Sunday, September 11, 2011

Steve Canyon color proof

A 'Steve Canyon' color proof from February 24, 1952. I love that border on the bottom...

1 comment:

WCG Comics said...

You know, I'd never really paid attention to Caniff's color work before, primarily because most of the collections have only been in B&W. (I didn't pick up the recent IDW Terry editions because I already have the full run by earlier publishers.)

But Bob Harvey's book was among the first that mentioned how Caniff tried to push the envelope in coloring Terry to make it pop out, and the recent Caniff artbook was really the first time I saw what he was doing in color.

It's amazing stuff and it's too bad it hasn't gotten more attention. I don't know if anyone was doing the same quality of coloring at the time, but the color work IS pretty innovative and would easily stand up against the best work being done today. The colors really add to the mood and tone and he did more than simply "color in the lines." (I suspect people like Hal Foster and Alex Raymond on Flash Gordon were doing comparable color work.) It certainly shows that Caniff had a strong color sense.