The photo above is from early August, when the artist Ken Avidor biked to Minneapolis from St. Paul to pick up the hardcover copies of his comic printing, Bicyclopolis: A Tale of Human-Powered Time Travel. Our shipping department (Eric, Chris S., and Chris F.) are pictured in the background. They convinced Ken to let us courier some of the books to St. Paul. Ken agreed—St. Paul has a lot of hills and a load of hardcover books is heavy! (Also, Ken was stung by a bee on his bike ride over to Bookmobile, so this is not his favorite photo. Sorry, Ken!)
The Artist
Ken Avior is a cartoonist and sketch artist who, after living in New York City for a long while, moved to Minneapolis, then St. Paul. Besides his comic book art, he also does courtroom sketches. In 2013, Ken and his wife, the artist Roberta Avidor, got rid of their car and house and moved into a condo in St. Paul. Now they walk, bike, or use the light rail to get around. But mostly bike! And after writing this post, I found out Ken and Roberta just moved to Indianapolis. Ken reports it’s a great biking city—very flat!
Bicyclopolis is the story of Dan, who uses a machine (pictured below) found by his Uncle Fred to travel through time. On a bike, of course.
Comic Printing at Bookmobile
I worked with David Steinlicht for the printing of Ken’s book. David is a comic artist who has printed his comic books with Bookmobile in the past: The Big All Small Comics Collection, In This Corner, and Cornered! David designed the cover for the Bicylopolis and helped Ken get the interior art print ready. From David,
Your excellent printing really shows off Ken’s wonderful artwork.
Bicylopolis was perfect bound and cased in, with 4-color printed end sheets. It’s 8-½” x 11″ with 98 interior pages printed 4-color on 80-lb. gloss-coated white stock. We used PUR for the binding of the coated pages, and cased it in with a 4-color printed case with gloss lamination.
Why Bookmobile for Comic Printing
Our short-run print quality is excellent, our pricing is affordable, and we offer many options. Customize your hardcovers with fold-out inserts, translucent vellum dust jackets, large-area foil stamps, printed end sheets, and more. Browse our Gallery to see the full breadth of what we offer!
Bookmobile offers PUR binding for a durable bind for coated interior stocks. And with runs of just 25 copies to 2,000 copies, you can print short runs and order reprints as needed—which means no worries about storing inventory or cash flow complications.