I was talking to an editor friend these days about this idea I have, and we were thinking about other longer stories, some which were an influence on my idea, and others which were similar in scope, and where these stories drank from, and how did they start, and how far they eventually went, whether knowingly from the beginning or not.
These long stories take time, and there’s never a good moment to start, but start you must, and eventually you’ll run out of excuses.
Here are some numbers, starting from one I saw last week online and which was the spark that made me start thinking about this. Michel Fiffe posted on his Instagram that he finished Copra with issue 50, and that it took him 1366 pages to tell that story. He self published the first issue in November of 2012, so that’s also 13 years working on the book.
Jeff Smith worked on Bone from 1991 until 2004. Another 13 years to make 55 issues. The massive Bone one volume collected edition has 1360 pages.
The Hernandez brothers self published the first issue of Love and Rockets in 1981. This boxset collection of the first 50 issues, released to celebrate 40 years of its initial release, has 2200 pages. The Bros continue to craft new stories with their characters to this day, so this is an ever growing number of pages.
The list goes on.
Other epic long stories involve creative teams, meaning that there’s a writer and there’s an artist (at least). Over at the Inkpulp podcast, Matteo Scalera and guest Nick Dragotta both share their experiences working on long creator owned sagas (Black Science for Matteo, and East of West for Nick). Matteo worked from 2013 until 2019 to draw all 43 issues (the collected editions go over 1270 pages). Nick worked also from 2013 until 2019 to draw 45 issues. There’s an East of West Compendium edition, collecting the entire story, with 1320 pages. You’ll see that these stories have a similar amount of pages as Bone or Copra, but were done in half the time. That’s one positive point of collaborating with other writers or artists. The longest stories Bá and I have been involved with (Casanova and Umbrella Academy) are a result of such collaborations, and are both far from done.
My friend told me I can’t focus too much on the end of the road when thinking about big stories like that, otherwise I’ll never start. I should focus on the characters and where they are at the beginning of the story , and go from there.
Let’s go from there.
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Be safe, be kind, be curious.
Pa-ZOW!
Fábio Moon
Moon Base, São Paulo
May 12th, 2025