THE COMIC BOOK PRESSER
About Spine Roll Fix
A spine roll is a common defect that is often caused from either the book pages being curled around while reading or from a book sitting in a pile of comics for a very long time. The result is a fanning of the pages along the left edge of the back of the comic. The easiest way to determine if your book has a spine roll is to look at the out right front edge and see if the front and back cover line up. Pages can stick out past the cover on the right edge but if they do not fan on the left back and if the front and back covers line up, the book does not have a spine roll.
The pic to the right shows what a spine roll looks like on the left and then what it looked like fixed on the right.
Spine Roll Fix Examples
The image on the right shows what the back of this book looked like with a spine roll on the left and then fixed on the right.
Below are more spine roll fix examples.
Below are NOT spine roll fix examples.
Next we will go over a few examples of what are NOT a spine roll and explain them. First we have a cover miss-wrap. This mainly affects vintage comics and occurs during the binding process. This is when the cover is not aligned with the pages when it is cut and a portion of the back cover has wrapped around to the front. It is typically a white line running along the front left edge.
The second most common defect that people think is a spine roll fix is what is commonly called a Long Box Dent. This is when the outer right front cover edge still lines up but the book has a dent that runs along the spine. This can happen when the book is in a long box and is sticking out between two other books. It is very common and should always be removed after a press. Below is an example of a Long Box Dent on the left and once it was removed on the right. You can see it in the shadow that runs along the spine.
