How come people never talk about colorist, inker, or letterers?

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same reason why most people only care about directors in movies

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I've can't think of a bad inker/letterer/colorist but do notice amazing ones

Here's something interesting I found just now from Sean Murphy

>How long will inkers be needed?

>In the old days they needed inkers because computers weren’t yet being used in print. I forget the name of the machine that preceded the scanner (process cameras?), but it was low-tech enough that inking was REQUIRED because the pencil lines weren’t dark enough to pick up. A side effect of this lumbering technology was that it created “inking” as an art form exclusive to print and to comics.

>Imagine you’re an artist working for Ben Franklin at one of his printing presses. Ben loves your comic strip ideas and wants to publish it. But there’s a problem: scanners haven’t been invented yet so your pencils won’t translate. He hands you a pen and brush and a bottle of ink and tells you to go over your pencils to make it darker. You frown–your pencils have nice shades of gray that ink will ruin! Surely Ben will understand that. ”Too bad!” he says while staring at some chicks walking past the window, “Take this ink and find a way to make it work. Or you’re fired.” And off he goes to get laid.

>Demands like this are what gave birth to hatching, cross hatching, feathering, and other tricks to give the impression of “gray” even though there’s only black and white. Before Ben Franklin, it was the lithograph invented by some Bavarian guy in the late 1700s. Before him, it might have been the Greeks using stone blocks or something. Whatever the history, we have to acknowledge that it was the shortcoming of technology that gave birth to modern inking.

>isn't necessarily essential to the piece
>colorist

Bad coloring ruins a lot of modern comics. It's like they just give the line art to amateurs who just learned Photoshop.

>The 90s is when many publishers switched over to scanners and modern printing technology. While it helped give birth to better coloring via Photoshop, it also helped make inking obsolete. But inking survived because it was part of the identity of comic books. Many people working in publishing still had a soft spot for the writer/penciller/INKER/colorist/letterer dynamic. We had the technology to print pencils and colors without needed it inked, but it wasn’t enough to kill off inking. Would readers even buy books that were just pencils? Thus, Marvel and DC continued including inking rates.

>With Wacoms and Cintiques coming of age, traditional inking is completely unnecessary. We no longer need comics to have that “comic book style” because readers have adapted to variety of styles that Cintiques easily create. And if it’s an old fashion “comic book style” you want, Cintiques can do that too!

>Obviously, most of comics is now digital. I write to my editors digitally–phone calls aren’t needed anymore. Even though I create my art traditionally, it’s scanned into digital files which is exactly where digitally created artwork ends up–there IS no distinction at the end of the day. Comics are colored and lettered digitally, the graphics are added digitally. The printers are digital. And if we could find a way to automate the writing and artwork at a lower cost, you’d better believe it would happen. Cost of iArtist (the computer program designed to create art based off the script create by iWriter)–a one time fee of $500. Cost of hiring Sean Murphy for one 22 page issue–$10,000.

>So there I am, cashing my paycheck from DC. My inking rate still included. But for how long? In a few years, I wouldn’t be surprised if the publishers cut out inking rates altogether in order to save money. You can still ink if you want to, they just won’t pay for it.

That's really good user, thanks for sharing

Post some colorists you like:

Elizabeth Breittweisser (I've met her and she's also really nice)
Dean White
Matt Hollingsworth
Justin Ponsor
Frank D'armata

>We no longer need comics to have that “comic book style”
Indeed. I like Larroca's art, but I feel like it would work better with inks.

Rucka's current WW is mediocre in itself but the lettering is god awful and does add to why it's a disappointing run.

And it's well agreed upon that Johns' Avengers run is ruined by the lowercase lettering but that was more editorial than the letterer's fault.

It's not bait if it's true

>Rucka's WW
This. Holy shit it looks those porn comics that mexican truckers like so much

>Elizabeth Breittweisser

She made Agents of Atlas (3D-Man) great, felt like a cinematic end to the series.

how do you remember so many?

Hi-Fi :^)

The Killing Joke

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I can tell you actually meant that, but there's a kid in my fraternity that always says "Thanks for sharing" who I want to deck every goddamn time he opens his mouth.
But yeah I thought that was pretty neat to hear from someone in the industry. I can honestly see inkers being the first part of the creative team to be phased out of the process, but also Murphy goes on to say that basically if the artist is popular or good enough they'll still be able to tell DC/Marvel/and whoever else that they want an inker.

All of that is from a post on his deviantart account, by the way.
seangordonmurphy.deviantart.com/journal/Obsolete-Inking-271985217

They're whole job is to be unobtrusive. If they're doing their job right, you'll barely notice them at all.

Speaking of Murphy
Here's a pretty good example of how drastically different a page can look from colors alone

Vote Loki

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most of Miller's recent stuff

Rachelle Rosenberg
Christina Strain

It's usually said by idiots with nothing useful to share (me) but thanks a ton for posting all this and the link. Always curious about what goes on between the pages

Nothing is more lazy than Vote Loki

Go FUCK yourself, guy

by not being a casual

newsarama.com/23079-gotham-academy-s-karl-kerschl-from-basic-pencils-to-lush-colors.html

This is old and you've probably seen the idea if you've read the comic by now but Gotham Academy has an interesting coloring setup. Kerschl's not doing pencils anymore but they're still doing the separate backgrounds and character work.

Hi-Fi deserves mention for coloring the comic of the year (Colonel Corps) and posting here sometimes

I used to believe that if you could do line art, you must be able to do coloring as well since I thought line art was only done to save time. Drawthreads proved me wrong and now i appreciate color-anons.

>there are people on Cred Forums who have never read (or refuse to read) black & white comics
Wew.

intentionally black and white is different from an uncolored comic, pleb

We talk about mismatched ilustrators/colorists all the time, and inkers every so often. Nobody ever mentions the letterers though

You know wat REALLY grinds my gears?

>Created by Bob Kane WITH Bill Finger

>Inker's can't ruin books

Letterers are very interchangeable, i'm not bashing them but unless you're really familiar with them or they have a distinctive style, it's hard to tell the difference between a lot of them.

Most big comics that are going to get discussed have pretty lame lettering. I wish hand lettering were more popular.

How does shit like this get past the printing phase? Do they go like:
>"This looks fine."
>"He looks like he's constipated."
>"Completely fine."

Injustice was weekly, they were probably close to deadline because they did go back and fix it in the trades.

They fixed it later in the trade I believe.

Stuff like that got through because Injustice was coming out weekly so the schedule was probably crazy and there wasn't time to fix it before its initial release.

Fair's fair.

I mean, that's only five.
They just stand out to me.

Fat Albert never had a tracer.

The killing joke
Twice (they were both shit colorings dont kid yourselves)

I though the same but they released that "noir" edition and it looks surprisingly bad.

It should be

>Created by Bill Finger

>muh Batman
Lol.

They should list the creators for EVERY character making an appearance.

>Name a comic that's been ruined by a colourist or inker

Jack Kirby's run on Thor and Vince Colletta one of the biggest hacks in comics

In order to increase his page rate he would erase details from the pencils

People offered to fight for Finger, he didn't want it.

I appreciate hand-lettering, but there's no-one who really jumps out at me as having a distinct style. That may be because 90% of the hand-lettered comics I read are probably done by John Costanza though

They will get it right one day.

Because the factory system is gay. If you're not writing, pencilling, inking, lettering and colouring everything you're a lazy prick. Jk. Anyone who doesn't passionately discuss that stuff isn't that much into comics if you ask me.
It's one of my theories that comics weren't taken seriously for so many years because of the factory system. If we'd had more creators who could "play all positions" I think comics' rise to respectability would have been much faster. It's the old "Art" canard--(some elitist cultural types think that) for something to qualify as a "work of art" it has to be the product of one person, i.e painting and literature-of course film and most "popular" music disproves this...anyway, it's just a theory I could expound on, feel free to shit on me (not literally, though, cheers familia).
Also Dave Gibbons lettered Watchmen, didn't he?

Giannis Milonogiannis on Ultimates.

>corporate comics--doing their best to make human beings obsolete in every step of the creative process!

creativebloq.com/interview/inspiration-comic-sans-gives-his-verdict-awful-font-812618#

yep

>It's the old "Art" canard--(some elitist cultural types think that) for something to qualify as a "work of art" it has to be the product of one person, i.e painting and literature-of course film and most "popular" music disproves this...anyway
People keep underestimating the role of the director. The greatest films were made by the directors with the most control over their projects, the point of the director is to direct the film crew and individual departments in order to make something that isn't an incoherent, unintelligible mess. Filmmaking can't be a democracy, it doesn't work like that.

Did not know that! Cheers user.
Well, I certainly don't underestimate the role of the director but you're right, the best films are those which the director exercises a vice-like grip on every step of the process. But we're really talking about "films" as opposed to "movies" here, aren't we, your standard multiplex fare is "creativity" (and I use th term loosely)-by-committee. So what would be the "inker" to the directors "penciller"? The D.P or the editor? Also I believe the original Auteur Theory essay was actually written as a critique of this way of making films, I might be wrong and mis-remembering, though.

>comic sans
I knew it looked good somewhere

The film director doesn't have a comparable position in comics. He's the author of the process of translating a script into a film, but he's not the author of the script. Since a script can be filmed in an infinite number of ways, the director is the primary author of the film. I suppose a comic book writer usually takes a role like that of a film director if he's skilled enough to produce rough thumbnails, storyboards or any kind of visual guidelines for what the penciller has to draw.

doom patrol issues in geoff johns run that breeth booth inker wasted doug manhke art.

Also, Jim lee is better without inking at the moment.

Yes, I know, it was a glib question, obviously.

>the factory system is gay
Most comics wouldn't be published on time if roles weren't delegated to different people. Contrary to what you might think, not everybody can be a jack of trades and still hope to advance in the industry.

Oh you're right, of course. Corporate comics are product. Gotta get that new advertisement for the big capeshit blockbuster movie out on time! I'm being facetious of course but there are very, very few factory-produced comics in "our" meagre "canon".

My favorite were the comics that had a slash under Kane's name like they were going to put Finger's name in and changed their mind because Kane's a fucking asshole. At least he died fucking alone in the end.

Pretty sure there's plenty difference between inkers. This would be Pascoe inks.

Kryssing inks.

You shit.

andrew dalhouse can make good artist look like trash with his shit shiny coloring