Ready to level up your comics skillset?

Welcome to your new favorite landing page, FILTH & GRAMMAR: The Comic Book Creator’s (Secret) Website. I’m Shelly Bond, and I’ve been editing comics for over three decades at corporate behemoths (see DC/Vertigo from 1992-2016), medium-sized corporations (Black Crown for IDW 2017-2019), and via offregister.press the comics and design lab I run with my partner in comics crimes, Philip Bond. In addition to editing over 25,000 comic book pages from The Invisibles to Fables to Eve Stranger, I’ve spent the past five years creating and designing a graphic memoir trilogy that documents my life and times as a comic book editor. I’ve also been teaching what it means to legit edit comics and graphic novels online via Zoom and for Portland State University since 2023. I’m a freelance editor on the Eisner Award-winning series Bitter Root, published by Image, and I assembled and edit American Caper, the first comic book from Absurd Ventures, that’s published monthly through Dark Horse.

Comic Book Editing is much more than setting and smashing deadlines, maintaining schedules and putting out fires. It’s knowing how to manage talent, troubleshoot when things start to fall apart, and prioritize/triage in a finite amount of time. What to take care of first/now/next or next time, from single issues to trade paperbacks to collected editions. It’s about time management, delegating what you can’t do because, while you have eyes in the back of your head, you don’t have a third arm.

All that aside, it’s filthandgrammar.com that I’m the most excited about because it’s a long time coming. The goal of this site is not just to document the things that worked for me as I concocted my own brand of editing comics through a specific blend of art and alchemy, method & madness. It's intended for newcomers who might have discovered zines in the stacks of a used bookshop; art students who wonder what happens once graduation comes and goes; and comic industry vets who may have wondered why they’re no longer getting work even though they have a decent track record.

Here's a quick clip of an interview with artist Lid Thom to give you an idea of what to expect.

What do I get?

Weekly:

Tuesdays: Standard and Deluxe Subscribers Dispatch from F&G HQ
Thursdays: Deluxe Subscribers Dispatch from F&G HQ

Dispatches will include one or more of the following:

For Standard & Deluxe Subscribers:

·      A Drive-By: Anatomy of a Page
·      Process: Before, During, After, and What Can Possibly Go Wrong?
·      Repeat Offenders: Mini Comic for Every Stage of Making Comics
·      How to Break In: Get Visible, Do Your Research, Timing is Everything, Pick your Moment, Follow the Forward Imperative
·      Random Selection: I close my eyes and pick a single issue of a comic and talk about it from every angle. Secret history, best panel, lessons learned, etc.
·      Annotating the Trilogy:
Throughout the year, we’ll take 4 months to annotate each of the graphic memoirs and proffer up more examples of how to level up your editing skills and make your own comics and graphic novels.
January through April: Filth & Grammar: The Comic Book Editor’s (Secret) Handbook
May through August: Fast Times in Comic Book Editing
September through December: i-Doppelgänger

Final Friday of the Month: F&G Digital Digest featuring a summary of the salient points of the month plus regular features:
·      Editors Assemble: I ask the questions and editors I admire from the corridors of DC/Vertigo come back to haunt me.
·      Hey, Gobby! Letters page where your questions go under the lights. Some rules apply.
·      Bonus Beats: Playlists for every editing occasion.

For Deluxe Subscribers Only:

·      Riding Shotgun: We follow a 4-page comic book story from idea to execution with writer Oliver Mertz. We discuss the pitch, edit the script (art direction and dialogue), hire the rest of the team, art direct the thumbnails, pencils, lettering, inks, coloring, proofread and go over corrections digitally. You’ll be there, too.
·   A Deep-Dive: A 15 to 30 minute video with a special artist/guest from famous cover painters to up-and-coming cartoonists who’ve been working with me in recent months.

Second Saturday Live on Zoom: From 11 – noon PST. Over the course of the year we'll rotate from AMA, discussions on crowdfunding, curating anthologies, and my personal favorite, Finish The Bloody Thing Already.

Thanks for signing up to filthandgrammar.com. The action begins Tuesday January 6th!

If I were you, I’d have four words for me:
Show Me The Ink.