Sponsor: How Comics Were Made by Glenn Fleishman ⇥ glog.glennf.com

Priced originally at $65, it’s currently on sale for $39 (plus shipping) — no coupon is required.

How Comics Were Made follows the intensive, magical, and industrial journey a newspaper comic takes from a cartoonist’s hand through the transformative production process to make it ready to appear as ink on newsprint—and behind, onto digital displays. The book richly illustrates the stages through never-before-seen printing artifacts dating back as far as the 1890s, original artwork from cartoonists like Bill Watterson, Lynn Johnston, Garry Trudeau, and Charles Schulz.

Author Glenn Fleishman uses historic images, preserved items, and industrial films to reconstruct nearly forgotten processes of the metal relief era of printing, as well as more modern periods, as newspaper and printing in general shifted into photographic reproduction using flat metal offset printing, and then, ultimately, digital processes from drawing tablets to laser-etched plates. The story is told through historic and modern interviews. Glenn interviewed over 40 cartoonists and others in the comics world, including rare talks with Trudeau and Watterson.

If you love comics and history or know someone who does, How Comics Were Made provides a unique lens from the dawn of newspaper cartoons to the present.

(The current deep discount stems from the book being printed and warehoused in Canada. With tariffs possible by March, the author is eager to have the book reach an audience before it becomes unaffordable to import.)