Monday, October 17, 2016

Manic Monday Bonus--Which Pocket Is Which?

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:

Wayne Allen Sallee said...

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.

B Smith said...

Maybe his pockets were like some kind of cloth mood ring, and indicated....er, never mind.