The coloring marvel used in the 80s didn't work in the 80s.  I refuse to buy anything from that period unless it is recolored or in black and white.

I think it was called the Flexographic process, or something.  It was horrible and drove me away from comics for a long time.

Wow, thats a lot of angst over coloring, isn't it?

I think it was called the Flexographic process, or something. It was horrible and drove me away from comics for a long time.

Wow, thats a lot of angst over coloring, isn't it?

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Especially since it's not actually the COLORING you're angsting over.

Flexigraphic was a printing process, which, among other things, used plastic plates instead of the traditional metal ones. These plates would often soften and deform under the heat of printing many, many pages, and that resulted in what we came to call "boogie lines", which were wavy or even dropped out completely.

Flexi, as we called it, also used different inks, which were much brighter than regular comic inks. This was the source of your angst. Problem, you see, was that the colorists were continuing, business as usual, but the printers were not compensating for the new inks.

Fortunately, the prices of letterpress printing kept going up and up, and eventually it actually became economically viable to use off-set printing, and the industry standard was switched.

It all runs together into a tiny ball of hate, JB.

I didn't realize brighter inks were required.  I always thought it was a choice by the art team.  An effort to use popular 80s colors, so to speak.  Thanks for pointing that out.

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Hard to set an exact time frame. It kind of trickled in and trickled out.