Coloring Samples
Although I've been coloring comic-book art for over a decade by now, it's only recently (with help & advice of Chrissie Harper) that I finally figured out how to do it in Photoshop. MAN! This is MUCH easier than the way I'd been doing in.
Here's a page by Tom Sutton from VAMPIRELLA #8. I was inspired to try coloring this because I originall saw it in a Mexican reprint, which had some of the worst coloring I've ever seen in my life. I was very happy with the results here...
I'm not sure what book this is for, or even who the artist is, but that's The Heap, and a brand-new super-hero, coming soon from Red Zone Comics.
This is the rejected (and unused) cover of FANTASTIC FOUR #64, as inked by Joe Sinnott, and colored, today, by ME! (11-6-11)
Here's a Gray Morrow page from CAPTAIN AMERICA #144 (which, absurdly, has a John Romita panel pasted down in the lower-right corner-- I wonder what was there originally?). I wanted to take a stab at this, without bothering to dig out the comic. I know that the early Marvel Masterworks have been justifiably criticized for their lack of faithfulness to the original printings, but in this case, the whole idea was to see what I could come up with WITHOUT referencing the original. Aside from anything else, I like the subtle "3D" effect of having the crounching figure of Cap in the background of panel 3 fade into the color of the skyline (something I initially picked up from a fellow student at PCA back in 1979).
Morrow never seemed to find a niche for himself at Marvel, apparently because art director John Romita felt his style was "not dynamic enough". I wonder if, when he said that, Romita even realized that Morrow had worked on what was probably the MOST FAMOUS version of SPIDER-MAN EVER-- the 2nd season of the cartoon show (1968)?
Here's another Jack Kirby page from CAPTAIN VICTORY AND THE GALACTIC RANGERS #13 (1984). The last several issues of this book were notorious for some horrendous hand-painted colors. I decided to see what I could do with as simple a style as possible. Since I began coloring my own work back a decade ago, it's been my goal to reproduce the look of 1960's comic-book coloring, but with a computer program that allows more control and accuracy than was possible back then. I think it's a perfect fit for Kirby's work!
This was a bit of a surprise. One of my favorite artists of the 1990's was Tom Grummett. However, this page from ADVENTURES OF SUPERMAN #495 (Oct'92) proved to be the most difficult page I've colored so far! I think it's all the tiny little figures; there's no "big" figures anywhere on the page to give it weight or balance. Once again, I did the colors without digging out the actual comic for reference.
Here's one by Bob Brown & Wally Wood from GHOSTS #2 (Dec'71), part of the story "Mission Supernatural". Brown was never a favorite of mine, but he did some solid work on THE AVENGERS and DAREDEVIL in the early 70's, even if most of his work at Marvel got terrible inks. Like many pencillers over the years, he fared better at DC. I wanted to find something as "different" as possible for variety's sake.
A Don Heck-Sam Grainger page from GHOST RIDER #26 featuring Dr. Druid! This was my introduction to the latter character. The fun parts of the story were offset by the uncalled-for development of the truth about Johhny Blaze's supernatural alter-ego becoming public knowledge, and his abrupt abandonment of his Hollywood career (not to mention his longtime love Roxanne, who had amnesia!-- both of these developments would be left hanging for almost the next 50 issues, thanks to Jim Shooter's "dump them into hell and LEAVE them there" habit of heaping abuse on characters created by other writers).
Here's another Jack Kirby page. This one's from OMAC #3 (Feb'75)!
Another GHOST RIDER page, this one by longtime penciller Don Perlin & inker Rick Bryant. I first ran across Perlin on MOON KNIGHT (in MARVEL SPOTLIGHT), and always wished HE had done the regular series, as he'd co-created the character. This page gave me a chance to be low-key subtle for mood, given the "old west" genre (not to mention the bad weather).
For more, see Part 2!
Artwork (C) Warren Publishing, Red Zone Comics, Marvel Comics, Jack Kirby, DC Comics
Color by Henry R. Kujawa.
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