Phantom comics coloring: Other publications

Last time I discussed the coloring of some phantom publications, namely, Harvey-hits, Gold-key, king, charlton, indrajal comics and also the coloring of some newspaper and magazine strips. Continuing with the discussion, here are few more publications and my opinion about them.

5. Diamond Comics: If I have to choose the worst phantom publication from the coloring point of view, then without doubt the prime contendent for the crown will be Diamond Comics publications. Not only the coloring, the overall printing quality of most of the phantom comics they published was far below even the ordinary level. The only consolatory thing in their favour is that they printed far less edited versions of original Phantom dailies compared to indrajal. Look at the sample here. How terribly they have treated the great Sy Barry's artwork. Miserable job.

6. Wolf: Now this is the best. Very eye-catching color selection with excellent blending of colors in panels. The perfection with even the very small and delicate objects are painted makes it almost perfect job. They have a very different style than others. Superimposing a similar (or in some case contrasting) color over a light background produces excellent effect. I just want to learn this style.

7. Egmont: We see a large variation in color quality of egmonts. Sometimes they come up with very good coloring but in some other comics their work is pretty ordinary.

8. Defenders of the earth series (1987): Normal quality work. Less than one's expectation.

9. DC (1989): Illustrating a comic book is highly different than drawing the panels for a daily or sunday strip. While in strips the diamension of the panels are fixed, comic book artist have liberty of using more work-space because of the big panels available. The same thing reflects in coloring also. Have a look.

10. Marvel (1995): To make the soulless stories sellable, the publishers opted to go for much darker/brighter coloring, something which closely resembles todays TV shows which are as dull and ineffective in catching public attention and to pull the public to the shows they rely on making it as much shiny as possible. Average work, no marvels done.

11. Moonstone (2008): The worst stories. Probably more matching the today's public taste in US, but for the old lovers of phantom they are a complete no-no. I don't like their coloring work either.