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Olav Bakken
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Posted: 12 October 2019 at 12:20pm | IP Logged | 1 post reply

The first comics to use digital colors was Akira, but it took some time for the rest of the industry to catch on. If we focus mainly on DC and Marvel, are there any way to say when the various titles did the switch to digital?
And does anyone knows when they started using computers to help creating backgrounds (not including "Batman: Digital Justice")?

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Matt Hawes
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Posted: 13 October 2019 at 1:41am | IP Logged | 2 post reply

The switch to computer coloring at Marvel and DC happened sometime in the mid-1990s, but I don't know exactly when for either publisher.

As for computers used for helping create comics, if not specifically backgrounds, JB himself was an early user of computers for comics related work back in the 1980s. 

IRON MAN: CRASH, a Marvel Graphic Novel, was the first Marvel computer comic, and the independent comic SHATTER was the first fully computer drawn comic series.

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Matt Hawes
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Posted: 13 October 2019 at 1:43am | IP Logged | 3 post reply

Come to think of it, if SHATTER was drawn with a computer, was it colored on a computer? If so, it predates AKIRA.

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Olav Bakken
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Posted: 13 October 2019 at 8:49am | IP Logged | 4 post reply

Yes, there would have been some early experimentations. But at some point even the established publishers decided that all of their titles from then on should be colored with computers.
It happened in the mid 90s, it would just be interesting to know exactly when and which issues.
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Byron Graham
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Posted: 13 October 2019 at 11:02am | IP Logged | 5 post reply

As I recall, the scuttlebutt at the time Marvel acquired Malibu was that Marvel wanted their digital coloring facilities.
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Matt Hawes
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Posted: 13 October 2019 at 7:41pm | IP Logged | 6 post reply

Byron, that's what I recall,  too. I call BS on that being the real reason, as I believe Marvel bought Malibu to simply be rid of the biggest competition it had a hope of purchasing. This happened right before Marvel's financial woes of the late 1990s. One reason I call BS is that Malibu's digital coloring facilities was this new fangled thing called Photoshop. It's not like Marvel couldn't afford a PS installation disc, even then.

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John Byrne
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Posted: 14 October 2019 at 7:26am | IP Logged | 7 post reply

As most of you know, I am okay with digital coloring provided it is used with restraint. But too many "colorists" are little more than technicians, these days, and their interest is in playing with the toys, not serving the art.

(A small thing about which I have grumbled: Windex apparently does not exist in the DC and Marvel "universes". All glass, be it windows, monitor screens or spectacles, is foggy.)

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Peter Hicks
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Posted: 14 October 2019 at 8:39am | IP Logged | 8 post reply

Come to think of it, if SHATTER was drawn with a computer, was it colored on a computer? If so, it predates AKIRA.
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Groan.  I am old enough to remember SHATTER #1.   The only hand done thing about it was the colouring.  The line art and lettering were done on computer.
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Jason Larouse
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Posted: 14 October 2019 at 3:22pm | IP Logged | 9 post reply

Image was doing it long before Marvel and DC. I think Spawn was digital from the first issue. Steve Oliff (who also did the Akira colors) was the colorist. 
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Eric Jansen
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Posted: 14 October 2019 at 4:20pm | IP Logged | 10 post reply

Wasn't that the point of MARVEL FANFARE (which began in 1982)--better paper and more detailed coloring than was available for the regular books?  Not sure if the coloring was done the "regular" way (just "trying harder") but I'm thinking this series definitely switched to digital coloring at some point.

Edited by Eric Jansen on 14 October 2019 at 9:28pm
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Dave Phelps
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Posted: 14 October 2019 at 5:50pm | IP Logged | 11 post reply

I remember some early experimentation in DC's Hero Hotline mini-series and Doom Patrol about the time Grant Morrison took over the book and they switched to New Format. That was early 1989 (around the time of Akira #7 based on Mike's Amazing World). No idea when it took over completely.
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Ed Love
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Posted: 15 October 2019 at 9:00am | IP Logged | 12 post reply

I seem to recall that Gerard Jones' and Mike Parobeck's "El Diablo" was one of the early books to be computer colored, that there was talk on learning to use the computer to do the coloring and applying it to that book.
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