I'm a fan of black and white. I like the movies. I like the comics. But sometimes color adds something.
For instance, coloring adds, to comic books, a colorist. You know, like Tom McCraw or Gregory Wright, or like that. Now, occasionally, when writers and editors and artists know that a comic book is going to be in color, it would appear that they might just have decided to take that into account during the aritistic planning process. I merely suspect this, you understand. I'm just a consumer of the comic books, you see so I don't want appear to speak against the experts at DC when they decided to publish the Showcase Editions of Green Lantern, Superman and Justice League which I picked up over the weekend.
See, Green Lantern's weakness is anything which is yellow. An interesting conceit and one which doesn't play well in black and white. "Why doesn't GL just use his ring on that lamp?" I would think. "Oh, yes," I'd say, after a moment, "It must be yellow." And then there's Superman whose weakness, kryptonite, comes with the Crayola plan, which likewise does not exactly come across immediately in black and white. And then there's Justice League which has them both.
Of course, this could have been solved with the dialogue, but for some reason, the writers and editors didn't just assume the readers couldn't see the color of the stuff in the comics. It's a minor point, but I found it somewhat ironic because the first two Showcase editions were Superman and Green Lantern who are, of course, the two guys wherein this stuff is most problematic or at least prominent.
We've all read black and white comics, and I even had the Signet editions of JLA, Superman, and Wonder Woman plus the large 30's through 40's hardcovers of Shazam, Batman and Superman, but still, maybe Flash and Batman should have been the first two Showcase Editions.
Posted by Mike Chary at August 9, 2006 2:24 PM
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I haven't read the GL or Superman Showcases, but it seems like in the JLA Showcase, Gardner Fox was VERY conscious of pointing out the color yellow. (And of mentioning that someone flicks a Bic in the next county, that fire robs Martian Manhunter of his powers, by the way.) Since Superman had a tendency to render his teammates superfluous, if he could actually be bothered to show up in the issue, you could bet the kryptonite was coming -- somehow -- and that it would be duly noted by Fox.
I guess what I'm trying to say is that the JLA Showcase, the lack of color wasn't a factor because Fox made sure he was overtaxing the little kiddies' brains.
Although on the flip side, Batman sometimes works better in b&w.