(click for larger image). Way back in 1986 (I remember it well!), Frank Miller published The Dark Knight Returns - a 4 issue mini-series that turned the comic book world on its head. Why was it so great? Well, it was gritty, it was "real" (a relative term in comics), and it was a whole lot of fun. It also did something that had never been done before; it gave us the end - the final chapter in the life of The Batman. But the story wasn't only groundbreaking because of the subject matter. The storytelling was brilliant - often told through snippets of news reports and through the lens of the various characters - each thoroughly fleshed out and unique. It also gave us the first female Robin - a teenaged Carrie Kelley. The series captures Miller at the height of his powers - cutting edge, daring, and wielding his expert cartooning skills. Miller's artwork on the series is gorgeous, thanks to the contributions of master inker Klaus Janson (well on two issues at least - see my other Dark Knight post for more about that). Janson had worked on Daredevil with Miller, and achieved great success, but I think they reached their zenith together on DKR. Rounding out this talented team was Miller's then girlfriend Lynn Varley. She colored the book beautifully, using a very muted color palate that was a lot more sophisticated than most mainstream comic books at the time. The way she achieved this was also unusual. The inked pages were reproduced at a smaller size onto a clear film overlay. Another copy was printed on a board in "blue line" - a process that renders the lines "invisible" to the camera. Using the overlay as a reference, Varley then painted directly on the blue line board. The final colored piece, with the black film overlay, became camera ready art - it was shot directly to produce the printed page.
This is one of my favorite pages from the series. Not only because it's from issue one, but it's a classic page that I could recite from memory ("The other -- HURTS!"). But is it really a "page"? Well, there is an inked original out there somewhere, so it is an oddity. Some people call these "color guides" which is not at all accurate. Color guides were typically 8 1/2 x 11 photocopies (often of not great quality), that were colored with magic markers (or sometimes watercolor). The colorist would then mark it up in pencil - indicating the name of the color to be used in the final printing. These guides were used to create the final printing plates for production. No color guide was ever photographed or reproduced - it was just a GUIDE (to see an actual color guide, click HERE). So what Varley did here is quite different. I've seen this process done on a handful of books including Mike Mignola's Ironwolf, and David Lloyd's V for Vendetta (colors by Siobhan Dodds). Interestingly, the cover for The Dark Knight Returns, issue one, recently sold at auction for 2.4 million dollars. There was a lot of discussion about how much of that piece was Miller and how much was Varley (it was mostly Varley!).
