The Silver Age of Comic Book Colouring
I’ve just finished reading The Silver Age of Comic Book Art by Arlen Schumer, a lovely coffee table book featuring the finished comic book art pencilled by eight men—Infantino, Ditko, Kirby, Kane, Kubert, Colan, Steranko, and Adams—from 1960–1972, with plenty of great comments pointing out their inspirations, innovations, and problems overcome. It’s a wonderful celebration of superhero art, though not without issues.
My most immediate problem with the book is the short shrift it gives to Gil Kane and Gene Colan and the way it tacks on five pencillers at the end as an afterthought. I’m also uncertain about the inclusion of Joe Kubert. But my biggest problem is the one Dave Fiore diagnosed: “Implicit in the structure of his book [and fairly explicit in the introduction] is an argument in favour of a qualitative progression from Infantino to Adams…” I agree with Dave that this is a wrong-headed argument, which can be seen only too clearly by turning from Schumer’s book to the pages of Marvels or Civil War.
What I like about the book is the parallel history that Schumer can’t help bringing up in his attempt to suppress it: that of what you might call the narrator’s—rather than the draughtsman’s—art; the art of page rather than panel. So my favourite section was probably the last, on “realistic” Neal Adams, showing off his layouts and composition, something I was first introduced to by Ragnell in her series on Green Lantern volume 2 #87 (despite the book’s central thrust, I believe Schumer meant to describe Adams’s graphic design work as meritorious rather than “meretricious”). Early in my comic reading life I developed the notion that Adams epitomised the default superhero style, but Ragnell and (despite his book’s intentions) Schumer have allowed me to move beyond that by showing me that there is more to Adams than his realistic anatomy. Ragnell does it with elegant exegesis; Schumer by graphic comparison with Steranko (and I’ll definitely be checking out Deadman now).
But the biggest revelation of all is the least credited. Schumer prefaces his work with this statement:
There has never been a coffeetable book celebrating their work, showing the actual printed comic book art—with ben-day dots on cheap newsprint—as it was transmitted to and perceived by the readership. Other books have been illustrated with the black and white original art, and as beautiful as that is, that’s production art, as far as I’m concerned. The recent spate of reprints, though they serve a noble purpose, remove the original coloring and replace it with garish colors on harsh white paper.
Although most of the comics in those days were poorly printed with off-registration rampant there was something beautiful about them, too. In trying to capture the integrity of the original printed art while also “cleaning” it up, I assumed the role of art restorer: not recoloring, but retouching.
I had always assumed that the colour reprints of comics somehow used the original colour schemes defined by the colourists, only using newer colour printing technology and better paper. I understood that this resulted in more garish colours. With this book in hand, which somtimes blows the ben-day dots up to an almost Lichtenstein level of ugliness, I decided to see how bad the new colouring processes were. I pulled out my Steranko trades and compared them to Schumer’s pages on him. And was astonished to find that the colours were not just harsher—they were completely different! Where Steranko had (presumably asked for) a metal platform rendered in gold, the “reprint” had changed it to steel; where Hydra agents had multi-coloured uniforms, the “reprint” had them in khakis; black and white moires had been filled with orange that dulled the effect; etc… I couldn’t believe it! I can’t believe it.
I always understood that my black and white reprints changed the tenor of the art, but now I understand that the colour ones do too. And I wonder which does so more transparently.
Interestingly, this is an important point that Schumer doesn’t address. The book is about pencillers, but it always scrupulously provides credit to the inkers of the work. Of the colourists, however, nothing. I had noticed in the past that my black and white reprints—of stories from the ’60s and ’70s—omit colour credits; now I’ve flipped through my new Amazing Spider-man official scan collection DVD-ROM and noticed that colour credits are absent in the original works until the mid-70s.
Suddenly I wish to know more. Who did this colour work? How? What makes it work? When has it changed? For as surely as Adams has lead to Ross has lead to McNiven, colouring has changed from the ’60s to today, become more realistic, less interesting. And there’s an obvious symbiosis, as colour does more work today that line used to carry.
Anyway. Schumer’s book isn’t about colour, but he brings it back to the art—the stuff that brought me to comics in the first place—with no more fanfare than a note in his preface. Though, as he hints, and I say, how can you separate the pencil from the ink from the colour [from the writing]? You can’t. Or you shouldn’t. And he doesn’t. Thanks, Arlen!