Color Quandaries #1: Killing Joke
via Publisher’s Weekly’s The Beat

Admittedly, I haven’t seen the full book, but Brian Bolland’s new coloring for the recently-released hardcover reprint of The Killing Joke has given me a reason to revisit this classic from the 80s.  The article below has some disdaining things to say about Bolland’s reworking of the coloring, but his move to a more stark color palette is, to my tastes, striking and original. What do you think? Let us know.

There’s a handsome new hardcover edition of THE KILLING JOKE by Alan Moore and Brian Bolland out, featuring remastered color by Bolland. PopCultureShock has done a side by side on the color, and some people, like Chris Butcher, find the new version less than compelling.
Killingcolor
This seems like a “changing tastes” thing. One style is more 80s, one more Aughts. Because we’re lurid, our personal tastes are a bit more with the original. But really, color is the hardest thing to judge objectively. Butcher writes:

I think my problem with it is that while artist Brian Boland brings a high degree of craft to the new colouring, he’s drained all of the emotion and… art… out of the work. Little touches like the cast-shadows on the cuffs of the Joker’s sleeves, for example, added more personality and depth to the art than all of the soft airbrush modelling in the world could hope to accomplish. At work my opinion is in the minority, with the majority of customers loving the hell out of the new look. Enh.

The new look may be more tasteful, but at least the modeling is kept to a minimum. Subjective or not, every time we flip through a stack of “mainstream” comics, our eyes are assaulted by a barrage of ghastly, life-draining “cgi” style coloring that has the major effect of ruining any of the balance of light and shade that the original artists were going for. Late deadlines are probably the main reason, but in general this “cgi-stylee” look takes real skill to carry out, and time.

Color Quandaries #1: Killing Joke
The Beat
Wed, 02 Apr 2008 12:05:00 GMT

One Response to “Those Killer Colors”

  1. freakengine Says:
    April 5th, 2008 at 2:31 pm

    While this new Sin City-ized version of Killing Joke looks cool, I’m all for leaving history as-is. Maybe he’ll add Jar Jar Binks to the mix next time.

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