Color Blind ~~ A "Comical Wednesday" Post

Look, ma! No color!

For many years now, all aspects of a color comic book's creation have been handled before said comic leaves the publisher and makes its way to the printer. But such was not always the case.

Back in the early 1960s, when the Marvel Universe was just getting its start – as was my ability to read comics or anything else – the coloring was done at the printer, and done separately as opposed to someone sitting there painting colors all over the original comic book art. Sometimes this caused problems, both minor and major.

Now, I've already showcased a few coloring SNAFUs (plus several other goofs) from comics' Golden Age here, but today I'm going to focus on the early 1960s Marvel Comics I mentioned above.

Admittedly, I didn't read the stories which originally appeared in Fantastic Four #4 or #6 – the first two Silver Age appearances of Prince Namor, the Sub-Mariner – until they were reprinted a bit later, so I can't say with any certainty whether his swimming trunks were green or red inside the book. But as I've mentioned in several older posts, my very first look at a Marvel comic was 1963's Fantastic Four Annual #1, in which the FF battled Namor.

Notice, if you will, that Subby's trunks are, once again, colored bright red on the cover. Not so inside. Inside they were green. In fact, every interior drawing of the Sub-Mariner which I saw as a kid had him wearing green trunks, but someone at the printer sure seemed to like putting him in red trunks on the covers.

Of much greater import was this next example. Every issue of Sgt. Fury and his Howling Commandos featured Sgt. Nick Fury and a handful of American soldiers that made up his squad. These soldiers had a variety of nationalities and ethnic backgrounds. “Dum Dum” Dugan was descended from Boston Irish. Dino Manelli was Italian, presumably the son of Italian immigrants. “Rebel” Ralston was a Southerner (from Kentucky, IIRC). Izzy Cohen, from Brooklyn, was Jewish.

One of these soldiers was Gabriel Jones, the squad's bugler.

The problem was that Gabe was what polite society then (1963) called a Negro. Stan Lee had to constantly remind the printers to color Gabe the drab grey color that comics then used for African-Americans. (It could have been worse. For example, comics in those days colored Asians a pale yellow.)

It wasn't until a year or two later that they started coloring African-Americans a more palatable brown.

I'm throwing in my next example just for the hell of it.

The Marvel readers' first glimpse of a villain known as the Grim Reaper was on the cover of 1968's The Avengers #52. And if the coloring of his costume is an “error,” it's only one of judgment! Green, blue, red, purple...! Doesn't look too “grim” to me. I guess they just didn't think that calling him the Gaudy Reaper would be as dramatic.

Later appearances of the Grim Reaper gave him much more suitably-colored attire. But hey, don'tcha just love the way artist George Perez simply ignored the fact that the villain had a prosthetic hand in the shot where ol' Grimmy is donning his mask?

Another title whose covers were plagued with sloppy coloring decisions was The X-Men. My first exposure to the group was issue number five.

The colorist got the X-Men's uniforms right – the all-red Angel doesn't count because he was in a cage of sorts and they colored him for dramatic effect – but Magneto's Brotherhood of Evil was all screwed up.

You see, Mastermind (the guy in green) was supposed to be dressed in light brown. IIRC, the Toad usually wore a mix of orange and grey, but here he's in yellow! Quicksilver, wearing blue here, was supposed to have been attired in dark green. (Although he did get a light blue uniform years later.) And the young woman who is decked out in green? Well! That's none other than the Scarlet Witch. Yes, the Scarlet Witch. Now, what color do y'all think she should have been wearing?!?

Thankfully, they got Wanda's costume colors right on the cover of the next issue, The X-Men #6, but guess what?

The colorist put our old pal, the Sub-Mariner, in those razzer-frazzer RED trunks again!

Thanks for your time.