Written by: Ted Miller

Because even without taking into account the fact that it was drawn to allow the colorist more latitude, it seems pretty detailed to me. And Porter’s background buildings here don’t look CG at all, just, well, detailed.

I think what you’re noticing is that artists often don’t use line shading these days as much. When I first began collecting comics in the latter half of the silver age, inkers were also called embellishers. Right around the time Jack Kirby was making the New Gods, the first hint that this would fall out of style took place.

Namely Kirby stopped working with Vince Colletta over changes he would make to the artwork. Colletta, one of the fastest inkers in the business, had a habit of erasing elements he felt were superfluous. Parts of architecture, people, whatever simplified the process. He did it a lot. Colletta took liberties, and became an example of what not to do if you’re an inker.

What inkers were doing began to be looked at more closely, and eventually embellishment was discouraged altogether. Now inkers are expected to simply ink what’s there and nothing more. Which is sad because it means comics have less character.

However, the trade off is that today coloring is far more sophisticated and embellishment is the colorist’s job. It can look what some call Photo-shop-y, but when done well looks fantastic.

And because of improvements in resolution, inking is actually more detailed these days, not less. Those fine lines detailing the architecture in the background would have been invisible using the old process.