There is a reason why most characters have (mostly) symmetrical costumes....it's to keep the colorists from going
bananas!
Take, for example,
The Conqueror, from
Victory Comics #1 (1941):
OK, you really can't tell much from that cover...how about the splash page?
OK, the cover looked better.
Created by
Bill Everett, The Conqueror is
David Lyons, an American resistance fighter who battling
Hitler's forces in Europe, when he gets zapped by cosmic rays, which make him better/stronger/faster
yada yada.
Ignore all of that--the
key thing is the color scheme of his costume:
So, note: Conq's left-hand shirt pocket is red, and the right one is blue. Pretty
clear, right?
Well, not to the unnamed colorist for this issue:
D'oh...two pages later they've reversed!! (along with the side stripes on his trunks!!). Plus, the woman's shawl has changed from green to blue!!
Surely, it's just a
one-panel snafu, right?
Nope.
But soon the pockets switch back to their
original configuration...
...yet for the end of the story they switch
again!!
OK, OK, so someone had a bad issue.
Well, not just one. Let's jump ahead to
Victory Comics #3 (1941):
Well, it looks like the blue has become
black...but honestly, that's probably just a result of the original cover fading. Again, let's go to the splash:
Green?!?!? Again, probably just age again, as some of the later panels will make it more clearly blue.
And we're definitely, firmly,
100% back to the original configuration...
...for a whole 3 panels.
The Conqueror stays with that scheme for awhile...
But pretty soon the poor colorist has clearly been driven
insane, as we
constantly switch...
...and again...
...and again...
...and one last time.
Please don't think that I'm picking on our unnamed colorists...hell, I myself had to keep going back and forth to remember which order the pockets were in from previous panels.
Which is why you
shouldn't design costumes like that.
Help keep colorists sane--keep costumes symmetrical, color-wise
2 comments:
There's a new Green Lantern named Jessica Cruz, who has a GL emblem tattoo or something over her right eye. Before Rebirth, it looked like a puffy X. It continues to be missing in some panels, or pencilled in with the colorist ignoring it.
Maybe his pockets were like some kind of cloth mood ring, and indicated....er, never mind.
Post a Comment