So, The Rocketeer finally came out on my dad's 80th birthday (December 16), and I finally got my comps on December 23. Yahoo! They printed awesomely. I'm so happy. The regular edition printed a skoosh darker than the deluxe, but it's so subtle that no one will really notice. I might not have noticed it myself, had I not had both versions open in front of me. The colors are perfect and true. I'm thrilled with the results.

There have been a lot of great reviews so far. Happily, all the reviewers seem to like the recoloring.

"[The coloring is] there to make the art look as good as possible. And it succeeds." - Augie De Blieck

"[The coloring] compliments the original work, it’s not overdone, and it gives the whole thing such an incredibly slick appearance that I’ll be absolutely shocked if this thing doesn’t take home a stack of awards next summer." - Chris Sims

(The comments after this review are wonderful. Just go read them. I love how Chris schools the "I like the old coloring better" people. Because, yeah, they're wrong, as the next reviewer sharply points out.)

"Stevens' art deserves the depth that Martin give it. It is wonderful art, and the coloring that was available in the 1980s simply doesn't do it justice. Perhaps the incorrect people who liked the original coloring more appreciated it because it made the book look more like a "comic book" while Martin's recoloring makes it look more three-dimensional and cinematic, but I say pooh." - Greg Burgas

Okay, now that the book is out, I'm going to talk a bit about the coloring process. I might break this into chapters because there's a lot to talk about, and I have to gather my jpegs, and somewhere in here I have to work. :)

When I recolored the series, I paid very close attention to both the Eclipse colored version and the Dark Horse colored version. I liked the palettes on the Eclipse stuff, particularly Joe Chiodo's propensity for cool foreground/warm background and that signature cyan-blue shadow color. I also liked the way the shading was done on the Dark Horse work. So I brought both influences into my work, but first and foremost, my constant thought was, WWDD? What would Dave do? How would he have colored this, had he had the chance? So all of that was in my head every time I approached a page: what would Dave have done, how did these colorists handle it, were they working closely with Dave or unsupervised, and how do I retain some of my own aesthetics? It's a lot to think about for 160-odd pages, and I admit, sometimes I got tired of the other voices and just listened to my own. But we'll get to that in a different post. For now, let me discuss some of the pages where I chose to follow the originals very closely.

Let's start with that page that everyone refers to in the reviews: the quintessential almost-naked Betty splash page. You might have seen several versions of this floating around...

Here's the very first version of this page, from the fourth chapter of the first series, published in either Starslayer or Pacific Presents, I'm not entirely sure at this point. I think it was Starslayer. Sadly, I don't know who the colorist is, as I've never seen the original comics.



It's important to know something about this version: Dave Stevens had very little to do with the color choices on the original series. Colorists were picked by the publisher, and I bet that he never even saw the coloring until after it was published. He was, understandably, not thrilled with the results. After all, the man was an accomplished airbrush artist; this wouldn't be how he rendered his own work.

So, when Eclipse decided to wrap up the story with a fifth and final chapter, and then republish the whole story as one book, Dave wanted it recolored. Enter Joe Chiodo, with assists from Bruce Timm, Brent Anderson, Scott Saavedra, and Jennifer Frank, who recolored the whole Eclipse series -- or, should I say, almost all of it.

None of those colorists colored this page. Dave Stevens colored it himself. No wonder: it's a big sexy splash page with a beautiful naked woman. Dave wouldn't have trusted this to anyone but himself. Here is physical proof that Dave never would have colored the page like it was colored originally -- which undeniably proves that the people who like the original colors are wrong. ;)



(Note: The color calibration is off on this scan; in print, it appears less orangey, very close to the colors in my version. I should have tweaked this one but I thought it was close enough.)

So when it came time to recolor everything, I was understandably hesitant to color this page. The editor and managers of this project assured me that Dave would have wanted it updated. It needs to match stylistically to the other pages you're recoloring, they said. Put your spin on it, they said. Okay, I said. If you insist.



The version I colored of that Betty splash page is VERY close to that second version from the Eclipse book. I wanted to stay as true as possible to Dave's vision and style, so I mimicked that page in particular. The only changes I made were to "cool off" the outside perimeter of the page -- adding blue and purple into the bottom of the tablecloth and the pillows on the floor, as well as the door and frame. I also pulled some saturation out of the photographer. The goal was to make Betty and the backdrop behind her the warmest, brightest things on the page. Other than that, this is very close to Dave's original.

Another tidbit of trivia: You know the splash page where Cliff is lowering Goose into the rooftop hatch? I believe there are two previous versions of that page as well. It originally appeared in Comico (1989?); I've never seen that version. The film for that version was lost and the page had to be recolored for the Dark Horse collection (1995).



Who colored the second version? None other than ex-Top Cow colorist Steve Firchow! I emailed Steve about this, and he said he'd worked closely with Dave on this page, and he felt that Dave was happy with it. So I put up a fight: why recolor this one, when Dave was happy with it, and we already have the digital file? But again, the editor and managers decided that I needed to redo it. I still feel bad about it...and I made sure that I channeled Steve for the final version.



Luckily for both of us, Steve's version made it into the deluxe edition, in the back materials. I'm so relieved.

It makes me smile when commenters in those reviews complain that this reminds them of Top Cow or Image coloring. Why yes, it does! Might be because most of the early Image colorists, including Steve and myself, were trained and/or influenced by Joe Chiodo, who was very good friends with -- wait for it -- DAVE STEVENS!!! *GASP!*

There's one more page that's lifted almost directly from Dave's original, but I'm too tired to find the files, put them together, resize them, upload them, and post them here. It's the very last page, the splash of Betty standing in the doorway. I'll tell you that story some other time, along with several others.

Oh, before I forget...I believe this appears in the deluxe edition:



In a shocking turn of events, it also showed up, already framed, in a box delivered to the studio, as a thank-you from the guys who made the book happen for Dave Stevens.



No, thank YOU, Kelvin Mao and Dave Mandel. Thank you.