The Stop Button

Spider-Man/Human Torch (2005) #1

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Who let this comic out with these colors?

I don’t usually go nuts, in support or against, over colors. I doubt I even know a single colorist’s name. But Felix Serrano is a criminal. He took Ty Templeton’s lovely retro-artwork–it’s supposed to be in the Silver Age style–and added this glossy Photoshop slime to it. I think it’s the bubble effect.

And this issue is just that old Dan Slott magic, from back when he could do no wrong and could get any reader with a Silver Age affection and some solid literacy salivating for his Marvel comics.

It’s got Peter and Johnny and Spidey and the Torch and the girls–Slott writes Betty Brant so perfectly he should do a whole series for her, a la Superman’s Girl Friend, Lois Lane.

It’s just a magical comic book.

And Serrano does whatever he can to lessen it.

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2 responses to “Spider-Man/Human Torch (2005) #1”

  1. vernon wiley Avatar
    vernon wiley

    Hmmm…were the originals colored like this? I can’t believe Marvel would spend the extra dime, so I’m guessing the paper change would be the culprit here, perhaps not the colorist. That’s if they didn’t re color it. Sometimes slick coated paper just makes colors mutate wildly. Also, sorry I haven’t answered email, Gmail has gone wonky and the last two times I’ve tried to send or use links, buttons have gone for naught.

    Reply
  2. Ty Templeton Avatar
    Ty Templeton

    Both Dan and I have discussed this from time to time. We both agree that the colouring on this series was the worst either of us has ever seen on our work. The colourist apparently apologized to Dan in person a year or so ago….and to be blunt, I disagreed in principle with some of the inking as well. I tried as hard as I could to draw each issue in the style of that decade, and some of the inkers tended to ignore it. In fact, in issue #1, I’d swiped some Peter Parker faces from Ditko, to really sell the idea that this was an old issue, and the inker added tons of details, changed the hairstyle in some panels, and generally made the original intent of the art unrecognizable (you’ll see no real Ditko-ness to any of the faces in the printed version). Overall, the series was a pleasant experience for me (who doesn’t enjoy drawing a Dan Slott story) but as we were not a HUGE sales success, we got some of the less experienced production teams. (Except for the issues inked by Tom Palmer, which I think were so pretty I wanted to cry.)

    Reply

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