How do you abridge a comic book, dot shade?

Factual Questions
1

I have a small collection of comic books from the fifties (Pogo) through today (Zits). I have noticed that some of the Wizard of ID/B.C. comics have been “abridged”. How do you abridge a comic book? Do you remove panels? If so, doesn’t that dramatically affect the comic itself, since it’s so scaled down to begin with? Do you rewrite the words in the balloons? If so, doesn’t that defeat the purpose of abridging, which is to save space?

While on the topic of comic books, I have a Dilbert book with Scott Adams’ commentary on certain strips. On one strip he mentions that the dot shading is hell to do. How do they do dot shading? Print out a sheet of dots and then cut out a piece in the need shape?

Thanks,

Scott

2

Each day’s strip is not abridged. Back to B.C., B.C. Strikes Back, and Hey! B.C. (for example) were all republished with fewer strips than the originals. I have no idea whether later books included the excised strips.

3

Skott–as to your other question, you can purchase sheets of dot shading or other shading patterns, cut them to size, and paste them into position. Or you (the artist) can put in every single dot. S. Adams was probably referring to the latter. It’s time consuming and boring.

4

the nice thing about reading two sunday papers is that there’s two cartoon sections. the both carry B.C., however, one carries the ‘full’ version, and one carries the ‘abridged’ version. or so i’ll call them. the full version has the title panel, usually a three frame quick laugh (usually starring the ants) and a 4 or 5 panel ‘long’ story. the other paper just carries the title panel, and the ‘long’ story.
i think there are other comics that do this too, but i can’t remember any off the top of my head. and it’s only sunday’s edition.

could this be what it means? maybe the format of the book wouldn’t allow the 3 extra frames per page and a half?
disclaimer: even though i read b.c. (sometimes), i rarely find it funny. i sometimes read family circus, it’s like watching a train wreck. just have to do it.

5

I do believe that Scott Adams (and hopefully Guy, too) was making a joke. The artists do not draw the dots; maybe crosshatches, but not the dots.

The “dots” are technically called screen tints, or if you’re an old-timer, Benday tints. (I pass this along only because it was taught to me as true, but I won’t swear by it: yes, they were invented by Ben Day.)

Back in the good old, old days (2 olds), Benday screens (and halftoned photos) were created using huge half-room sized copy cameras equipped with “glass crossline screens.” The glass screen would convert the various shades of gray on the artwork into areas of various-sized dots on the film negative – which would be used to make the printing plate.

In the good old days (1 old) you could achieve much the same thing using a “contact screen” – a cheaper sheet of flexible plastic instead of the glass screen – on the camera.

Then they introduced self-adhesive shading sheets, like Guy said; another option is rub-down (aka dry-transfer) shading sheets. Both of these apply the “dots” right on the artwork. (I wouldn’t be surprised if a primative version of this product existed in the 1 old and 2 old days – say a sheet of black Benday dots on white paper which was cut to the desired shape and rubber-cemented onto the drawing – but I’ve never seen it; I just know about the how they made the “dots” using the camera.)

But all of the above are probably going the way of the Linotype machines in this day and age of computerized scanners.

6

ubermensch mentioned a problem that was a thorn in the side of several cartoonists. The newspaper determines the shape of the cartoon boxes, not the cartoonist. Some newspapers NOW allow for the opening cartoon and some do not. I don’t know if this is a matter of contract between the paper and the artist but as you pointed out, different papers make different decisions about this opening cartoon.

Calvin and Hobbes’ creator outlined this in his final “book” and also described his conflicts in getting papers to allow him to change the format of the blocks as well.

Pogo’s creator remarked somewhere in his “books” that the colors given to his characters and their neckties was determined by the editors of the newspapers.

Every business has its quirks!

Even today, IIRC, fancy magazine ads are corrected by a person with magnifying glasses and a tiny tiny paint brush. At least the newspaper dots are a reasonable size!

7

Jois: are you mad, man? These days all photoretouching is done on computers using Photoshop or a similar progam.

Even before computers, it wasn’t done the way you describe. (Sure, you’d hear legends about old guys who could retouch one dot at a time, but mostly that was bluster or BS.) There were three major ways of retouching: one for the artwork, one for the negative, and one for the plate (if it was a letterpress plate; an offset plate needed a new or retouched negative except for cheap down-and-dirty deletions which could be made right on the plate… in fact, right on the press).

The artwork could be retouched using an airbrush.

The negative could be retouched using a bleach that would “open up” the dots in certain areas. Of course you also had some control using filters and exposures; and unlike most photography you’re familiar with, halftone photography has TWO exposures per shot, both of which can be varied – the main exposure, and a “flash” exposure to increase the tonal range of the grays.

A letterpress plate could be retouched by subjecting various portions of the plate to more, or less, of the acid used to etch the dots. Protected areas were covered in an acid-resisting paste (called, if memory serves, “Dragon’s Blood”!) before they were redunked in the etching solution.

Jois, perhaps you’re thinking of opaquing, the process of removing unwanted transparent specks from a negative before making the printing plate. THAT required a fine brush and magnifying glass, but is about as close to retouching individual dots as lumberjacking is to watchmaking.

8

Thank you for the answers all.

I’ve known about the two-panel comic intro that is sometimes removed depending on space. I didn’t figure that was the root cause of the abridging, since other comic books did not include them and were not labeled abridged. I think that the non-inclusion of certain strips would make more sense… but then many a book does that as well. I think of Bloom County and how many of the comics printed in the books were missing, especially with storylines, and also how many had the punch line changed from the original (usually for the worse).

Dot-shading, anyway you look at it, sounds like a pain. I certainly doubt cartoonists do it by hand, because it’s too regular. But even the process described stuyguy sounds painfully laborious for a small detail. But then, small details are what make some comics great (apart from humor or whatever).

In the Scott Adams book I mentioned previously, he wrote that his syndicate determines the colors for Sunday strips. He mentioned that they tended to pick the worst times to add diversity to the cast, usually by giving someone with a relatively lowly post the diversity.

Okay, I’m done :}

Scott

9

stuyguy, I was a kid when I watched my aunt do this so I might have messed it up. The place where she worked did the very fancy magazine ads, board games, and museum photos for shows. Seems to me that this aunt fixed errors on the negatives - there were three to four sets of negatives per picture. One red, one blue, one yellow and sometimes a fourth one in black - so, were they positives instead of negatives? Maybe in the color separation process there were both colored positives and black negatives? And I’m sure she corrected errors with a tiny tiny paintbrush!

I think she and a machine decided if colors were correct - that was the other part of her job?

I don’t remember an airbrush or “opening up” dots or filters but I was only there for a few hours.

Could have been opaquing, “the process of removing unwanted transparent specks from a negative before making the printing plate.”

That’s when I learned about the dots that made the colors in the Sunday comics!

Jois

10

Jois:

What you probably saw was a “color key.” Color keys were (and probably still are, to some extent) a very popular and accurate pre-press color proofing system. Here’s how it worked.

Original artwork, let’s say a photograph, is placed in the giant camera I mentioned earlier – it’s called a process camera if it is capable of shooting color separations. The photo is shot 4 times (3 of those times using color filters) to “capture” the color components of the original photo. The four negatives are the color seps: one will be used to print yellow, one cyan, one magenta, one black. NOTE: All these negatives are themselves black (opaque), with transparent dots.

(Extra credit and will not be on the final: Those first three colors are known as the “subtractive primary colors”; their dots overlap in varying amounts on a white page to – theoretically – create any color in the spectrum, including black. That is probably (???) why black was optional when you saw your aunt. The reason black was usually (these days, always) used is because, here in the real world, the Y+C+M used alone combine to create a crappy, muddy sort-of-black.)

Now, if everything has gone perfectly (ha!), you could take those 4 seps, burn 4 metal printing plates, mount them on the press, and run the job. But chances are your client would come over to ok the job and see a big ugly hair that accidentally got stuck on the original photo and is being printed at a zillion copies a minute… or any of a thousand other reasons the job is not right, and needs to be fixed. A very, very expensive proposition.

So, what is needed is a way to “see exactly what the job will look like” before you burn plates and put it on press. That is called a pre-press color proofing system, and the most common was/is the aforementioned color keys.

The negatives are inspected for obvious flaws (dust, scratches, the hair, etc.) which are opaqued out. Then, thin transparent sheets of mylar – each coated with a thin layer of light-sensitive Y, C, or M emulsion – are exposed in contact with the negs and developed. The result is a set of 4 “positive” color key sheets which, when stacked on top of each other and positioned perfectly (“registered”), create a full-color image that will match what the printing press will create.

This is probably what your aunt worked off of (and what the client would need to okay). It’s easy to catch tiny errors in the negatives at the proofing stage. And, if she could fix the errors by hand she would save the time and expense of shooting the job all over again.

11

Where can I find out what some of my older comics are worth today?

12

The second-to-last paragraph in my above post should read:

“… each coated with a thin layer of light-sensitive Y, C, M or B emulsion …”

Sorry.

13

Thanks, Stuyguy, That’s it! I still have three sets of color keys - a peacock, a Babar board game, and an oriental woman in a red kimono - colors are still vibrant.

14

You didn’t say what kind of comics you’re talking about, and the thread is about comic strips, but I’m going to make a completely unjustified intuitive leap and assume you’re asking about the prices on comic books.

The standard reference for comic values is The Overstreet Comic Book Price Guide, which you should be able to find in a library. You can also check out a well-stocked newstand for any of the monthly comic trade magazines. Many of them have a price guide in the back.

These guides are really only useful for judging the relative values of comics. Their prices are usually what comic stores will sell back issues for, so you may not be able to get that much. If you sell to a store, they will of course only pay a fraction of what they’ll sell it to the next guy for. You get your best prices selling them yourself on the 'net or at a comics convention, but that involves a lot of inconvenience.

15

Yes, the halftone dots are a pain.

I’ve done cartooning myself in the past. (3 years in college, then on the web: http://www.strangevoices.com/tshp/martytoons.html – sorry, I’m not updating them at the moment, but you can see the first 70 of 99 episodes by going to the directory http://www.strangevoices.com/tshp/toongifs/ and clicking on them individually)

When you draw for print, you, of course, can’t use “real” shading (i.e., with a pencil or charcoal or something). Photographs would be shot through a halftone screen to generate the dot pattern and fake the shading, but cartoonists weren’t worth the extra trouble and expense. Our stuff had to be ready-to-engrave, meaning that it was made of discrete bits of pure black and pure white. Like doing artwork on a Classic Mac.

You had several options:

  1. Draw in ink, use no shading at all.
  2. Draw in ink, make shading by hand with stippling (where you draw all those dots yourself) or crosshatching.
  3. Draw with black crayon. Unlike charcoal, crayon leaves visibly large pieces of black, not gray smudges. So you could crudely “shade” with crayon, but it produced a very distinctive look that could look like crap if you didn’t do it just right (same w/ stippling and, to a lesser extent, crosshatching).
  4. Use BenDay (I don’t remember the exact spelling) dots. I bought 11" x 14" sheets of clear adhesive acetate. Basically, it was one big, transparent decal with dots on it. They came in different percentages so you could vary the darkness of your shading. (They even had ones with brick, stone, etc., patterns–for architectural renderings, maybe). I’d lay the acetate over the area I needed some shading, trace it with a pencil, then slice it out with an Xacto knife and stick it on the paper. Quite the pain in the ass.

Even worse was when I first started out, BEFORE I found out about those stickers–I printed out pages of halftone dots using my Mac LCII and inkjet printer. I had to trace the shaded area on a lightbox, cut it out, then glue it down.

I’m so glad the Web came along. And that I developed a style that required little shading.