Green Lantern No. 117 Cover by Staton & Giordano

This is where I came in and started collecting comics regularly. Joe Staton was evolving and developing into his first mature style. Denny O’Neil was still writing the book, but was close to his end of this period at DC. Jack C Harris oversaw an enjoyable period of Green Lantern that captivated at least me in my early teens.

I thought Professor Ojo was an interesting nemesis. The right bit of tragedy and his willingness to still be a bastard. For the new cover colouring, his hands and the anguish on his face carried the emotional weight needed to draw the reader in. Green Arrow being slightly overconfident as usual, and GL being wary and dealing with the immediate threat, told the story.

Colour by me. No AI was used.

As published.

Original art scan from somewhere on the web.

Art made production ready.

New colour version.

Re-created trade dress added.

Your Bottom of the Page Bonus

I don’t often re-create the original colour anymore. I did it at first to understand the original colourist’s decisions and to make it easier for resistant viewers to get into my work and what I wanted to do. But it was always about the new colour versions. The people that like them, like them, and those who don’t have learned to scroll past without expressing their indignation for the most part.

One fellow online said it was his all-time favourite GL/GA cover and asked if I would do a re-creation of the original. So here it is with some small, inconsequential changes you may or may not notice.

Unlike what publishers often do with their archival reprints today I haven’t just put down the fully saturated colours as originally specified. Those colour formulæ went down on paper that absorbed them and did not reflect their full intensity. Today, with our improved printing and display techniques, a full-on green prints as a full-on green. I’ve desaturated my colours here a bit to match the look and feel you would have seen when picking up this comic off the newsstand in the spring of 1979.

While I think there’s an audience for the updated colour I demonstrate that takes advantage of the reproduction capabilities with layers and transparencies we have now, if companies insist on “original” colour, I wish it would look like original colour and not oversaturated vibrancy that takes away the subtlety we once enjoyed. Colourists like Tatjana Wood coloured to the reproduction methods they worked with, knowing that colours would desaturate once printed. During the Flexographic years that came after, which had exceptionally vibrant colour – especially in the yellows – you saw that they quickly learned that 100% yellow going to print as 100% yellow and adjusted accordingly. So it makes little sense to me that companies insist on putting out products that are not true to what was originally intended. Rant over. My example here proves the point.

Homage to the original colour.

Re-created trade dress added.