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Post by Mister Spaceman on Nov 6, 2019 16:18:00 GMT -5
Dino Battaglia is a master of black and white comic art.   |
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Post by Mister Spaceman on Nov 6, 2019 16:22:02 GMT -5
Jeffrey Catherine Jones was always spectacularly great in black and white.  |
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Post by Deleted on Nov 6, 2019 16:34:02 GMT -5
"The Thirteenth Floor" is a British strip about Max, a sentient computer that looks after his tenants in a tower block. Max is a psycho who deals harshly with anyone who threatens his tenants (bailiffs, criminals, etc.). He takes them to his "13th Floor", a virtual reality world where he teaches them a lesson. Meet Max in black and white:  Does he work as well in colour? I would say not:  Here's Max's 13th floor in action:  |
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Post by brutalis on Nov 7, 2019 7:33:28 GMT -5
No conversation about black and white comics art is complete without mentioning Gilbert and Jaime Hernandez.   Los Bros' Hernandez have such skill with black and white and yet each brother has their own style and clarity in utilizing it. I am constantly amazed with some of the panels they have produced and I absolutely keep reading and poring over those early Love and Rockets magazines from Fantagraphics. |
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Post by wildfire2099 on Nov 7, 2019 7:46:40 GMT -5
I think it definitely depends on the artist... The Marvel and DC black and white reprints are nice for getting expensive silver age stuff cheap, but they were meant to be color. Stuff that was original to black and white, more the most part, is better that way IMO.
There are a few things (TMNT and Elfquest) that are equally good in both, but mostly it's a style choice, IMO
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Post by Prince Hal on Nov 7, 2019 9:34:21 GMT -5
Barry Smith's Conan was splendid in black and white.   |
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Post by Prince Hal on Nov 7, 2019 9:47:40 GMT -5
I wish Kubert had done more black and white work. These are uncolored Sunday pages from his Tales of the Green Beret strip.  Of course, there was Yossel, his stunning graphic novel told in rough pencil sketches by an artistic young Jewish boy whose family had not emigrated to America :    |
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Post by Confessor on Nov 7, 2019 11:59:53 GMT -5
Gosh, some of my all-time favourite comics have black and white art. There's far too many to list them all here, but I would say that, like any British comic fan of my age, I grew up reading black & white comics in the late '70s and '80s...including reprints of various Marvel and DC titles, which were mostly all black & white. Someone mentioned the Essentials and Showcase TPB volumes earlier and, while they do make some artist's artwork look better (Wally Wood's early Daredevil stories and Russ Heath's Sea Devils are two that spring immediately to mind), for the most part, those U.S. comics were drawn to be coloured and do look best in colour IMHO. Far more interesting to me are the artists who draw specifically for the black & white format. Much as I love colour -- and I've spoken many times before in the forum about what a mind-blower it was when I first stumbled across proper American colour comics in a local newsagents in the early '80s -- an awful lot of my favourite comics were always meant to be black & white. @taxidriver1980 has already mentioned Charley's War, from the pages of Battle Picture Weekly. There's no way that Charley's War would be as impactful if it were a colour comic; Joe Colquhoun's stark black & white artwork is perfect for such an unflinching look at the battlefields of the First World War...   taxidriver1980 also mentioned "The 13th Floor" strip from the criminally short-lived British horror comic, Scream!, but there were at least two other absolutely fantastic black & white strips in that comic too. Firstly there was "The Dracula File", which was drawn by Eric Bradbury, and then there was (my personal favourite) "Monster", written initially by Alan Moore and then continued by Rick Clark. The black & white artwork in "Monster" was done by Jesus Redondo, and could be at turns chillingly horrific and achingly touching. There's no way the art on "Monster" would've benefitted from a colour job...   Also, speaking of Alan Moore, lets not forget that V for Vendetta was originally drawn by David Lloyd to be published in black & white, in the pages of Warrior magazine. I have to say that I actually really like the later colourization of the artwork that Lloyd and Siobhan Dodds did when DC published it in 1988, because the combination of the muted palette and heavy black inks gives the art a murky quality that is perfect for the morally ambiguous nature of the tale. But that said, it's easy to tell from the heavy spot blacks and shadowy shading that Lloyds' art was clearly originally intended for publication in black & white...   Two other favourite comics of mine that are both in black & white are Alan Moore's From Hell and Art Spiegelman's Maus...   And then there's all those wonderful Will Eisner black & white comics, like A Contract with God for example...   |
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Post by Deleted on Nov 7, 2019 12:45:42 GMT -5
That "Monster" strip is now available as a trade, but I haven't purchased it yet. "Johnny Red" is another strip I like, which I think also first started in Battle Picture Weekly. Johnny Red was a pilot in the RAF, but was discharged dishonourably. He joined an elite aerial unit with the Soviet Union, battling the Nazis:  |
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Post by Confessor on Nov 7, 2019 13:00:28 GMT -5
That "Monster" strip is now available as a trade, but I haven't purchased it yet. Yeah, I picked it up a year or two back. I hadn't been aware at the time that "Monster" had carried on in the pages of Eagle, after the demise of Scream! So, it was fascinating to finally see how the story ended, after a wait of 30+ years. "Johnny Red" is another strip I like, which I think also first started in Battle Picture Weekly. Johnny Red was a pilot in the RAF, but was discharged dishonourably. He joined an elite aerial unit with the Soviet Union, battling the Nazis: I liked Johnny Red a lot at the time too, but like many of those old Commando comics (which I also liked at the time), I think the strip is fairly unreadable to adult eyes. |
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Post by berkley on Nov 7, 2019 13:26:16 GMT -5
I see that Eddie Campbell has come out with a colourized version of From Hell, which is the last comic I'd ever have thought could benefit from such a treatment. Has anyone looked at it, out of curiosity?
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Post by Confessor on Nov 7, 2019 13:49:54 GMT -5
I see that Eddie Campbell has come out with a colourized version of From Hell, which is the last comic I'd ever have thought could benefit from such a treatment. Has anyone looked at it, out of curiosity? No. The scratchy, unkempt, but crowded with detail black & white artwork of From Hell is so appropriate to the Victorian London setting of the book that a colourised version would surely just detract from Moore's story. I guess some bean counter somewhere thought that it might sell a few extra copies to the superhero fan crowd, who might've been put off by a black & white comic. |
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Post by beccabear67 on Nov 7, 2019 13:53:01 GMT -5
Something about how the Hernandez bros. use blacks reminds me of Wally Wood. Robert Crumb might be better in B&W than in color, though I like his Yazoo record LP covers to be in color. Maybe I', wrong on that, maybe either b&w or color is equally great by him. With movies I think some films like To Kill A Mockingbird, The Last Picture Show, and Rumble Fish should obviously never be colored... perhaps Charley's War, From Hell and Maus are like them?
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Post by Confessor on Nov 7, 2019 14:00:47 GMT -5
Something about how the Hernandez bros. use blacks reminds me of Wally Wood. Robert Crumb might be better in B&W than in color, though I like his Yazoo record LP covers to be in color. Maybe I', wrong on that, maybe either b&w or color is equally great by him. With movies I think some films like To Kill A Mockingbird, The Last Picture Show, and Rumble Fish should obviously never be colored... perhaps Charley's War, From Hell and Maus are like them? I think you're right, but in the interests of full disclosure I feel that I should point out that whenever Charley's War featured on the front cover of Battle Picture Weekly the first full page splash was indeed printed in colour. This is because the front and back cover of BPW was always colour at the time, while the interior pages were all black and white. But Joe Colquhoun's art definitely looked better in black & white in my opinion...  |
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Post by Deleted on Nov 7, 2019 14:14:24 GMT -5
"Detective Zed" was another Eagle strip, about a robotic cop in 22nd-century London. Not many images of him, but here he is:  The strip wasn't dystopian or anything like that. It was actually rather humorous. But it was suited to black and white. Like "Charley's War" in Battle Picture Weekly, Zed would be featured in colour when he made the cover:  So, almost any b/w strip in England had the opportunity for colour representation when its time for a cover appearance came! |
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