Lunch Money Read Online Free

three shelves in the family room—and it was worth over ten thousand dollars. Once Greg had shown he knew how to take care of the comic books, he had been allowed to read and look at them all he wanted. Greg had even bought a few collectible comics of his own, mostly newer ones that weren’t very expensive.
    It was his love of comic books that had first gotten Greg interested in drawing. Comics had led Greg to books like How to Draw Comic-Book Villains, You Can Draw Superheroes, Make Your Own Comic-Book Art, and Draw the Monsters We Love to Hate. Back in third grade Greg had used his own money to buy india ink, dip pens, brushes, and paper at the art supply store. And drawing new comic-book characters was one of his favorite things to do—when he wasn’t earning money.
    That whole summer before sixth grade Greg had worked toward the launch of Chunky Comics. From the start he had felt pretty sure he could come up with a story idea, and he knew he would be able to do the drawings.
    But first he’d had to deal with a lot of how s: How does a whole comic book get put together? How big should each one be? How was he going to print them? How much would it cost him to make each one? And finally, how much money should he charge for his finished comic books—assuming he could actually make some?
    But one by one, Greg had found the answers. An encyclopedia article about printing books had helped a lot. It showed how pages of a book start as one large sheet of paper that gets folded in half several times. Each time the sheet is folded, the number of pages is doubled. So Greg took a piece of regular letter-size paper, and folded it in half three times the wayit showed in the encyclopedia. That one piece of paper turned into a chunky little sixteen-page book—Chunky Comics. It was so simple.

    But not really. Greg figured out that making little comic books was a ten-step process:
    1. Write a story that can be told on twelve to fourteen mini–comic book pages.
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    2. Sketch, draw, ink, and then letter all sixteen minipages—which include the front and back covers.

    3. Paste eight of the minipage drawings into their correct positions on a piece of paper to make “master copy one”—a sheet that can be copied again and again.
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    4. Paste up the other eight minipages to make “master copy two.”
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    5. Using a copier, print the images from “master copy one” onto one side of a “press sheet”—a piece of regular letter-size paper.

    6. Print “master copy two” onto the flip side of the press sheet—making eight page images on the front, and eight on the back.
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    7. Carefully fold the press sheet with the sixteen copied minipages on it.
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    8. Put in two staples along the crease at the very center of the little book—between pages 8 and 9 .
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    9. Trim the three unstapled edges—and that makes one finished mini–comic book.
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    10. Repeat.

    And each of the ten steps had to be done perfectly, or no one would ever want to spend money on his little comics.
    After all the how s had been settled, then came the writing. But Greg hadn’twritten just one story. He had developed a master publishing plan. Volume 1 was going to be about Creon, an incredibly intelligent Stone Age hero who helped his tribe deal with ancient dangers, like prehistoric beasts and Cro-Magnon marauders. Greg figured there could be seven or eight issues about Creon.
    Chunky Comics volume 2 would feature the future, where a superhero named Eeon tried to protect a small colony of humans living in a world of melting ice caps and mutant life-forms that were part human, part toxic sludge, and part recycled trucks and airplanes. Again, there would be seven or eight issues featuring Eeon.
    Then Chunky Comics volume 3 would feature Leon, a fairly normal modern-age technodude who suddenly finds himself energized when his digital atomic watch overheats and