57. Imprinted Image: I Hate Modern Recoloring...April 4
Or, why didn't Sisyphus just stop rolling that dang boulder?
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IMPRINTED IMAGE
Welcome to Imprinted Image, my weekly comics newsletter that has been coming out closer to bi-weekly, and perhaps might stay that way, if y'all have thoughts. If this is your first time, welcome! Most every week, I send out this post with a summary of what else I did this week, a collection links to comics news items I found interesting, and a rough draft essay on whatever topic I'd like. This week, I rant about a pet peeve that bothers me and seemingly very few other comic book fans: unfaithful comic book recoloring.
But first! Last week, gave my usual new comic shop book recommendations, the Marvelous Market for April 2. My current weekly effort is an in-depth annotation of THE WICKED + THE DIVINE, a personal favorite written by Kieron Gillen, drawn by Jamie McKelvie, colored by Matt Wilson, and lettered by Clayton Cowles. The week prior, I published my notes on issue 19. There's superhero style fighting, villain monologues, and the results of a fan survey Gillen made to see who exactly was reading this comic at the time. You don't want to miss it.
I also created a resources tab on this website. It's a collection of reading guides, tutorials, and free legal resources like public domain image archives. I want this to be as useful as possible, so if you have any additions please send them my way.
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Speaking of, it is time for a new monthly Patreon poll! What should I read and cover this month? The poll will be up until next Friday morning, so any of you readers have time to join the Patreon and vote!
Speaking of, it is time for a new monthly Patreon poll! What should I read and cover this month? The poll will be up until next Friday morning, so any of you readers have time to join the Patreon and vote!
52, vol. 1. Written by Geoff Johns, Grant Morrison, Greg Rucka, and Mark Waid, with layouts by Keith Giffen, pencils by Eddy Barrows, Chris Batista, Joe Bennett, Ken Lashley, Shawn Moll, and Todd Nauck, inks by Marlo Alquiza, Draxhall, Jack Jadson, Ruy José Tom Nguyen, Jimmy Palmiotti, and Rob Stull, colors by David Baron and Alex Sinclair, and letters by Phil Balsman, Pat Brosseau, Jared K. Fletcher, Travis Lanham, Rob Leigh, and Nick J. Napolitano. Phew! 52 was a weekly comic published by DC, hence the paragraph of creators. I'm historically not an expert in DC, so this might be diving in the deep end, something I am not scared to do anymore because I'm a grown up.
CREATING COPRA by Michel Fiffe. COPRA is a series I have been meaning to dig into because it is a DIY success story. Fiffe put out a book explaining the behind-the-scenes of exactly how he pulled it off. Not technically a comic per se but I would love to cover more process works like this one.
FAREWELL, MY ODIN vol. 1 by Chihiro Yoshioka, translated by Cynthia Caraturo and relettered in English by Bensidi Ayoub. This is a very new manga that I pulled because 1, it looked interesting, and 2, was endorsed by the creator of another popular Viking manga, VINLAND SAGA.
SCALPED vol. 1 written by Jason Aaron, drawn by R. M. Guerra, colored by Lee Loughridge, and lettered by Phil Balsman. This is the book that put Jason Aaron on the map, and I have no idea what it is about, other than involving Native Americans. I think it might be one of those Vertigo-style re-imaginings of a classic DC character.
TOP 10 vol. 1 written by Alan Moore, layouts by Zander Cannon, final art by Gene Ha, colored by Wildstorm FX and lettered by Todd Klein. To be honest, why haven't I read this already? I love all of the talent involved here. Get your act together, Spike Stonehand.
RANT ZONE: Why I hate (most) digital recolors
Before the collector's market really took off, comics were often thought of as disposable artifacts. One consequence of this is that the comics industry hasn't done the best job of preserving itself for future generations. With the internet, this appears to have changed. Apps like Marvel Unlimited and DC Universe Infinite allow readers to jump deep into back catalogs for cheap. Older comics are regularly collected into new hardcovers and paperbacks. Even scans of the black and white original artwork are more readily available because of Artist's Editions. While it seems like we are living in a utopia for reading old comics, there is one major and consistent problem I have reading these old comics: They are recolored terribly.
This is just an opinion, I know. A whole generation raised on the digital recolors might actually come to prefer them. But, I am not alone. Much of my thought has been clarified by the work of Jose Villarrubia, a colorist who has done recolorings himself. He's collected a vast album on Facebook detailing exactly what his problem is with many new recolorings. Often he'll even include a quick attempt at how he would restore a page to demonstrate his point, and he seems even more of a purist than I am! YouTuber ComicTropes compiled many of these images into a video and added some of the history of comics coloring, if you want a good introduction to things I won't recap. Background information out of the way, lets get into it.
As a reader, these decisions irk. The flat, oversaturated colors strain my eyes and give me less to dig in to. The lack of texture makes the image feel lifeless. It simply does not look as good to me. However, I am more upset as a fan of the medium. The work of the original colorists, often women as coloring was not as appreciated as line art, has been erased. New decisions are made to fit modern trends of "realism" that erase the style of the time. I'm not trying to overstate things, but history itself is lost.
Sometimes, company men will justify this by arguing that the new colors are what the original creators would have done if they had modern technology. That's not falsifiable, for one, but more importantly, that wouldn't fly in the high art world. When restoring classic works of art, no one would say it's okay to make major changes because modern supply chains allow for more types of paint that the original artist might have taken advantage of. That's preposterous. People expect the high art of a Renaissance master to be respected, and comics art should not be treated any different.
I wouldn't even be this mad if something akin to the original art were still available. If Marvel Unlimited had an option to switch between touched-up scans of the original page and the new recolors, I'd pay them double their current cost. The tragedy is that even using less than legal means, it is nearly impossible to find many comics in something approaching their original colors. Without ponying up hundreds or even thousands of dollars, I can't actually read the comics that made Jack Kirby a legend. I can only read their reinterpretations.
As a positive example of how to do this kind of restoration right, look no further than the SKY MASTERS OF THE SPACE FORCE Complete Sunday Strips that I received in the mail last week. Restorer Ferran Delgado writes up in detail his process, which involves recoloring using the actual colors available to newspaper comics at the time. While I'm sure you could still quibble with some of the final results, as Delgado admits (often older colorists would use garish and saturated colors in the mock-ups knowing that they would be muted on the page given printing and paper limitations of the time), the final result looks so much better than other modern recolorings.
And this was just one guy doing his best work. Marvel and DC are both part of multi-billion dollar companies that could absolutely afford to pay for high-quality restorations of their back catalog. They won't, because as multi-billion dollar corporations they are more concerned with generating profits than with preserving art history. Even if I don't think they ever will actually do this work, I think it needs to be said that they should. Perhaps then it is upon us, as fans, to do the work of preserving the legacy of old comics.
A Port of Links
The biggest news item is of course late breaking and the cause of much uncertainty, especially beyond comics. Trump finally issued many of the tariffs he has been threatening. Bleeding Cool has some analysis explaining why this will hurt comics. To simplify, even the countries Trump isn't mad at like the UK were given 10% tariffs, which means that English books will now be more expensive. Countries like China, which prints many American comics, or Japan and Korea, which publish manga and manhwa, are hit with even larger tariffs. Everything, at least in the short term, is set to get more expensive. There is already a Kickstarter that canceled their campaign because the tariffs would make the profit margins untenable.
The other major comics news, the Diamond sale, doesn't have many updates. Final approval of the sale will happen April 7, including terms on bonuses for employee retention. The Beat, as always, has a great summary of all the small news.
Rob Salkowitz had an interesting column on "What Killed Comics Journalism." He goes in to the various factors, such as the decline of Google and rise of social media, that make comics journalism an unprofitable venture.
Data time! H2SH, despite an unpronounceable name and being the unrenumbered BATMAN # 158, topped last week's bestseller list. Following it was 2 Absolutes, 2 Ultimates, 1 Amazing, Uncanny, and Unlimited respectively, and 2 Fantastics, one featuring Godzilla.
It's my weekly links to other people's list of links! The Comics Journal posted their week's links, which focuses on news, reviews, and interviews. They lead with the closing of the Things From Another World website, where I believe people could order comics online to be shipped to their homes. This happens of course after parent company Dark Horse was bought by a media investment group. Someone should do something about those guys.
In other SKTCHD news, David Harper on OFF PANEL has an episode with Zander Cannon on his upcoming series SLEEP and what else he has been up to post-Kaijumax.
The History of Comics in 500 Issues podcast released Episode 16 covering DETECTIVE COMICS # 20. No, we aren't to Batman yet. This episode is about The Crimson Avenger, whom host Jess Nevins argues is the last of the Pulp Heroes before the age of the Super Heroes.
Let's Talk Comics podcast dropped an interview with Curt Pires, a writer I'm not very familiar with but who wrote OLYMPIA, INDIGO CHILDREN and the upcoming LOST FANTASIES.
In the Comic Book Heraldverse, the MY MARVELOUS YEAR podcast covered 2010 pt. 6 with a discussion of Jonathan Hickman and co's "Three" arc of Fantastic Four.
Question of the Week
Am I just completely off my rocker when it comes to digital recoloring?