I’ve been thinking a lot about comic book coloring processes recently, just letting myself brainstorm how I would print a so-far imaginary color epic. As part of this, I’ve been researching older methods for getting a lot of colors out of a few different inks. So, I was particularly struck by this Four Color Process site that Dan Nadel linked to at the end of December. Here are a few images and a quote from their manifesto (written by John Hilgart):
…in [a] decisive, paradoxical twist, [the] four-color process created a form of depth even as it fought against illustrative realism. Whereas contemporary reproductions of mid-century comic art are truly closed and flat, old comic books are visually leaky and deep. Four-color dots perforate the flat surface of the universe, opening onto nowhere – some uncharted cosmos.