This week, I am going to take a little detour on my tour through fill-in issues, and talk about color. After some heated discussions at PIX this past weekend about comics coloring, I promised to post something about Brian Stelfreeze. He’s a cartoonist that often colors his own work, and creates some of my favorite palettes in comics.
For example:
(page 1 from Maximum Velocity part 2, a backup in the Heretic)
And some of this:
(a spread from Domino 4 – love the orange lens in Domino’s goggles)
And wow:
(a spread from Matador 1 – the small, warm doorway in the last panel…)
So one of the things that sparked our discussion this weekend was Ed Piskor’s recent forays into the original 64-color palette of old comics. Don’t get me wrong; I think there are plenty of examples of attractively colored comics using this limited palette. I love the appearance of old comics and believe more than any other element, it is the color that defines those old books. Obviously I’ve spent some time using this palette. But in an era of nearly limitless reproduction options (including both print and digital), I think the original 64-color palette can evoke a certain mood or be used symbolically but I find it problematic as a purely aesthetic choice. It’s a palette that carries too much baggage to be ignored. It can aid the storytelling, but it is difficult to use without calling attention to itself.
Well that paragraph hurt my head. Enough bullshit, what makes Stelfreeze so good and why is the 64-color crayon box relevant to him?
(Matador 1, splash page – notice the tiny red highlights in the woman’s eyes in panel 3)
Stelfreeze uses color as a design element and he often simplifies his palette (which is how it relates to the limited number of colors that old comics have). One of the books I thought of when I started looking at Stelfreeze’s work was Kevin Nowlan’s Outsiders Annual #1 (1986). A few comics were beginning to use better paper around this time called Baxter paper. The better paper greatly affected the printed colors. Most colorists continued to use the same palettes that they employed for books printed on the much-more-absorbent newsprint. The effect was dramatically different between the two paper stocks. Nowlan realized this difference and adjusted his colors – by utilizing colors that weren’t used much on newsprint like lime greens, grays, purples but worked well on this new paper. To learn more about this comic and Nowlan’s ideas about it, go read this interview that Frank Santoro conducted with Nowlan a couple years ago.
Stelfreeze also gets a lot of mileage out of warm and cool palettes to set scenes, to create atmosphere and depth, as a spatial and temporal indicator when cross-cutting between panels, and to maximize contrast – a vital part of his page and spread designs.
In this splash page from Gen Active 3, Stelfreeze uses a cool palette to describe the shadowy interior of a Vegas strip club during the day:
The other book I’ve been looking at while thinking about Stelfreeze’s work is Batman Year One, the original issues. Anyone interested in old coloring should track down these issues. They are my favorite old-style coloring and one of the more unique interpretations and applications that palette. I also think they must influence Stelfreeze. Some of my favorite panels and pages feature an extremely minimal palette, sometimes as little as one color besides the white of the page and the black line. Also it is interesting to compare the original issues with the collected version because the same colorist does both versions.
Batman 405 (an example of a restrained palette using the 64-color palette of old):
Batman Year One trade paperback:
Batman 405 and 406 splash pages (minimal color, beautiful design – these are splash pages) and Batman Year One trade paperback:
Here’s a page from Batman 406. I like the middle row of panels in the original. Magenta is my favorite 64-palette color:
Finally, a sample of a black and white Stelfreeze comic, Gun Candy 2:
BONUS! – from Domino #1, a Charles Burns Altoids ad:
Comics referenced in this post include:
Batman 405, 406 (DC Comics, 1986)
Batman: Year One (DC Comics, 2005)
Domino 1, 3, 4 (Marvel Comics, 2003)
Gen Active 3 (DC Comics, 2000)
Gun Candy 2 (Image Comics, 2006)
The Heretic 2 (Dark Horse Comics, 1997)
Matador 1 (DC Comics, 2001)
The Outsiders Annual 1 (DC Comics, 1986)
