Horrendous DC Golden Age Reprint/Restoration

Maybe, but I feel as though these characters and legacy’s deserve a good presentation of their origin

 

here's the same panel but out of a (rather worse for wear) copy of DC 27 from 1939. How did i do in my craftint emulation?

 

I honestly don't know what I'm looking at, and I probably couldn't do any better, but that is horrible. Did they have measles in the original as well?

 

Above is my attempt at re-creating/emulating the Craftint Multicolor used in the original detective comics 27

Below is a panel from a 1939 detective comics 27 that I based mine on

 

I see. They're both bad, but I prefer the original because of the obvious lack of anti-aliasing on the top version. Just being honest. Making everything sharper really brings out the imperfections. What is the objective exactly? What is that dot printing effect on the original called? Are you wanting to leave it or remove it?

I don't remember much about the original comic. Somewhere I have a hardback with this in it. I'll have to dig it out of storage.

 

Glad to have your opinion. The objective of this to recreate the original printing look as all of DCs restorations are horrible.

They use standard Halftone printing under traced art.

I found online a scan of pages 2-6 of a production proof so I used that as a basis for a kind of restoration/recreation of Detective Comics 27.

The printing technique used in the original comic is called: Craftint Multicolour.

It’s was designed as a cheaper, faster, easier to produce alternative to ben day printing. Wich was the standard up until Craftints explosion in use. It was primarily used from the mid 30s to the late 60s but some used it into the early 80s.

Since DC has done such a shoddy job at restoring and presenting their golden age classics. I thought I could give you all a little treat by showing a little
Love and care can go a long way.

Ps: don’t waste your time digging up that hardcover. I believe you are referring to the omnibus series. Since all of DCs other restorations look so bad I doubt those pages will look any better than this


This is from the archive series and is just awful

 

Not familiar with the omnibus. I have this:

There were color plates, but it was mostly black and white.

 

haven't actually read that
could you post a scan, id like to see how it stacks up

 

I'll find it and scan that page. It can also be found here. This is from that site:

 

Wow, that looks absolutely awful

 

In that original Detective Comics #27 panel (post #54), why is there a white space between Batman's thigh and the cape behind him? That shouldn't be there (and I see your recreation fixed that), but I wonder why they drew it that way to begin with.

 

This (presumably) is a scan of the original (found online). It's washed out, but there is no cross hatched grays or spotty skin.

 

It does, doesn't it. Many unacceptable changes from the original. I'm not sure if the book is any better than the online scan, but I doubt it.

 

That looks like the 1st edition reprints put onto library style film frames. The backlight, fading and grain all confirm my suspicion.

I know it is certainly NOT from a Original 1939 due to the loss in detail and the fact that their is no cross hashed greys. The printing process they used for that book makes anything but cross hatched greys physically impossible

 

I would like to see examples of the original DC27. Are there any? It would seem pointless to start restoration from anything else.

 

And this is where i "come clean". The image i posted above

this is actually both done by me. I wanted to challenge myself to create something that looks like an actual DC 27. And to get an unbiased opinion of my work i would badge it as an authentic DC 27 panel... (turns out batman in DC 27 didn't even use craftint,they used ben day!)

I guess I passed the audition!

 

Just a side note. I bet their are some people who really liked the vintage comic book feel and craftint colour I used on this example



For this i used the content aware fill on a 50s comic to get a generic page texture and a black ink texture.

I then used my digital craftint color plates to create the color and then opened it in CMYK and move the layers a bit in each direction to create the golden age “charming” page miss-registration.

I then googled water damage and water stains and applied those on top.

And as a finishing touch I did a upscale/downscale/upscale to emulate websites upscaling smaller content for their webpage and a garish unsharp mask for just the little extra bit of tacky charm.

If you want me to do or show anything else, feel free to comment

(Ps, if I REALLY wanted to sell it, I could have printed it out and the scanned it back in. But I wanted to see how far I could get with a completely in computer experiment)

 

It's worth noting there are three different published versions of the first Batman story:

1. The original artwork as published in Detective 27. This has never been reprinted, since the original art and photostats of it are long since lost. However, in 2011 black and white production proofs surfaced for five of the six pages of this story. These offer an excellent-quality view of the original art, but have not (to my knowledge) ever been used to produce a high quality reprint of the story.
2. A trace job of the original story done for Detective Comics #387 in 1969. In the process of tracing they also censored the story... the most notable difference being that on page 2 panel 2, the murder victim no longer has a knife sticking out of his back and blood dripping. This trace job is not very faithful overall in other ways. The lettering is totally different, and the panel sizes are slightly altered at times (One example... if you look at the page you posted above, the caption "Meanwhile the Commissioner draws up in his car" in panel seven is not all on one line, but rather the word "car" is on a second line below. Whereas in the original version it's all lettered into one line). This version appears in Detective #387, the Batman from the 30s to the 70s book pictured above, and Batman Archives Volume 1.
3. A second trace job that is more faithful to the original story. It does not have the knife censored from the art, and the panel sizes and lettering more closely match the original (but as a trace job, it's still missing a lot of the original linework). This version appears in the Famous 1st Edition tabloid reprinting, as well as in the Millennium Edition reprint.

 

I believe that the archive editions and omnibus editions feature both different trace jobs from the famous first editions and from themselves.

Ps. I might be working on a full restoration using the production proofs. Stay tuned. Same bat time Same Bat Thread

 

Thank you. This is interesting and informative and fills in much I was curious about.

 

Are you sure about that? Do you have an example from the 1st edition reprints (or the 1939 original) to compare?

That image is the same on a couple of comic scan sites, here and here. They have much more than just DC27, and there seems to be a lot of solid gray in issues from the same period.

Also, about the new Omnibus editions, I found this, which states "these stories will be scanned directly from original copies of these issues".

 

1) ok look at this


look at the henchman's face on panel 2: this is a trace job

Then look at his face in panel 2 of this “scan”


Then look at my restoration. From a printing proof which is made of the same plates as the official 1939 book



Tell me with a straight face
#1 and #3 look the same

2) notice also that both the trace job and the “scan” have solid greys while the printing proof. Which again are from the same art as the 1939 Dc 27 has cross hatched greys.

After analyzing a few pages from a confirmed scan I can say with confidence this book was done with ben day. Meaning the only solid colours could be cyan, magenta, yellow and black. Therefor again, the solid greys are physically impossible!! At best you could put a 50% screen but that’s not solid and will be visible on any good scan.

3) after reading the article it seems pretty obvious. We’re talking about DC27 and Batman. The books they are pushing are called Detective Comics:
Before Batman

 

What? The question is about the scan (the second image in your post) found on those comic scan sites. Is it from the original comic or something else? If something else, then what?

 

It’s not from the original comic, it’s from a reprint, either the famous first edition or archive

 

Here's a scan from the same site, from Detective Comics 26:



The quality is very much like the DC27 scan. Notice the nice gray suit.

I don't think DC26 has been reprinted until this year.