Hey guys, weird question- to people that jave read the original coloring for Flex Mentallo, is it better?
If Flex is my favorite story of all time and I don't care about blowing 50$ on ebay, is it worth it to have the originals?
Also, general comic recoloring merit argument thread I guess.
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It's about the most subjective thing there is. You can look at more comparison pics and figure out how you want to go.
I prefer the original but I have good taste so maybe it'll be different for you.
epic banter Sup Forumsro
Neither of them look particularly good so the recolor was pointless unless they didn't have the original stuff to reprint somehow.
I'd say if you like the idea of the book there's no difference.
I believe Morrison and Quitely asked for the recolor because they weren't happy with the original.
>be flex mentallo
>be comic about how it's okay to enjoy childlike whimsy
>be comic where "realism in comics" is the bad guy
>get recolored to be more gray and realistic
I am not sure there is an example where a recolor has look 'better'.
More Modern sure but I don't think that is better, or at worse like pic-related the white levels get all funky and the book looks really strange.
There are a couple of examples where Color having been added to a B&W comic was an improvement or as good in its own ways but I can't think of any completely positive recolors.
The recolor is better because it's what Morrison and Quitely wanted.
They're both enjoyable IMO. This isn't one of those cases where the recolor is objectively worse (which unfortunately happens a lot), it just gives the comic a different vibe.
Morrison and Quitely apparently prefer the newer version, so if you want the 'official' one that's the one you should go with, but there's nothing wrong with preferring the original colors.
The original was just another churn out job by the colorist. The recoloring is based on what the creators wanted/intended it to look like.
I prefer the "original" coloring, even though Morrison and Quitely do not.
Despair.
The left is superior
Newer is better, right? Why wouldn't you want THE BEST?
Artists are fallible
This is a good lesson
>"Its another Alan Moore comic and we want dat Watchmen money, so make it more magenta and orange." - DC, 1988
I think Mentallo's recolor is stupid but I think the Killing Joke's is fine.
Big Guy did it right
The worst examples aren't when the colors are changed but when the style of the coloring is changed.
Shading and Lighting bugs me more when updated.
the Sandman recolor in particular really bothers me
they ruined the whole psychedelic atmosphere it had
>image.jpg
fuck off
Coloring is always an interesting thing.
I think it's obvious that readers prefer a larger, more dynamic palette of colors to work with, and the most in-demand colorists (FCO Plascencia, Jordie Bellaire, et al) indicate that preference.
I just always find it interesting that "recolorings" always tend to simplify things. It's exceedingly rare to hear about a re-coloring (of something not black-and-white) that actually adds more artistic flair to the project.
However, given the preference of these recolorings to only honor the wishes of the writer and pencillers, I'm not surprised. The original colors, more often than not, tend to lessen the impact and skill of the original linework, instead focusing on whatever the "point" of a panel/scene is supposed to bring. (OP's pic and are the most obvious examples, where it takes a modicum of effort to see how intricate the pencils are in the original, whereas it's instantaneously easy in the recolors).
Overall, it's a bit tricky. It's easy to say "well, the writer and penciller WANTED it this way!" Well, then, what about the colorist? They too often get treated like lapdogs even though, in a lot of cases, their feel for color works better for the book overall, although to the detriment of the writing and the linework.
Have to admit, the new version does show off Bolland's line work a lot better.
notice how my post is of higher quality than yours
Which is the original and which is the recolor?
I don't even remember anymore.
Left side is Original
Damn, and here I thought Grant would be all for a multi-colored headless robot...
That recolor removed a lot of... you know... colors.
>tfw I JUST bought the original issues on ebay
dis gon b good
Modern colorists are garbage.
yes exactly
the problem with most recolors is that they always have to reflect this ridiculous modern trend toward "realism"
and this trend is even more obvious in a lot of the superhero movies being released these days
because you know superhero stories just never were realistic enough
of course not they were made for kids right? kids love colors but oh adults HATE colors
colors are basically like a poison to adults
the world of adults is far too serious and harsh for colors
a pity if only they had something in the world to take their mind off all that
A lot of coloring does often fall into the trap of just make it look like it supposed to look, which can get very boring.
I know what something is supposed to be even if it is colored a strange color.
I hate recolors because my autism demands that I keep a copy of both on my HD. For something like sandman that pushes it into the not worth it zone.
Because the point of the page was to highlight on the multicolored brains, in the original the focus was on the irrelevant robot-body.
The KILLING JOKE recoloring is awful for that, it even changes Batman's yellow/black logo to black-on-grey.
Generally speaking I think most recolorings look terrible because they're anachronistic. Artists from the '80s didn't draw exactly the same way they draw today, so you're putting "modern" colors on art that looks like it comes from a different period, because it does. It doesn't make the comic look modern, it just makes it look like the art is at war with itself.
Sometimes the recoloring doesn't look too anachronistic, but that's the best case scenario. The Simonson Thor recolorings are pretty tasteful, but they still look wrong for the art and hand-lettering.
Clearly Tom McGraw is the real talent here.
It was literally the Watchmen colorist
And I think DC fires anyone who complains about the dumb shit they do, so Frank and Grant kept their heads down and kept their jobs.
The old coloring hurt my eyes. I can't see one reason, other than nostalgia, to think the new one is inferior.
They INTENDED the flashbacks to look dull and drab?
The lighting in the recolor is garbage and everyone looks like plastic
That isn't even a recolor. It is just printed on different paper. The color values are probably the same, but Newsprint mellows them out.
Personally, I do like the recolor for Flex Mentallo. I think even though the book is about being able to enjoy comics on a surface level (which is debatable), it's still very situated in Flex transversing a very real setting. It was never a comic with a lot of charm, it's supposed to be grim and dark; matching Morrison's in-book character's near-suicidal mood. It only ever becomes fantastical for the very end.
>everyone looks like plastic
this
I noticed the brains easier in the original.
That's debatable, I only noticed the other brains I the original cause they stand out more in the recolor and I did a double take.
...
Does she have some kind of tumor on the left side of the head in the right one?
Digital error
Flex is one I don't mind the recoloring on.
This isn't a recolor situation, just someone experimenting on the left
Old gives it a cool color scheme, Im a sucker for magenta and blue.
New makes it look like a regular Batman comic.
The Neal Adams recolors are pretty painful.
He redrew some parts of some issues too which makes it worse.
the left is full of mistakes but i guess some people like that
How?
here's one i made myself of The Maxx recoloring. like everything else in the thread, we see bright colors toned down to a duller, more brown and grey set of colors. what irks me about this page in particular is the lighting on the figure in the middle right. in the original, he is backlit, probably from a steetlight, the headlights of a car or the neon sign of a nearby business. in the recolor, that shading is removed completely.
Actually if they had made everyone else more "realistic" and made Flex more colorful, then the contrast would have been better. That would be pretty cool.
You can fix mistakes without removing monochromatic mood lighting and replacing it with an ugly metallic glossy sheen.
What mistakes?
the belt
batman's cape and arm
the woman's skirt
Ah.
Well that's a very small price to pay for not looking like complete shit.
>monochromatic mood lighting
THERE we go! that's the phrase i have been searching for. this is the worse change made is so many recolorings.
i swear they must see a red-tinted panel and say "what is this? people aren't RED! he needs to be flesh colored and his clothes need to be 'real' colored too" neverminding the fact that the red tint was meant to convey a sense of anxiety and violence in that panel.
it's low res, but you can see the Sandman recolor is FULL of this crap.
wow that recolour is lifeless and boring. It somehow makes it look like I'm watching the adam west show except everyones drunk and fighting, and not in a good way. In a sad way.
Shitty digital painting ruining classic comics. Why can't we have handmade coloring any longer?
left is so much fucking better. Proof that sometimes you need to fuck off and let a colourist do his goddamn job.
I'm so glad my Incal omni has the original colors.
Here is the problem with almost all of these.
It is going back to work once it is out to touch it up and not just letting it be the thing it is.
It is strange that the same level of fall on your face doesn't happen when books go from Black and White to in Color.
I guess adding color wholesale is such a massive shift that it becomes a very different rather than a changed original thing.
at least the recent reprint had the original colors
Digital recoloring is necessary for digital comics. Keeping it flat and and as true as possible to the original colors works out reasonably well.
Eclipse Miracleman? Their first try was piss but the coloring for their trades(?) was better.
I am not sure about that, I have gotten some pretty old comics on digital and they have read fine.
Wasn't the version before Eclipse the B&W stuff like V for Vendetta from Warrior?
>readers prefer a larger, more dynamic palette of colors
You'd be surprised but not really. If we're talking superhero comics especially, people really expect art to reflect life in as much detail as possible.
>"well, the writer and penciller WANTED it this way!" Well, then, what about the colorist?
There's also the case of artist and/or writer just plain having shit taste in coloring. Or at least a weird vision of their own art which is something you might not expect from them. Case in point: Bolland, whose work ever since he started coloring himself looks like plastic models in a plastic world.
I prefer the restored versions but I wish they could preserve the color "dots" present in the original prints somehow.
I dunno, I just don't think either is ideal.
Oh, and to expand on that, the newsprint may look more like what was originally PUBLISHED, but the restoration looks like what was originally DRAWN. So there's no clear answer in terms of what's more "accurate".
They're unwilling to sell them looking like that. Here's a good example of a decent recoloring, a bad recoloring, and an original.
The new one doesn't look bad it just looks like they got the saturation levels wrong.
I guess but the middle one looks almost too bright
Middle is too bright but the right idea. That needs to be their approach on these.
It feels like they are polishing them too much
That one is actually a tough one for me.
the more garish coloration is a better fit for the story, but I personally like the Colossus-look on the specific character on the right. The striping is actually too distracting from what I assume was an intended metallic banding.
that is not a recolor, that's a digital restoration. Someone gets paid to digitalise the scans / original issues and making them look as good as possible.
Generally they look ok, there's a lot of work dedicated to preserving each pixel of linework. But Marvel has botched a lot of their restored comics by taking them and trying to make them look as seamless and colour filled as possible, eating the actual colour away and making it look like it was done on paint. 80s X-Men in particular suffered from it. Shittiest restoration I've seen was the Magik mini.
I prefer the pirate light restorations where they just colour correct the paper and remove printing / scanning defects.
OP refers to something different, which is grabbing the originals and doing an entirely different colour scheme. Some early 2000s Marvel restorations did that, but beyond that, it's rare.
A lot of the trouble with recolors is the colorists are apparently trash.
He went a bit overboard with the background but otherwise it works
Don't have facts to back this up, but maybe it's because the good colourists are doing new books rather than updating old ones
Yesh, the Warrior stuff was b&w. Eclipse had two coloring takes. One for the series and for the collection.
mistahphil.tumblr.com
It's a case of hitting the uncanny valley with coloring.
Even with as few as 10 colors we know there's an explosion of light and a smoldering fire surrounding thor - there's no need for much else, our imagination will do the rest and mentally note to us "this is epic"
With the recolor, the extra detail brings out more of our attention to the pic itself and doesn't' activate the same creativity. I find it hard to describe, but I pay more attention to what the image depicts rather than imagining the situation in my head.
You gotta keep things symbolic sometimes. Let the reader create the situation in his head. In this respect, I think moebius was a master - His works are extremely intricate when he wants to, yet he also manages to create amazing atmosphere just by slapping plain colours on the entire surface.
This user is onto something too.
>recoloring moebius
triggered
It takes a droplet of taste to tell that the originals are almost always vastly superior; rich and emotional use of color took the pages beyond a mere graphic depiction of something happening and gave it symbolic weight, varying with each reader. The new ones attempt to be more "realistic" and end up completely killing the emotional intensity and look dull and/or garish. Perfect examples of doing because you can, not because you should. Fucking disgusting how awful most of these look.
I don't even get how Moebius makes his pictures just feel right.
So the writer for Flex is a worthless hack?
No, but you are.
Miller is truly horrible
>>>/tumblr/
People have known Miller was shit since before tumblr existed. Sorry kid.
This is not digital painting? This is shitty modern pipeline-based color work.
See, in modern comics colorist hires a rookie called 'separator', who fills in colors deciding of what should be the same color. Then, colorist just swaps the colors across the page, and of course he has to add some shitty rendering to prove he's an artist. That's it.
Like, really, those two side by side are perfect examples - it's a futuristic city, so things SHOULD be brown and grey, right? So he draws them grey and brown, without thinking about composition of the scene for ten seconds.
This colorist looks like a complete rookie, desu, who just learned to use gradient tool, but frankly, not many colorists are better.
The thing is colorists are paid shit, and often aren't even credited (sometimes companies hire graphic studios and credit the studio) so they don't give a fuck.
You wanna see digital painting in comics, look up Stiepan Sejic - pic related, it looks closer to, well. Painting (and it's faster than traditional painted comics, Alex Ross style).
>Stan Lee and Steve Ditko credit box removed
triggered
meme
Yeah they do need to tone things down a bit with these, other than that that's the way recolors should be done. Fantagraphics is doing it right with their Carl Barks stuff.
Middle one is NOT a fucking recoloring. It's what the original looked like. It looks bad because colorists did their job ASSUMING colors are gonna look washed-out on cheap newsprint.
Same here. Those are probably just original coloring proofs, scanned.
And this is in fact the reason why they do recolorings, because original colors don't look good on good paper (except, you know, putting it through photoshop and lessening saturation to 75% would probably be easier, but who gives a fuck, amirite?).
How does this look?
Also their Young Romance is the best restoration I've seen. Everyone should strive to preserve the artwork and keep the original feeling of the comic.
>those shitty scribbles on "Moon of the Wolf" lettering
kill me.