It’s a tale of production specs and hurt feelings. Megan Kelso put together Scheherazade, an anthology of female cartoonists for the New York City indie Soft Skull Press (which, though it’s a propos of nothing here, is a company known for being Canuck author-friendly). Once she saw the final copies, she was horrified at the printing job and is now essentially disowning the project. “This is not a matter of the artwork looking too dark or too light or less than perfect,” Kelso writes in an online posting. “The affected stories have lost all their gray shading, background detail, and in some cases, faces and text are unreadable. Readers know that in comics, images and text are equal partners; comics need clear images as much as words to be understood.” Soft Skull publisher Richard Nash has prepared a long (very long) response, which may be of interest to the production types among our readers, who will readily empathize with woeful sagas of back-and-forthing with printers and creators. (Thanks to Bookslut.com for the links.)

Related links:
Megan Kelso’s posting on Scheharazade
Download a PDF of Soft Skull publisher Richard Nash’s response