why were colors so poorly applied back in the day?
>>144672271the press was used for mass production now they just print the pages
High accuracy printing tech was prohibitively expensive for the first hundred years it existed.
>>144672281printing press with colors?
Who gives fuck, people bought it anyway.
>>144672299>Why care about the pastbecause it's interesting
>>144672299Retards bought it.
They were literally done by amateur/non artist women who took it on as a part time job. They'd take big sheets of cellophane. You'd have a big office where they were just cutting out chunks of cellophane to overlay on pages to be photostatted(basically an old camera that acted as a scanner to reproduce the pages) with the idea that there cold be some leeway/bleed in the colors. The important thing was to separate the colors. They'd get a guide by the person credited as colorist, which would be a copy of the original page with marker/watercolors, or an overlay, with colors coordinated to the number that color would be. Colorist as a profession done directly by the person making the color choices didn't really start until the 80's
>>144672525does that mean that each issue was done by hand, and thus each issue has unique color bleed?
>>144672525More specifically the cel cutting was done by the comic book printers, not any staff at the publisher. It was stupid but the reason behind it was that while books were still being printed on rag like newspapers, the necessary line screens were close to 75 lpi which can't accurately reproduce a wide gamut of color. The 90s coincided with moving to coated, bleached, higher quality paper stock capable of taking higher line screens at which point digital separation was plausible. And even then traditional applications like Photoshop could not competently bucket fill regions without spilling: the first application to be made for this purpose was for Malibu Comics which is the entire reason Marvel acquired them then largely ignored their IP.
Original printed panel from ROM #32 (which is about to be reprinted in ROMnibus #2), note the bleeds and the solids in foreground because it's a fantasy sequence and it's easier
>>144672611No, the final issues would be made from the single photostat/"scan" of the page covered in cellophane. There might be some bleed or flaws on individual pages in some cases but the source would be the same. It is however, why there's effectively no original color pages to reprint many older issues. Most modern reprints are created from referencing the color guides and remaking them digitally, but not taking into account the way they'd look on newsprint(and the fact that modern printing/digital colors in general look different). Which is they generally look more gaudy than they would originally.
>>144672707Here's a photo of the actual board Buscema and Sinnott turned in. Look at all the crisp detail that got lost by the reduction and muddy colors.
>>144672729Fuck, pic didn't attach.
>>144672525>Colorist as a profession done directly by the person making the color choices didn't really start until the 80'sWith blue line method coloring?
>>144672525>>144672673>>144672713dont suppose theres video of this process available? im not wrapping my head around this.
>>144672743Here's a best-case reproduction of the colorist's work which is probably what the ROMnibus print will do.
>>144672743oh man, that really is quite a stark difference.
>>144672759Marvel being Marvel, they might decide to split the difference and use full coloring for the scene like I did here (eyedroppering from character art).
>>144672422We know you bought it, you don't have to talk about yourself in the third person
>>144672780And here's what that would look like run at a 150lpi screen like they probably use for these volumes.
>>144672707Destiny is like 90. How is she breedable?
>>144672759>which is probably what the ROMnibus print will do.I fucking wish. They never try to replicate 4-color printing. It's always flat fills with no texture
>>144672800The original coloring I fucked with was done by Barry Grossman who went by different pseudonyms depending on which company he was coloring for: here he's credited as "Ben Sean." Only colorists did this for some reason and not very many of them.
>>144672271Women did it.
>>144672814The only gradient fills I attempted in >>144672800are the swooshes from the doors opening, everything else looked god-awful because 1980s comic book art was never intended to be colored with anything except flat fills and gradients fight with any crosshatching the inker applies.
>>144672800>freshly-raped RogueTo think this was Bill Mantlo and not Claremont writing it
>>144672754https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uNYDiJibRM4 found this. no idea how accurate it is yet though.
>>144672889I was talking about lack of Ben Day dots not gradients. So like >>144672780. Though there is texture in the inks there which would also be flattened out.
>>144672800Not exactly.While the printing process remains the same, the way the printers arranged the dot grids differs from decade to decade.For example, 70's Marvel printers often didn't rotated the printing screens or only rotated them 45 degrees because it was cheaper and faster, leaving then with a distinctive "grid" look.They also used only 25%-to-50% dot intensity and mostly layered 2 colors per area.
>>144672754and there's this https://scarysarah.medium.com/a-brief-and-broad-history-of-post-golden-age-pre-digital-comic-book-coloring-9fe9e386149a
>>144672673>the first application to be made for this purpose was for Malibu Comics which is the entire reason Marvel acquired them then largely ignored their IPStop repeating this story, it's simply not true. People who helped run Malibu have said this wasn't true. Rosenberg decided to cash out at the height of the bubble and Marvel bought Malibu to prevent DC from doing it and overtaking their market share. Rosenberg spread the whole story about Marvel wanting their coloring department to make it look like it was being done for any reason other than Rosenberg being a shyster. Marvel originally wanted to shut down the color department because their accountants thought it was cost ineffective and only changed their tune when their main printer/coloring company got severly backed up.
>>144672780>gray MystiqueAlways preferred this to the blue.
>>144674015That's blue, dawg
Some excellent informative answers here. Good work. Golden and Silver Age comics had a lot of characteristics stemming from the poor printing process. The thick black lines around objects, ending sentences with an ! or ? because a period might not reproduce, the unreliability of coloring things gray or brown.
This panel is from GIANT-SIZED SPIDER-MAN# 3, January 1975 with Marvel trying to give Doc Savage some needed publicity by teaming him up with Spider-Man, who shared stories with everyone from Howard the Duck to Dracula to Red Sonja. Spidey was accessible.This is just off the top of my head about being Out of Register. Here's a technical explanation for how four color printing way done and why it was such a pain in the neck to get right. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CMYK_color_model Back before computerized coloring, comics were done on a four color basis. As I understand it, the black and white art was sent to the production department and colors were laid down separately. And sometimes the overlays would slip a wee bit and an object would have the color a wee bit to the wrong side. This particular case is extreme, the blue on Doc`s boots and vest is way out of whack. But some amount of error was common enough that inkers drew a heavy black line on the outside of objects to hel keep the color contained. You don't see this much anymore, and it probably looks quaint when young readers see old stories ("Dude! What's with the thick outlines?"). But it make s different objects stand out clearly and prevents confusion in general. You wouldn't be puzzling over whether that's an arm or part of the furniture, for example, and it meant much-needed clarity in the days of constant brawling.
This also is why the colors in Golden Age and Silver Age comics were usually so darn bright as to be garish (and we liked them that way). It was simpler. Heroes wore blue, red and yellow because they were shown most and it was easier. Villains were often in green or purple or brown outfits for contrast but also because mixing the colors was more work and you did it on characters not shown as much. Making green of course was done by overlaying blue and yellow; different shades of green meant putting down, say 25% blue and 75% yellow.Stan Lee has mentioned many times how the Hulk and Iron Man started out grey, but it was too difficult to keep their coloring consistent. So they went green and yellow ("gold") respectively. Skin tones for Asians and black people were a problem, too. Well up into the 1960s, Asians were often shown with skin tones that would look fine on a lemon and black people usually had this sickly light grey skin that was a bit horrifying ("Gabe!" Sgt Fury might conceivably say, "are you hurt? You look like you lost a few pints of blood!"). The production people probably COULD have done a more realistic job on the ethnic skin, but to them, these were "funnybooks" aimed at little kids and they didn't get paid extra to do extra work.
>>144672271they are worse today. 3rd worlders working for $1 a page and destroy the art. colorists arent people and should be hated by everyone.
>>144675800Blame the victim
>>144674861Registers to me as blueish grey. Moreso with the screening. Now during the Paul Smith X-run she was really grey.
>>144672271Traditional coloring
>>144672809>Destiny is like 90. How is she breedable?It doesn't say anything about how they want to breed them. Maybe they just inject larvae into their flesh, for them to use as food. Or they reproduce like xenomorphs.
>>144675722that's wild
>>144673179>Rosenberg spread the whole story about Marvel wanting their coloring department to make it look like it was being done for any reason other than Rosenberg being a shyster.Why would he care if people knew he sold the company to make money? That happens all the time.
>>144675863No, she's blue there my friend. Get your eyes checked.
>>144678533could be his screen. she's blue but it's a muted blue.
>>144672271there was basically one company in charge of "cutting" colour for nearly all the industry at the time.Like >>144672525 it was basically an unskileld job and people walking on the street would literally get hired.There IS some nuance, cover art got a different treatment by more skilled workers.
>>144672780this shit made the new mutants remasters basically unreadable for me.i'd fucking murder to get the original prints in high quality.
>>144675752>>144675722>>144672759>>144672800thanksfor the effortposts senpaitachi, someone should save this for posterity, practically nobody knows the differences.
>>144672271Vaguely off-topic, but was the prevalence/trope of villains who have non-human skin-tones a result of early printing methods or was it just a style at the time? I notice it a lot in old cartoons where the colour limitations of print wouldn't have been an issue, but maybe that's just animators imitating comic style.
>>144675181>ending sentences with an ! or ? because a period might not reproduceoh wow, i had no idea. neat bit of trivia.
>>144678513He's a con artist so it's better that he makes it look like Marvel wanted them because he made such an innovative and awesome company and don't you want to partner up with this guy and give him your money and the rights to all of your characters so he can make movies off of them instead of the reality that Malibu peaked as part of the speculator market and he got out because he realized he could make a lot of money selling it off to a bigger fish and destroying the company and everyone that worked there to line his pockets.
>>144675752the garishness was also toned down on newsprint, if you see a lot of more modern reprints they're using digital colors to replicate the layouts but not the final printed version. Color theory/sstylization also comes into play, blues for night and all.
Here's another kooky thing a lot of people don't realize- DC comics STILL uses reprints based on the old way they had to restore comic art.You see- original pages were not valuable to comic companies for decades, it took until the 70's for them to start seeing worth in them after publication, and before the 60's a lot of pages were simply pulped. DC does, however, keep an inventory of every issue they published. So, Greg Theakston, an artist/inker for guys like Kirby, figured a way to replicate the pages- bleach(yes, bleach) the comic page until it was near white, then copy it, fixing it as needed. Well meaning, but this process meant the lineart you see is less crisp and not faithful to the original.Many DC reprints of early work you see are simply not the original, they're copies of copies.
>>144672271Printing process was to blame. As in imperfections to the machines themselves. Wasn't possible to print cheaply without some errors here or there.
>>144672271Looks better that way, on the shitty paper with the misaligned color.
>>144675181Or the near-total lack of the word "flick" or characters named "Clint".
>>144681549CLINT Barton
>>144682045One of the very few exceptions.
>>144682079How many other Clints are there even other than Eastwood? Weird sounding name.
>>144672271What do you mean? They still are. Oh you mean the printing process my bad.
>>144679950This isn't entirely true; I checked the Batman: The Golden Age TPB that reprinted that issue and they did finally update the cover to look closer to the original, rather than using that version from the Archives. They're still using the brighter colors of the Archives but at least the linework is closer to the 1940s version. That said there are still some issues with those Golden Age reprints though.
>>144679950>>144682460Here we go, this is from Batman: The Golden Age vol 4 from 2018
>>144682575And here is a comparison between (from left to right) the original comic from a Heritage Auction, the DC Archives version that they used for a while, and the one from Batman: The Golden Age vol 4
>>144682135Short for Clinton
>>144672525>They were literally done by amateur/non artist women who took it on as a part time job.Stopped reading right there.I believe you. Women ruin everything.
I think this video might be interestinghttps://youtu.be/IARz_2vJ3ls?si=sFUqpyntO1zbHk4M
>>144675863It's definitely a blueish-grey, or a muted, washed-out bluelike she's ashy and dehydrated
>>144683134thanks anon. will check it out a bit later.
>>144672271Lazyness
>>144672707am i right in thinking the grainy blacks are a result from the printing process and not something that happens when coloring?
>>144684399printing process + paper
>>144672271Because they were creative.
