Why is the art different?

[eledoremassis02]

I have the Batman Archives for 1990 and I recently bought the golden collection digitally from Amazon.

I had a hunch they were recolored for digital but it turns out the art is different as well (at least in the first story).

Anyone know why?

Golden collection:


Archive collection:

[thecolorsblend]

It's a good bet that the original art for most comics up through the Sixties (at least) is long gone. Burned, shredded, recycled, pulped, any number of possible outcomes.

Just as bad, the original negatives were usually not preserved either. The few available negatives of Golden Age comics only survived by accident in most cases. They were marked for destruction but (for whatever reason) it never happened.

Thus, many reprints are sourced from surviving copies of the original comics. And the further back you go, the fewer copies exist.

I would estimate that the Archive editions from the Eighties are the most faithful reprints. That's the good news. The bad news is the reason for that is because the process for creating those Archives required literally destroying the comics in question. In the mid/late Eighties, Greg Theakston developed a process for bleaching the color off of the pages while preserving all or most of the original black line. But obviously, the comic book itself can't possibly survive that process.

Every time you read those Archives, you should bear in mind the literal high price that was paid for obtaining those reprints.

To finally drill down to your question, in SOME cases, it's possible that a complete original copy just plain didn't exist. So, in those cases, I suspect that the art was replicated by hand. The artist in question has never been identified. But this conspiracy theory has a lot of traction in the collector community. There are simply too many variations that exist in the various reprints for you to chalk up to peculiarities of printing graphic art. The differences cannot be attributed solely to that.

I don't think DC has ever admitted this. But I am convinced (as are others) that DC has reproduced/redrawn/recreated/whatever certain pages for reprint purposes. They attempted to redo a given panel faithfully.

Hope that helps.

Finally, it might seem reasonable to criticize Theakston and others for their destructive practices. But consider. Those Archives were the first time that many comics were ever reprinted. Those reprints were also the first time that many readers and collectors had a chance to read those original stories.

So, yes, it is undeniably sad that copies of (for example) Superman #1-24 from 1940 were destroyed. But in destroying those original comics, DC guaranteed their preservation for many generations to come. We can debate whether that's worth the price that we paid to get there. But in the finaly analysis, those Eighties remasters will be around for a very long time.

[eledoremassis02]

Very insightful! Thank you, that's a real shame tho.

Found this interesting threat. The archives seem to be censored redraws (at least story 1) where the omnibus isn't
https://forums.stevehoffman.tv/threads/horrendous-dc-golden-age-reprint-restoration.873029/

[thecolorsblend]

Yes, there is occasional censoring too.





Stryker makes reference to being executed in the unedited page but that dialogue balloon is removed in the second version.

[Slash Man]

This has been a pet peeve of mine as well; there's way too much artistic liberty to be a restoration. Things like the gradient in the frame of Batman punching Stryker are not faithful to the golden age coloring process, and so much line detail is lost by trying to isolate the line work for a complete recolor. Some of the pages are downright unreadable.

I don't think that was a case of active censorship, seems like they just neglected to add the speech balloon back in (based on all the other elements of violence that remained). Though they did censor instances of yellowface in the recoloring process.

DC's graphic novels/reprints have been in a dire state recently, I doubt this is going to receive the attention it deserves anytime soon. They've also started and stopped the Archives Collections, the Chronicles Collections, the Golden Age Collections, and the Golden Age Omnibuses: keep in mind all of these collections cover the exact same content. I had a complete Chronicles set before they switched to the Golden Age. Before I could even get suckered into switching to that, it was cancelled as well.

[thecolorsblend]

Couldn't think of anywhere else to post this. But here's a fairly technical examination of the lettering in early Detective Comics and Batman issues.

https://kleinletters.com/Blog/early-batman-letterers

[Slash Man]

Fascinating that they were able to credit many of the early stories, but many are just unknown. I think we can at least arrive at some educated guesses in the future since everyone's handwriting has its own distinct signature, even when they're trying to mimic another's style.