Qiana J. Whitted
  • Home
  • About
  • Publications
  • CV
  • Contact
  • Desegregating Comics

How Do We Talk About Coloring in Comics?

11/1/2013

 
Picture
Originally posted at Pencil Panel Page.

I am looking for more effective ways to talk about color and the strategies that colorists use to convey meaning in comics. I’d be grateful, too, for examples of comics that you feel are particularly striking or innovate in their use of color.

In my comics course this semester, I have found myself alluding more frequently to McCloud’s brief chapter on color in Understanding Comics, but I’d like to build upon these terms and concepts to analyze coloring more convincingly as a signifying tool. The class’s most recent discussion of Jeremy Love’sBayou referred often to how the southern landscapes of the comic were made all the more lush, haunting, and gruesome by Patrick Morgan’s distinctive use of color, a vivid palette that recalls children’s picture books and Disney cartoon animation.  Color frames readerly expectations about the content in this example, but the interplay between text and image ultimately enlists these very color choices to critique the aesthetic expression of the southern past as idyllic nostalgia.

Color is particularly useful in exploring how socially constructed ideas about race negotiate the realities of skin color (something I also discuss here in this post’s thought experiment). Another example that I find interesting comes from the 1953 story “In Gratitude” by Al Feldstein and Wally Wood from Shock SuspenStories. In this scene, the parents of a Korean War veteran named Joey visually recount the incidents narrated in their son’s letters from the frontline. Described in the letters are the heroic deeds of a fellow soldier named Hank who ends up giving his life to save Joey.


Read More
    Picture

    About

    An archive of my online writing on comics, literature, and culture. (Illustration above by Seth!)

    Categories

    All
    Adaptations
    Aesthetics And Style
    Anthropomorphism
    Brazilian Comics
    Caricature
    Comics And Gender
    Comics And Music
    Comics And The South
    Comics Research
    Defining Comics
    Django Unchained
    EC Comics
    Editorial Cartoons
    Empathy And Emotion
    Events
    Indie Comics
    Interview
    Reader Response
    Romance

    Archives

    July 2020
    June 2020
    February 2019
    August 2018
    March 2018
    September 2017
    August 2017
    March 2017
    December 2014
    August 2014
    July 2014
    June 2014
    May 2014
    April 2014
    March 2014
    January 2014
    December 2013
    November 2013
    October 2013
    September 2013
    June 2013
    May 2013
    April 2013
    February 2013
    January 2013
    November 2012
    October 2012
    September 2012
    May 2012
    April 2012
    March 2012
    January 2012
    December 2011
    August 2011

    RSS Feed

Proudly powered by Weebly
  • Home
  • About
  • Publications
  • CV
  • Contact
  • Desegregating Comics