Spider-man—a franchise beloved across many a generation since its debut in 1962. During this time, it has undergone many different interpretations by a myriad of artists and authors. One interesting difference between all these different creators and their creations is their use of color to subtly convey tone, intended audience, and internal thoughts and emotions of the characters.
The amazing Spider-man... Is no more?
Early Spider-man comics, such as the referenced issue #50 of Amazing Spider-man, utilized particularly bright and saturated colors. Not only were the bright, fun colors meant to stand out to young, eager to beg their parents for a copy, children, but there was also a technical reason for this style of coloring. In an era before computerized coloring, for a mass-printed comic, each color had to be separately overlayed on top of one another, one at a time. Most modern printers still operate in a similar way, using a combination of cyan, magenta, yellow, and black inks to create the desired colors. However, doing this process by hand one layer at a time was tedious and slow, so comic artists and colorists had to find shortcuts. Frequently reoccurring characters that would have to be colored more often had simpler palettes—like Superman and Spider-man's being entirely primary colors—and villains or infrequent characters having more complex palettes to make them stand out more.
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The cover page of "Spider-man No More!"
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Peter leaves "Spider-man" behind.
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Spectacular Spider-man
As technology evolved, so too did the tools for making comics. Printing different colors became easier and faster, new techniques and styles had been discovered, and artists could now utilize computers to line and color their works digitally. Whereas with physical media, an artist is limited by the tools and colors that they physically have on hand, digital media allows for the use of endless amounts of tools, textures, and any color the artist could possibly think of. This allowed many different styles and techniques of coloring and shading, giving the comic a more distinct and stylized feel.
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| Spider-man perched atop a gargoyle, illuminated from the moon behind. |
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Technology also allowed for the discovery of different cultures and ideas. Humberto Ramos, the penciler of the Spectacular Spider-man (2003) series was highly influenced by manga—Japanese comics—that had not previously been widely available to the West. This also inspired the coloring choices of the comics, focusing on a more "realistic" approach to colors that may target it towards an older audience than the 1960s comics.
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Ramos' manga-inspired styliazation of characters.
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Gwen Stacy: Spider-woman
As technological advancements benefiting comic creation have begun to level out in more recent years, it appears that comic artists have shifted away from adapting new technologies and instead towards re-innovating and experimenting with the technologies they already have. Edge of Spiderverse's (2014) second issue, Gwen Stacy: Spider-woman, does an excellent job showcasing this idea.
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Gwen: sad, alone, and feeling "blue."
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Spider-woman takes a more artistic approach to colors, rather than a realistic one. While the colors often make real-world sense, when Gwen is particularly emotional or in her own head—such as when she is playing her drums—the colors of the world contort to match her inner thoughts and feelings. The comic expertly uses color not to emphasize what the reader can see, but rather what the reader cannot, almost enabling a first-person perspective in a third-person narrative. It's incredible how something as simple as different colors can communicate to us the readers exactly what a character is feeling!
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| Gwen, in a moment of desperation, being overtaken by her emotions... |
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| ...and using that to her advantage. |
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Special thanks to Reddit user dr_hermes for their informational post in r/comicbooks, as well as Natalie Wiley's Printivity article "The Comic Book History."
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