Laying out the pages

 In addition to the page numbers on each page (which are separate characters), we have the comic strips themselves.  Mostly we have 4 strips per page, with blank horizontal rows between them. We don't need to keep or regenerate the blank rows.  We have a program that can identify the blank rows between the strips and pull out the strips and make them separate image files. 

Checking the sizes of the images, we find them all between 4050 and 4660 pixels wide and between 1230 and 1320 pixels high.  The actual location on the page varies due to either the original layout by Arriola or the scanning process.  But having isolated each strip, we can position them on the page consistently.  Of course, we need to take account of the left-hand/right-hand nature of each page and make sure we have enough extra room on the inside margin for the binding process.

Standard page layout for an 8.5 x 11 inch piece of paper allows us 1/4 inch for both the left and right margin, plus an extra 1/8 inch for the gutter.  This means we want each page to start horizontally at 150 pixels for a left-hand page and 225 for a right-hand page.  The page would end horizontally at 4950 pixels for a right-hand page and 4875 pixels for a left-hand page.  Since each image, however, is a different size, if we pin down the starting point of an image, we don't control the ending point -- the ending point is determined by the starting point plus the length of the image. 

We have allowed 4875 - 225 = 4650 pixels for each image, but we know most images are less than this.  So we position each image so that it is right-adjusted on a right-hand page, and left-adjusted for a left-hand page.  These leaves any extra space from the image being less than maximum size in the gutter. 

The longest page (ignore the page numbers) is 5808 pixels.  Add the top margin of 300 pixels, and the last panel ends by 6108.  We can put the page numbers so that the baseline is at 6300, centered under the pages (the center being at 2512 pixels for left-hand pages and 2737 for right-hand pages.