Modern family: Addition

Preparations and Volume Books (1)

I more or less had an idea on how Dunphy Comics is being eyed by people in the industry and certain toy-making groups.

DC's failed trend following is probably the most aggressive attack of the competition. Then, Hasbro's phone lobbying was the most annoying while Marvel Comics' inaction was probably just a calm before the storm.

Whatever those cases are and how they affected my comic book company, I have mostly prepared myself for most of them while I could still do adaptations to unexpected attack strategies.

I even had made a lot of defenses in extremely annoying scenarios such as the Comics Code Authority and the protest of 'Karen' parents.

A disclaimer had always been printed out along the credits just as how the 'work of fiction' disclaimer had always been ever-present in film credits.

Meanwhile, the Comic Age Rating System or CARS had always been plastered in the back covers of every Dunphy issue and the officializing of it is underway ever since My legal department was hired.

Unlike the CCA, CARS was inspired by Hollywood's MPAA rating system.

CCA was always bending the contents of comic books to its restrictive will while the CARS would set and separate the contents of comic books apart by age appropriateness.

If the CCA made every comic book under its reign as cheesy and childish, CARS would still allow things to be childishly cheesy while also opening up the avenue for serious, mature, and even grittier content creation.

Although the CCA means well, I simply didn't want that restriction and wanted to free myself and my all-age readers to many possibilities.

CARS would effectively expand the age demographic of comics in the 1970s- 80s and make things feel like the new century era where the CCA was obsolete.

The protests of 'Karen' justice warriors would also be rendered moot by CARS as its legal officialness has been approved and would become a norm.

One would always wonder why comic books and even cartoons would bend to the will of restrictive guidelines. Whenever comics and cartoons did bend their will, the bias and the ideology that such things are only for children would be set.

I don't want that for my comics and my future animation venture, so the staple of theater viewing would become the staple of my published comic books and greenlit animation.

If Hollywood movies and TV shows are for all ages as long as they abide by age restrictions, then so can Dunphy Comics and Dunphy Animation.

As for the matter of Dunphy Toys and the incessant request of toy companies, there was never a chance to consider authorizing others when the Dunphys could just do it themselves.

Poor Hasbro should just probably let go of the their ambition of getting Transformers trademark and with these transforming toys along with other popular Dunphy characters, Dunphy toys will enter toy market with massive fanfare.

In the matter of Marvel's fair game of improving their quality and reaching Dunphy level, I would probably just welcome it as quality improvement and a just and fair game, but since I have my motives for Marvel franchise so it would be better if they fail too.

At the end of all this pandering, Dunphy Comics has also made its contingencies for all the contingencies that the competitors could potentially come up with.

Although it wasn't anything perfect, I'm already quite satisfied with the fact that it made things stable as the company moves forward for more innovations.

They could attack all they want and we will defend against them as we can. That is the entire gist of being in a competitive business.

Of course, I wouldn't entangle myself for too long with all the many possible back and forth between Dunphy Comics and its identified competitions.

I have several other matters to attend to and it pertains to the fact that Dragonball #20 and TMNT #13 had finally been achieved.

Reaching the tenth issue of any comic title was an amazing milestone that takes time and effort. Of course, celebrating such an achievement was a necessity.

However, instead of celebrating and partying in a literal sense, I took it as a method to move the comic book business forward.

If the comic book industry thought that Dunphy Comics would be satisfied enough with industry-changing story methodologies and popularity surveys, then they might have to think again as 'trade paperback' is about to have new entrants in the form of Dunphy Volume Books.

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As far as I could recall from my memories, trade paperbacks or 'trade' is a collection of stories originally published in comic books.

Derived from the standard practice within the publishing trade as issuing a version of a hardback book in a less expensive form

It was essentially a reprinting of many issues in book format that usually presents a complete miniseries, a story arc from a single title, or a series of stories with an arc or common theme.

For many years, trade paperbacks were mainly used to reprint older comic book stories that were no longer available to the average reader. Original copies of old comic stories were scarce, and often very expensive when found due to their rarity after all.

These collections of reprints were united by their title character or series but only accidentally had any commonality of story or theme, and their existence as books was clearly an afterthought.

In Japan, their version of the trade paperback is usually called the tankobon volume. Which is a collection of 8-10 manga chapters that have been previously been published as part of a collective magazine publication like Shonen Jump.

As someone whose published works are essentially a mix of inspiration from American comic books and Japanese manga, I just had to collate ten of my published issues and reprint them in book form.

It would essentially be a trade paperback but with the tankobon volume cohesiveness.

Dunphy Volume Books would be the amalgamations of an American collection of messy comic book issues while keeping Japanese manga's penchant for collected manga chapters.

Every successive Dunphy Comics issues were connected and progressive after all, so I got the gist of the American way and the Japanese methodology.

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Of course, I and the Dunphy print outsources had long worked out on the details of the Dunphy Volume Books.

I even already have Dragonball Volume 1 and TMNT Volume 1 copies.

It took quite a lot of trial and error to get the final iteration I was satisfied with. Flipping thin comic book issues were different from flipping thick books after all.

Fortunately, Our printing contacts were quite accomodating at my nitpickiness to design quality and book flipping convenience.

Eventually, both parties got the printing specifications worked out in the end and book-level printing was done in masses.

Baxter printing, longevity, and book cover integrity were fine-tuned in all of them.

Cheap and thin comic book issues were supposedly disposable after all while our relatively pricey but volumetric 'books' are for the long run.

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All in all, the Dunphy Volume Books are on the last stretches of its debut and everyone in the Dunphy Comics HQ are looking forward to owning their copies.

They were also expecting what kind of stir it would make in the industry and how it would be tied back to Dunphy Comics once again.