By the time I finished drawing Joe Death and the Graven Image I had the sneaking suspicion that the flat, limited color I had been using on previous drafts wouldn’t be good enough for the final. I have two people to blame for this, one from the old school and one from the new. Milton Caniff and Matías Bergara. But before we get to them, check out a few non-spoiler-y pages from Joe Death and the Graven Image.
For fun, I thought I’d include the flattened color layers without the lines, spotted blacks, and word balloons. In reality, there are no true blacks or whites, comics are a different matter of course and print media has its own rules. Color is the middle ground, the hill to die on, the soundtrack to insert. Gradients are a part of nature and as I spend more time outside I notice every color is a shade, progressing from one color to another as the light waxes and wanes, as fires flicker and ovens warm.
Now on to these jokers Caniff and Bergara, these level uppers, these color hustlers! Caniff, is an American cartoonist who was born in Hillsboro, Ohio in 1907 and died in 1988 in NYC. In 1934 Caniff began his legendary comic strip Terry and the Pirates for the Chicago Tribune New York News Syndicate, newspapers folks! Take a look at his stuff.
These are old comics, so I really have no idea how the color was applied but the limitations of color choices are obvious, red, yellow, blue, and the mixtures there of, and they are fantastic. They are luxurious compared to many comics in our modern era, bright, bold, powerful, used strategically. Night scenes in comics and picture books are some of my favorite things ever and these two strips have it going on.
Matías Bergara is a Uruguayan cartoonist most likely known to you all from his groundbreaking work on Coda, written by Simon Spurrier, and published by Boom Studios in 2019. This one knocked my socks off and broadened my color horizons indefinitely. The variety of his linework and ink textures can’t go unnoticed either, absolutely stunning in every regard.
Follow Matías on Instagram immediately AND look for his upcoming book Step by Bloody Step publishing February 23, 2022. You won’t want to miss it!