What sorts of inks were used for SA books? 2 2

[gilbinder]

Hello, I was wondering what specific sorts and brands of ink were used for printing Silver Age comics, especially Silver Age DC books, and where might be a good place to obtain them. 

I’ve been reading up on the printing process of post-Colortint comics printing, and although I’ve been able to find information that’s useful about how the various 64 (later 124) colors were created from 25%, 50% , and 100% CMYK inks, I want to know about the specific original inks used. 

(I’m interested in seeing just how much visually nicer I can make well-loved reading copies, solely through by using the inks that would have been used to print the issue at the time to touch them up, so that I don’t damage their long term health. Like how museum archivists restore paintings using period paints. I want to make my reading copies look their best. )

[flashlites]

57 minutes ago, gilbinder said:

Hello, I was wondering what specific sorts and brands of ink were used for printing Silver Age comics, especially Silver Age DC books, and where might be a good place to obtain them. 

I’ve been reading up on the printing process of post-Colortint comics printing, and although I’ve been able to find information that’s useful about how the various 64 (later 124) colors were created from 25%, 50% , and 100% CMYK inks, I want to know about the specific original inks used. 

(I’m interested in seeing just how much visually nicer I can make well-loved reading copies, solely through by using the inks that would have been used to print the issue at the time to touch them up, so that I don’t damage their long term health. Like how museum archivists restore paintings using period paints. I want to make my reading copies look their best. )

I've often wondered myself how I might touch up some of my beloved SA comics. I was a printer by trade for many years. I've concluded that it would be very difficult because during the printing process the ink goes on so very thin. You wouldn't just be able to dip a paint brush into a tin of ink and start touching up. The application and consistency would have to be just right. There are experts who have figured it out, but I'm sure their services aren't cheap. As for me I've decided to leave my books as they are. I still love them just the same. (Flash 136 I allways wondered if I could pull off a little touch up ?)

[Aman619]

What do you mean by “touch them up”. If you’ve researched comics inks and printing, you know that there are only four inks and all areas of comics covers and interiors are derived from the visual effect of tiny dots of each ink, in varying sizes of dots, so, “touching them up” can’t work because you’d be painting with solid inks colors, or messily trying to match the dot patterns.

take a magnifying glass to any comic and you will what I’m talking about.  My point is that since you can’t manually replicate the printing effect, you might as well use crayons and markers.

[flashlites]

10 minutes ago, Aman619 said:

What do you mean by “touch them up”. If you’ve researched comics inks and printing, you know that there are only four inks and all areas of comics covers and interiors are derived from the visual effect of tiny dots of each ink, in varying sizes of dots, so, “touching them up” can’t work because you’d be painting with solid inks colors, or messily trying to match the dot patterns.

take a magnifying glass to any comic and you will what I’m talking about.  My point is that since you can’t manually replicate the printing effect, you might as well use crayons and markers.

Yes exactly. It will be difficult indeed. I am impressed that that you are looking into it. I'm willing to bet that you just might pull it off. You've done the research. 

[gilbinder]

1 hour ago, Aman619 said:

What do you mean by “touch them up”. If you’ve researched comics inks and printing, you know that there are only four inks and all areas of comics covers and interiors are derived from the visual effect of tiny dots of each ink, in varying sizes of dots, so, “touching them up” can’t work because you’d be painting with solid inks colors, or messily trying to match the dot patterns.

take a magnifying glass to any comic and you will what I’m talking about.  My point is that since you can’t manually replicate the printing effect, you might as well use crayons and markers.

Actually, you can hypothetically manually replicate a given four-color hue with the aid of reference materials to determine which tint ratios were used to produce that color.

It might be possible to use using some sort of method such as using some tool that has a very small area of the 25%, 50%, and %100 dot patterns engraved into the end, and use the Cyan, Magenta and Yellow inks to coat the end which would then be used a bit like a precise sort of stamp. 

 Flashlite’s comment about the ink having to go on thin is a possible problem that I’m glad was brought up.

 

Part 9 of this in depth exploration of four color printing techniques was supposed to cover late 1950’s onward methods, but the author unfortunately seems to have disappeared: https://legionofandy.com/2016/08/26/ben-day-dots-part-8-1930s-to-1950s-the-golden-age-of-comics/ 

[Aman619]

Forget the color chart...  you can’t manually replicate the dot patterns.  Each plate is set at a different angle to the others forming a rosette pattern.  Maybe someone could successfully replicate ONE DOT HERE AND THERE... but there are 85 per inch on the newsprint pages, and 150 on the covers!

if you think you can still do it, forget making your comics prettier and go directly into forgery! 

Trust me, I have printing experience and even asked for small cans of C,M,Y and K inks to do just what you are trying... until I faced the dot size and angle issue, and that the inks needed to be thinned ( they are like toothpaste ) as was pointed out.  You CAN SUCCESSFULLY REPAINT AREAS AT 100% ink coverage... there aren’t any dots to deal with.

Edited May 14, 2018 by Aman619

[tth2]

40 minutes ago, Aman619 said:

if you think you can still do it, forget making your comics prettier and go directly into forgery! 

 

[Aman619]

I’ll be here all night!

 

ok here what I’m talking about:  google this —  four color printing rosette

youll see how complex it is at printing dot size.  And each image show the complexity at just one of the 100 possibilities for each ink color %.  Even if you limited it to 25% 50% and 100% tones, that 3 x 3 x 3 x 3  =  81 possible combination sets of dot sizes to prep for. And that just for pre 1969 when NeailAdams lobbied successfully to add more %s to their deal with the separators. 

[flashlites]

As much as we all love our comics, the thought of me damaging one of them always kept me from attempting this. Re member you can always hunt for a better looking copy? Still if your interested in retouch and restoration it is a fascinating profession (an art form really), I would invite you to look up Susan Cicconi and Mark Wilson. They are the experts.

[aardvark88]

The easiest 'forgery' is just to slim and trim your comics. Run the 3 open edges of your comic through the chopping block at the office, library or school to 'freshen' up the edges. No more chipping.

[VintageComics]

3 hours ago, flashlites said:

As much as we all love our comics, the thought of me damaging one of them always kept me from attempting this. Re member you can always hunt for a better looking copy? Still if your interested in retouch and restoration it is a fascinating profession (an art form really), I would invite you to look up Susan Cicconi and Mark Wilson. They are the experts.

Susan and Mark are well known around these parts. They've been in it for decades.

There are also several board members who have done extensive training and even started their own businesses, restoring books professionally.

13 hours ago, Aman619 said:

Forget the color chart...  you can’t manually replicate the dot patterns.  Each plate is set at a different angle to the others forming a rosette pattern.  Maybe someone could successfully replicate ONE DOT HERE AND THERE... but there are 85 per inch on the newsprint pages, and 150 on the covers!

if you think you can still do it, forget making your comics prettier and go directly into forgery! 

Trust me, I have printing experience and even asked for small cans of C,M,Y and K inks to do just what you are trying... until I faced the dot size and angle issue, and that the inks needed to be thinned ( they are like toothpaste ) as was pointed out.  You CAN SUCCESSFULLY REPAINT AREAS AT 100% ink coverage... there aren’t any dots to deal with.

I think someone will be able to duplicate it at some point. It's not impossible and as comics get more expensive it becomes more and more easy to justify the cost of forgery.

[Aman619]

Forgery won’t be possible, I think you mean counterfeit. Replicating printing dot patterns is @ colossal waste of time when recreating the separations would be so much easier...  and by easier I mean still incredibly hard to fool the naked eye.  Think of the Myers books to see what I mean. They look great, but not original at all 

[RockMyAmadeus]

On 5/14/2018 at 12:32 AM, Aman619 said:

Forget the color chart...  you can’t manually replicate the dot patterns.  Each plate is set at a different angle to the others forming a rosette pattern.  Maybe someone could successfully replicate ONE DOT HERE AND THERE... but there are 85 per inch on the newsprint pages, and 150 on the covers!

if you think you can still do it, forget making your comics prettier and go directly into forgery! 

Trust me, I have printing experience and even asked for small cans of C,M,Y and K inks to do just what you are trying... until I faced the dot size and angle issue, and that the inks needed to be thinned ( they are like toothpaste ) as was pointed out.  You CAN SUCCESSFULLY REPAINT AREAS AT 100% ink coverage... there aren’t any dots to deal with.

Indeed.

[VintageComics]

19 hours ago, Aman619 said:

Forgery won’t be possible, I think you mean counterfeit. Replicating printing dot patterns is @ colossal waste of time when recreating the separations would be so much easier...  and by easier I mean still incredibly hard to fool the naked eye.  Think of the Myers books to see what I mean. They look great, but not original at all 

I did mean counterfeit. Thanks!

I don't understand how you mean it would be a colossal waste of time. Do the Meyers books recreate dot patterns?

If you're going to counterfeit million dollar books it's the only way it's going to happen.

When you say recreating separations, do you mean the 4 plates?

[Aman619]

yes  separations are when the desired final colors are "separated" into %s of the 4 ink colors.  You seen what the comics colorists use to paint the comics, right?  Basically a repro (stat or xerox) of the line art thats watercolored how they want the comic to look. They add notes as to the exact combination of each ink to mix to yield the tint they want for each area. Back then they were forced into a limited palette, just a few % levels for each ink.  The people at Eastman Color would be tasked with creating the film for each plate by hand cutting "friskets" of red film (red photographs opaque (black) blocking the exposed film from being exposed. Its tedious work, but when they are dome stripping each % of each ink together they end up with film negatives with all the areas perfectly broken down areas of dots at the desired %s.

You can also make operations from a color photo or scan. The difference is that you don't cut the areas... the %s are continuous, flowing from 0% to 100% of each ink color. These are made with filters that break up the image into just what is needed from each ink color to reproduce the original .

 

I said a colossal waste of time to painstakingly PAINT all the dots of a comic book because a year later when you're all done (and it looked amazing!) it would STILL never fool the eye into looking real. It would look cool as hell! Like the Myers covers look amazing until you look closely and see all the painting that was done.  They look fake... It would look like what it is: an elaborate painting of the colors that the dots look like to the eye -- they do not paint the dots. ( IIRC the only dot patterns on their books are whats left of the source comic book that allowed to show through their overpainting). 

The dots are too small and mathematically precisely spaced so that you'd need computers to produce them. and at that point, why not just reproduce the book by printing it like a comic book.  Easier to try to isolate a clean b/w line art and recolor it just isolating the %s just like Eastman Color did.  Greg Theakston had a method he used when hired to make the DC hardcover Golden Age reprints series. He actually destroyed a comic book in the process. He'd washed out all the ink except black in order to end up with just the black line art. It really wasn't perfectly clean without some hand painted work because some cyan and magenta dots sat ON the lines and his process couldn't get them 100% eradicated, so his line art was never as clean as the original brushwork the inkers used that DC shot when they made the original separations and printed the books  Plus DC opted to go with glossy paper and the ink colors had a very different look than the cheap newsprint look.

Chip Kidd had his own solution to reproducing old comics. He scanned them at high resolution so that he had enough pixel dots to describe the relatively large printed dots. His reproductions LOOKED just like the actual comics. But even still, the eye can tell the difference. He wasn't trying to recreate a comic, just the LOOK of them, yellowing paper and all. I prefer his method, especially when he'd enlarge a single panel to full page size, making the dot patterns a big part of the effect.  Sort of what Lichtenstein might have been looking for if he were the thief many like to say he was. Rather than opting for a freehand redrawn interpreted version of the cheap and throwaway nature of the isolated panels. Its interesting to speculate however that if no one had done it yet, and computers were available, whether he might have gone for the perfect dot look . It would speak to his true intentions. But he was a painter in a time when painters painted and used real life for inspiration and weren't seeking technologically reproduced copies of what they saw. His challenge as he saw it was to take something so commonplace that nobody gave it a second thought and FORCE you to reconsider it.

But not to reopen that whole argument... If you want make a comic book forgery good enough to fool any of us on the boards, you'd need access to the original art, the colorists notes detailing what %s each color was printed,  (or a high quality printers loupe that will read the %s off a comic), and the same paper used by each publisher during each phase of comics production. (preferably aged and not freshly manufactured. You could probably use any printing press today, but, there are probably some who can spot paper handling effects (gripper marks etc) that would prove their recent vintage. I think the inks would be less of a problem, except to match the same cyan and magenta because Ive seen variations from todays accepted mixes of those colors.

I agree that it can be done though. Not THAT easy, but sure.