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Scott Adsit
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| Posted: 28 March 2025 at 2:05pm | IP Logged | 1
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From the Your First John Byrne thread...
JB: Recalling Euro versions where Cap was given bare legs!
This kind of thing used to happen a lot with American reprints overseas. Blue Daredevils, green Supermans and yellow Red Skulls.
Why was artwork recolored or sold uncolored to the foreign markets?
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John Byrne
Grumpy Old Guy
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| Posted: 28 March 2025 at 3:28pm | IP Logged | 2
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Never did get a straight answer on that one!There was some suggestion that it was just CHEAPER..
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Josh Goldberg
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| Posted: 28 March 2025 at 4:42pm | IP Logged | 3
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I was wondering about that blue Daredevil. I wonder if the foreign colorist mistakenly though the character was Batman.
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John Byrne
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| Posted: 28 March 2025 at 4:58pm | IP Logged | 4
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As one editor commented years ago, that would mean that they were paying far more attention than we could reasonably expect!
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Jean Voulis
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| Posted: 28 March 2025 at 7:32pm | IP Logged | 5
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Visiting family in Greece in the 80s I would read Marvel reprints (In Greek) of Thomas/Buscema era Avengers bundled with Rom issues and sometimes Master of King fu.
All in glorious black and white - seeing color versions today just seems 'off' to me.
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Brian ONeill
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| Posted: 28 March 2025 at 7:42pm | IP Logged | 6
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I read a few Marvel UK issues from 1984, where they would print 6-8 pages apiece of 3 stories in one issue. Usually, there'd be a couple of pages in 'full colo(u)r', a couple in black and white, and the others in some weird 'two tone', basically replacing the black in a 'black and white' page with (usually) red. Didn't see the point in that 'tinted' look.
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James Woodcock
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| Posted: 28 March 2025 at 11:15pm | IP Logged | 7
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Those UK black and white reprints was where I met the vast majority of
Marvel comics.
Then you would get the two tone, and then you started to get full colour -
with the colour plates completely Mos-aligned to the art.
Used to boggle my mind how US comics could get colour correct jn the
1930’s, and here we were in the UK, in the 80s, misaligning the colour.
In the 70s, US comics were only available at the seaside, for some reason I
never understood, and I didn’t know that America wrote its dates different
to the UK. So I thought the next issue was to be released in a year’s time,
which totally mystified me. Eventually I figured things out.
And then in the 80s I found a newsagent that started to import comics.
I would say I started to buy US comics around X-Men 144 - the D’Sparye
issue. These were three months behind the US comics. The newsagent I
was buying from eventually started to import directly so I managed to get
things like Camelot 3000 from him.
Finally set foot in a real comic shop the day Classic X-Men 1 was released,
meeting Chris Claremont, Art Adams and John Bolton. Started going to one
each week the month after the last issue of Born Again was released
because I wanted to see what came next. Was shocked to see the Madcap
issue.
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Robbie Moubert
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Evertonian
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| Posted: 29 March 2025 at 1:31am | IP Logged | 8
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Although the more expensive comics such as Eagle and TV Century 21 were printed with glorious photogravure colour, albeit only on some pages, UK comics were generally on cheap paper in black and white. Sometimes you might get a colour centrespread and the use of a single accent colour (D.C. Thomson titles such as the Dandy and Beano used this a lot).
Prior to Marvel UK launching in 1972, Marvel stories were reprinted, in B&W, in the Power Comics line (Wham!, Smash!, Pow!, Fantastic and Terrific) and in various publications from Alan Class (Astounding Stories, Creepy Worlds, Uncanny Tales etc.). Class reprinted stories from a range of publishers and you might find a Spider-Man or Avengers story alongside stories from a variety of publishers (Charlton, ACG, Lev Gleason etc.). Occasionally the artwork provided to the likes of Class might contain slight differences to the versions published in the US. One example is Fantastic Four #1; the version used by Class is taken from the original version seen here as opposed to the amended version that was published.
The missing onlookers on the earlier version facilitated the lowering of the text box on the right.
Edited by Robbie Moubert on 29 March 2025 at 1:33am
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Dave Kopperman
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| Posted: 29 March 2025 at 2:36am | IP Logged | 9
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Given the analog production methods and the possibility of different print sizes, they’d no doubt have to cut new color plates for different printers (which I’d assume also applied for reprints). And I’d assume they didn’t provide the colorist’s guide because it went right from editorial to the printer and was probably trashed.
But as to why even a proper standards guide wasn’t given to reprint companies in foreign markets? Occam suggests no-one could be bothered.
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Athanasios Kollias
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| Posted: 29 March 2025 at 6:05am | IP Logged | 10
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I was wondering about that blue Daredevil. I wonder if the foreign colorist mistakenly though the character was Batman.+++
I am pretty sure they saw Iron-Man and Thor and mistook DD for Cap.
---- Jean, do you recall the orange tones they used in the Greek reprints every other page? I WISH it was all b&w, but for some reason the publishers thought it was preferable to have some pages colored in this weird fashion than without colour.
Edited by Athanasios Kollias on 29 March 2025 at 6:06am
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Matt Reed
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Robotmod
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| Posted: 29 March 2025 at 6:22am | IP Logged | 11
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Struggling to understand what’s wrong. DD is red, is he not?
As to B&W, although I accepted it with the Essentials line, it’s not a favorite of mine. I think much of the joy of superheroes has been expressed in their colorful palette.
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Richard Stevens
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| Posted: 29 March 2025 at 3:15pm | IP Logged | 12
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I think the issue is that the whole book was printed in black, white and red.
Honestly, that looks really cool and ahead of its time!
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