# Do you know who colors the daily comics? **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [August 10, 2004, 1:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-you-know-who-colors-the-daily-comics/259192 "2004-08-10T13:26:34Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 6\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![Limbo\_Donni](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/5f8ce5/32.png) [@Limbo\_Donni](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Limbo_Donni)\ **Post date:** [August 10, 2004, 1:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-you-know-who-colors-the-daily-comics/259192/1 "2004-08-10T13:26:34Z")
This is a rhetorical question, because I ran across the answer and want to share it. > [@](#): > > _[Asked about the comic strip The Norm]_ > > Who colors the strips? Some papers print colors, but [TheNorm.com](http://TheNorm.com) is B&W > > My paper looks like this > [http://home.overzealous.com:8080/comics/thenorm/20040727](http://home.overzealous.com:8080/comics/thenorm/20040727) > > [TheNorm.com](http://TheNorm.com) looks like this > [http://www.thenorm.com/arch/2004/040727.gif](http://www.thenorm.com/arch/2004/040727.gif) > > So, is the coloring done by each paper, the syndicate, or the artist Michael Jantze? The answer that came back: Re: colored dailies. I can’t recall any daily strips colored by the artist. Jantze sends black and white dailies to his syndicate. But some editors prefer colored dailies. In “The Norm”'s case, the coloring, done for those papers that request it, is done by a company named Reed-Brennan. (A barely known fact is that RB is owned by King Features, so in essence, the coloring is done by the syndicate.) The colorists are known to be very careless, often messing up, and coloring things blatantly wrong. For example, there was a Blondie a week or two ago where a dress had a different color than mentioned in the dialogue. Or more common, the border collie in “Safe Havens” has an unhealthy yellow fur. And sometimes, the jokes only make sense in black-and-white. To reduce the likelihood of errors, Jantze has given strict instructions to his colorist, limiting her palette to blues, and instructing darker shades for the foreground than the background. ---
**Author:** ![Fern\_Forest](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/71c47a/32.png) [@Fern\_Forest](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Fern_Forest)\ **Post date:** [August 10, 2004, 1:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-you-know-who-colors-the-daily-comics/259192/2 "2004-08-10T13:35:49Z")
Harrumph! I didn’t think it was the comic artists themselves. “No sir, I don’t like it.” ---
**Author:** ![Jonathan\_Chance](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jonathan_chance/32/701_2.png) [@Jonathan\_Chance](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jonathan_Chance)\ **Post date:** [August 10, 2004, 2:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-you-know-who-colors-the-daily-comics/259192/3 "2004-08-10T14:26:24Z")
Yeah, Scott Adams of ‘Dilbert’ once complained that he’d written a story about a theiving night security guard and when it went through coloring (a Sunday strip) the colorist made the character black which made Adams all oogy to see. ---
**Author:** ![percypercy](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/8baadc/32.png) [@percypercy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/percypercy)\ **Post date:** [August 10, 2004, 5:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-you-know-who-colors-the-daily-comics/259192/4 "2004-08-10T17:01:06Z")
I was actually just reading this interview with Darby Conley, “Get Fuzzy”'s Cartoonist. He says he colors his own comics, but I’m not sure if he’s only talking about the Sundays or the dailys too. [http://meet-the-makers.com/conversations/conley/4/](http://meet-the-makers.com/conversations/conley/4/) -Lil ---
**Author:** ![Chairman\_Pow](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/838e76/32.png) [@Chairman\_Pow](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chairman_Pow)\ **Post date:** [August 10, 2004, 6:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-you-know-who-colors-the-daily-comics/259192/5 "2004-08-10T18:25:50Z")
I imagine that in that case, where everything is colored, it’s done by the artist themselves. The only thing they’d have to watch out for is making sure that the colors will translate well to grayscale when it’s printed. ---
**Author:** ![ouryL](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ouryl/32/6067_2.png) [@ouryL](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ouryL)\ **Post date:** [August 11, 2004, 8:09am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-you-know-who-colors-the-daily-comics/259192/6 "2004-08-11T08:09:45Z")
> [@percypercy](#): > > I was actually just reading this interview with Darby Conley, “Get Fuzzy”'s Cartoonist. He says he colors his own comics, but I’m not sure if he’s only talking about the Sundays or the dailys too. > [http://meet-the-makers.com/conversations/conley/4/](http://meet-the-makers.com/conversations/conley/4/) > -Lil Huh? I thought he photoshops his? :eek: