The Gender of Coloring
by Jeet Heer
Sunday, August 2, 2009
Among the many juicy tidbits in the Trevor Von Eeden interview in The Comics Journal #298, is the story, which was news to me, that the cartoonist was dating Lynn Varley, who served as the colorist on his groundbreaking Batman Annual #8. Varley would go on, of course, to date and marry Frank Miller, and color many of his works as well.
This got me thinking about the relationship between gender and coloring in commercial comics. Although comics have been very much a boy’s club, it is noticeable that there a number of women have carved out a niche for themselves as colorists. Many of these women had personal relationships (as sisters, girlfriends, wives) with writers and artists.
Examples would include: Marie Severin (sister of John Severin), who was also course an accomplished artist; Glynis Wein (first wife of writer Len Wein), Tatjana Wood (first wife of Wally Wood), and Richmond Lewis (who is the wife of David Mazzucchelli, and did an amazing job coloring Batman: Year One). In some of the classic newspaper comics as well, cartoonists used their wives to help do the coloring. Outside of mainstream comics, Lewis Trondheim’s work has occasionally been colored by his wife.
The reasons for these women becoming colorists vary, of course. Lewis, as I understand it, is a special case because coloring was a sideline from her main career as a painter, and occurred mainly because Mazzucchelli wanted to bring Lewis into his world of comics (she also collaborated on editing Rubber Blanket).
I’d like to see someone do a good gender analysis of why women went into coloring. I’m inclined to see this as something more than mere sexism or the creation of a pink-collar ghetto. One factor at work is that for much of the 20th century, women were more likely to be associated with the decorative arts than men; in commercial comics coloring is often seen as a decorative. I’m not a gender essentialist so I don’t think women have an innately better color sense than men. But for historical and cultural reasons, women in our culture are more likely than men to be raised with color sensitivity.
There is also the fact that a cartoonist’s studio often resembles an old fashion artisans shop, with the main master being assisted by apprentices and family members. Again the classic newspaper strip provides examples, with many cartoonists taking on sons (and sometimes daughters) as assistants.
For at least some of the women we’re talking about (I’m thinking here particularly of Severin, Varley, and Richmond), coloring was clearly an expression of their creativity. They all had a major impact on the history of comics. As Mazzucchelli once suggested, the last person who works on a page of comics art, whether it’s the editor or colorist, often has the biggest impact.
Labels: color, David Mazzucchelli, Frank Miller, gender, Glynis Wein, Lewis Trondheim, Lynn Varley, Marie Severin, Richmond Lewis, Tatjana Wood, Trevor Von Eeden, Wally Wood, women in comics
Colorists get paid less than inkers, pencillers and writers (at least in the last, and only, Marvel payment slip I saw- it's possible it's changed or it's different at different publishers.)
I LOVED Lewis's work on Year One. Even her work on Ironwolf and that Prisoner spin-off.
Don't forget Laura Allred! I seem to recall Mike being colorblind, actually…
Maybe there is a parallel between predominant female colorists in comics and female editors/script supervisors in film (where, justifiably or not, they are prized for being especially attentive to detail and emotion)? If I'm not mistaken, women also dominated the early days of animation in the cel-painting departments (though this may be more of an indicator of their social status at the time than anything).
well, not only are men typically, or were typically not likely to be raised color sensitively, but they are also more likely to be color blind. I think that probably has little to do with colors in comics, but I think it says something interesting about the science of sight and the issue of gender you were getting at. This article explains it most interestingly. Women, I suppose, are the superior colorists by genetics (most likely, anyways): http://scienceblogs.com/cognitivedaily/2007/07/do_women_perceive_color_differ_3.php
ah, crap, this should work, just splice them together.
http://scienceblogs.com/cognitivedaily
/2007/07/do_women_perceive_color_differ_3.php
I thought this post was going to be about the gender of color or maybe the gendered act of coloring. But instead it's about the gender of the actual colorists themselves? With the conclusion that … they were female?
I'm sorry, there's a lot of talk about sex here, and a lot of talk about wives, but there's really very little about gender.
"But for historical and cultural reasons, women in our culture are more likey than men to be raised with color sensitivity."
I'm curious – what do you mean by "our culture" and what are those historical and cultural reasons? Also, sorry if this sounds dickish, but what is "color sensitivity"? The phrase itself is so gender-loaded that it's hard to process neutrally.
There's a long, long history in Western art of line being equated with the masculine and color with the feminine… It clearly has its institutional repercussions. See Jacqueline Lichtenstein, "The Eloquence of Color":
http://www.amazon.com/Eloquence-Color-Rhetoric-Classical-Historicism/dp/0520069072
(though, going by those prices, I guess nobody reading this is going to be buying it anytime soon. Another proof that the secondary book market's gone crazy. But that's a whole other discussion.)
Keep in mind that (anonymous) women also used to be more likely to work as color separators at the printer's (I suppose because, for some cultural reason or other, it was considered "women's work"). But were the in-house colorists (the ones who did the color guides) women early on? For example, do we know the sex of the colorists at the New York Herald who worked on Little Nemo? (Wait. I just remembered seeing an original "Kewpies" Sunday page by Rose O'Neill, with copious color notes which were clearly addressed to a woman colorist. But I don't remember who published the "Kewpies" Sunday strips.)
I suppose what irks me – and this is nothing personal – is the way in which you attempt to strip these women of agency, creative or otherwise. You say, "I’d like to see someone do a good gender analysis of why women went into coloring," as if their creative motivations were necessarily derived from their gender. Imagine the flip of this statement: "I'd like to see someone do a good gender analysis of why men went into pencilling." You group all of these women together without any individual details or attention other than their names and what husbands they had (or as you phrase it, whose wives they were), except for Richmond Lewis, who was "brought" by her husband into "his world" of comics.
"For at least some of the women we’re talking about […] coloring was clearly an expression of their creativity." For the rest of them, I assume, coloring was an inexpressive and uncreative act probably (at least in Lewis' case) motivated by their husbands?
Another famous example: Francoise Mouly, who did coloring work for Marvel in the 70s.
Glynis Oliver Wein did some really nice color work in the 70s, and in my opinion was an underrated reason why those X-Men comics were so popular.
More examples: Karen Mantlo and Michelle Wolfman.
Countering all of this is the case of Laura Dupuy Martin. She did the colors for the influential superhero series The Authority in its original incarnation, the series that kicked off the "widescreen", decompressed storytelling technique that is now de rigeur in superhero comics. I would argue that her colors were a big part of the series' success, giving it a blockbuster, big-ticket event feel.
Martin is part of a new generation of women in comics who came in of their own accord, not folks who married (or boyfriended) into comics. It is interesting that she chose color over other aspects of comics work (though she did do some art directing as well).
Andrei and Sam: thanks for the helpful suggestions from cognitive science and art history.
Rob: Thanks for all the other examples. I totally forgot about Mouly's time at Marvel.
Andrei: I'm going by memory here but I think with Little Nemo the coloring was doing by German-American engravers. But it's certainly the case that later in newspaper comic strip history women had a very large role to play in coloring.
Blaise: I take you're point about agency BUT I think too much talk about agency ignores the role of larger social structures and cultural forces (of the kind Andrei mentions in his posting). I did want to pay tribute to the excellent coloring done by Severin, Varley and Lewis BUT I think it's also right to see that the roles assigned to men and women aren't always voluntarly chosen.
Neal Adams' first wife, Corey was a genius colorist. She was a real, uh, game changer in my world.
Going back to the artisan's studio that Jeet mentioned, as well as to Dash's first comment, the early film industry featured workshops of women who would hand-color 35mm film prints (adding flash effects to the gun battles in Great Train Robbery, for example). It's a division of labor that goes beyond comics.
I seem to remember my color theory teacher in college (a woman) telling us that studies had shown women were more perceptive to subtle difference in color. I know its blasphemy to suggest to some that there's an actual physical different in the sexes outside of genitalia.
Also, there's an established tradition of people getting into comics because of who they know so that part isn't very unique. Stan Lee was in the field because of his uncle. Not to mention that some of these woman were already working in the field before they met and married their working partner (I think Lynn Varley and Frank Miller would be an example).
I know! After we figure out why women are such good colorists, let's try to figure out why Mexicans are such great dishwashers! put on your thinking caps everybody….
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Teleological_argument
-matt thurber
There's a trend today of artists trying to break into the industry through computer colouring, just so that they could hopefully get a job drawing or writing latter on.
Jeet–
"Andrei: I'm going by memory here but I think with Little Nemo the coloring was doing by German-American engravers. But it's certainly the case that later in newspaper comic strip history women had a very large role to play in coloring."
So, umm, is "German-American" the third sex now? 🙂
Andrei — sorry, I meant German-American men. The reason their Germanness is significant is that they learned their craft in the superior print culture of the continent. Jeet
Little known fact: Up to ten percent women posses an extra set of cones that enable them to differentiate between what many would consider "neutral" shades and in the yellows.
So maybe women really ARE genetically predisposed towards being more sensitive to coloring. 😉
Oh, Rivkah. You're just being sexist! (SNARK)
Don't forget Patricia Mulvihill. And Marie Severin was a pencil artist as well, so it's not like she was relegated to "minor" coloring duty.
Joe Willy said…
I seem to remember my color theory teacher in college (a woman) telling us that studies had shown women were more perceptive to subtle difference in color.
==============================
This strikes me as irrelevant for most of mainstream comics history. While there were some cool color effects done in comic strips, comic books, at least until the 1980s, were colored in the least subtle way imaginable.
Specifically, you had four colors, CMYK (cyan, which is a blue, magenta, yellow and black). Of those four colors, you had I think four gradations–0%,25%,50%, and 100%. (A 75% gradation was added in the 80s.) So all those classic 60s Marvel Comics? They had a maximum of 64 different colors, including white. Actually fewer, because there was some maximum ink saturation you could have before the inks stopped adhering (something like 250%, as I recall from working for Dark Horse–but that was already in the computer coloring age).
The point is, you really just couldn't be subtle with the colors. That's why the colors on European comics just dazzled me when I first saw them, because the European cartoonists used photographic color separations of painted colors, instead of cutting rubylith overlays by hand, the way the Americans did.
Even as a kid reading comics in the 70s, I assumed the reason women were colorists was basic sexism, both economic and artistic. Women weren't thought to be as good as artists as men (and it was assumed that men needed the money more anyway because they were the breadwinners), so they were assigned art tasks that were less important. This work also didn't pay as well as pencils and inks, but it was piecework that could be done quickly. So it was a good way for women to earn some "extra" money.
I think the comment about Laura Martin is right on. By the time she came along, Photoshop had changed coloring of mainstream comics from a primitive afterthought to one of the main expressive tools. One could easily argue that now the colorist is significantly more important than the inker. So a colorist like Laura Martin is not someone shunted by sexist institutions into a second class creative role, but a valued co-creator.
There presence of women working as film editors may parallel that of colorists. Editors were originally viewed as film "joiners" whose craft was considered subordinate to directors and production designers. Women could get jobs in the film industry because they would accept lower salaries and the job was viewed as requiring the same skills as sewing.
Thelma Schoonmaker, editor for films including "Raging Bull" and "the Departed" says "I think women make good collaborators … requires very hard work, patience, discipline, and good organizational skills, and these are second nature to many women.”
That statement could, to this armchair quarterback, be applied to the work of a colorist as well.
Does this mean that the job of colorist is a "pink collar ghetto" for women? Historically, I think it does. But just as editors like Ms. Schoonmaker have contributed to a growth in stature for their profession, women like Laura Dupuy Martin has elevated her position. But we still don't see many women moving to the primary areas for comic production, namely writing and drawing.