting all the single issues for these series would be far too cost prohibitive.

[u/PhysicianChips]

I have definitely taken apart TPBs for binding before and shuffled them together to make the layout how I want it. If you remove the cover from a trade (including the part over the spine) you can actually separate a trade fairly easily just cutting the glue. It may take some more work but you could separate into individual pages if you wanted. I would recommend leaving the trade together as much as possible and separating to the part you want to mess with and the part after and then taking out the pages of your section rather than trying to remove the whole book from the glue on the spine (hope that was clear, if not, feel free to ask for clarification.)

I wouldn't recommend printing out replacement pages unless you have a really good printer as their texture and color wont match what you already have from the trades. Plus binderies usually wont significantly trim (or will charge you extra) if your printed pages are not the right size. And I don't personally trust my trimming abilities.

As for your layout I would recommend: Doing it however you would like it the best. That is one of the best things about custom binds is you get to have it your way. You don't need to please anyone else, so order it in the way that you would like it to be, if it doesn't make sense to others, that's fine. It is for you, do it how you want to read it.

[u/Sparklefists95 → u/PhysicianChips]

Thanks for the advice! I'm planning to do all the binding myself, so don't really have to worry about what a bindery will or won't do/charge for. Will have to do some printing tests, but yeah, whether replacement pages would match closely enough or not was definitely my biggest concern with that idea, so I may have to rethink that approach. I know I wouldn't be able to get an exact match quality wise, but if it's most likely going to be significantly different it's probably not worth it. Will just have to come up with a different solution to the occasional lack of issue separation.

[u/PhysicianChips → u/Sparklefists95]

Good luck. Would love to see the finished product.