March 24, 2003

Why is the above A&J comic strip black and white and tones of gray? Because it’s so old? No, no, no. It’s because I plucked it from the GoComics archive instead of my own digital files. I do this more and more for several reasons. For one thing, my own digital archives aren’t nearly complete; I have more to choose from at GoComics. And it saves me a little time in the morning. And they are, after all, the same cartoons. And the strips from GoComics are already colorized, which I truly do consider a plus. I think colored work shows up better on the Web. However, all the strips at GoComics up until two years ago were colored not by me but by an outside party. contracted by the syndicate. The colorists worked with no instruction from myself and, because of my proclivity to work on deadline, usually had little time. So, I took a live-and-let-live attitude toward their work which, it must said, was usually good. But sometimes it was bad. Today’s classic A&J would be one example of the latter. So rather than subject you to Janis’ purple pants suit, I “desaturated” my copy from GoComics. That is, I made it black & white. If you must see the original, there’s the link above.