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I didn't realize we were on the same side of the Bay, Zaki. We're practically neighbors--I'm in the Oakland hills.

Anyhow, the books I left with H&R should be back in my hands a week from now. I'll post pictures right away.
And since I got the box that I thought Jim was holding for me back, if the first order looks good, I'll run it through next, since it's also stuff I'd wanted to get signed in San Diego.

I didn't pick the books up until this morning.

They look great!
I'm extremely pleased, and I left fourteen more volumes with them to be bound (backlog caused by the LBC situation; it's almost all stuff I want to take to San Diego.)
Books are at home and I'm at work, so no pics until this evening, but it's good quality control: neat corners, no glue seeping or oozing. Nice job all around. Overall, I have to say that they look at least as good as LBC's work as far as neatness and tightness is concerned, and the lettering is actually clearer and sharper.
In fact, without my asking, and at no extra charge, he hand-lettered the actual titles on six of the eight spines in larger type.
I gave them a certain amount of leeway to exercise judgment, and Joel chose not to trim the right hand edge of the comics (but did trim top and bottom), on the grounds that it would cut into the cover (and some interior) art. I'm not sure how I feel about that, but I'll probably get used to it. If I don't, I'll let him know I'd like the books he's working on now trimmed.

Total bill for eight volumes was $152.95 (this includes California sales tax, which shouldn't apply to any of you sending books from out of state.) That's a base price of fifteen bucks a volume, plus $2.50 each for panel lines (and also includes head and tail lines.) No shipping charges, since I dropped off and picked up.

My wife Sue went along with me today, since it's her day off, and Joel and his partner Jim gave us a quick tour of the bindery, so we got to see an oversewing machine at work. It's a very small operation--no more than 3,000 square feet, I'd guess, and I think just the two of them operating it--but they certainly seem to have a lot of work; there was a pallet full of unbound page blocks of Statutes of the State of California, big stacks of magazines and journals being bound for libraries, and what Jim was binding on the oversewing machine was a pile of movie scripts. Very interesting.

Joel told me that one person who heard about them on the Internet has already called.

They don't take credit cards(!), but he said he'd have no problem with shipping an invoice with the books. This seems a bit too trusting to me, but that's what he said...

These are the eight books I picked up at H&R on Friday morning:






Notice how clear and sharp the lettering is




A couple close shots of corner folds






These are a bit tight in the gutter, but that's because they were made from trade paperbacks that didn't have a lot of gutter to begin with--and there's no actual loss anyway.






You can see here that there's plenty of room in the gutter in this more standard volume made from newsstand comics



...and you can also see the right hand edge, which isn't trimmed. I'm still deciding whether I like that...


Anyway, I'm impressed. They're going to get a lot more business from me.

They run a Thursday delivery route to various colleges and libraries, and will drop off at homes if they're near where the route takes them. I don't know what municipalities it covers (San Francisco and Oakland/Berkeley for sure, but I don't know how far afield.) Zaki, I doubt that it would go as far as Union City, but who knows...