A Brief and Broad History of Post Golden Age-Pre-Digital Comic Book Coloring

If I told you to think of a Silver Age comic book, what image does your mind conjure? Chances are, you’re picturing a comic with bold lines and bright, vibrant colors. Maybe there’s an Ape on the cover. The image in your head is nostalgic, evocative, and inspiring to many artists who try to recreate the look and feel of these funny books from a bygone era. The look of these books however, wasn’t as intentional as you may think. The style of Silver Age comic books, especially in regards to color, was dictated largely by the limitations of what could be achieved under the administrations that published them, and how much said administrations were willing to pay for printing costs. Some artists pushed against these limitations, and others were simply happy to live within them. This article is dedicated to the work of the under-credited color artists and separators who helped define the look of the comic book medium. Comic books were, and still are, printed as cheaply as possible to maximize profits. Comic books printed today benefit from advancements in printing technology that were unimaginable half a century ago, with better paper, machinery, and most of all, computers. For a large part of their history, comic books were printed on newsprint with Web Press Printers, the same as Newspapers. Because of this, and the color separation methods used, there was a fairly limited color palette that colorists could work with that would reproduce accurately on the medium it was printed on. Through trial and error, the best colorists found ways to use this to their advantage. <a href="https://simonmaggots.medium.com/a-brief-and-broad-history-of-post-golden-age-pre-digital-comic-book-coloring-9fe9e386149a">Click Here</a>