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Description
Thanks to Monzo for the inspiration, here's a recolour of one page from the Transformers Marvel US issue 64, 'Deadly Obsession'. Lines by Jose Delbo, inks by Dan Reed and orginal colours by Nel Yomtov. Script, of course, by the mighty Simon Furman. The original page is here, for your reference: [link]

This issue always struck me as looking particularly murky (I know someone who loves it, it's a matter of taste more than anything), and I was never sure if it was due to the art, dark inking or dark colour palette. Jose Delbo gets a really bad rap over his art, but some of it is actually quite decent, he tends to live and die by his inker and colourist though.

A recent auction had some original lineart, so I decided to recolour a page to see if it could look better, or at least more presentable.

Nel Yomtov's colouring did not help. It was very very dark and blobby, with various characters finding themselves various colours. I know it's easy to look back in hindsight with all our modern technology, (but this was the guy who once gave Scorponok a red nose. I mean come on!). Still, I imagine he got all his books out on time, and his style did work well with Geoff Senior's, when he wasn't colouring Optimus Prime's head upside down of course. Trying to colour 22 pages a month is no easy feat and I respect anyone who can manage that!

Anyway I decided to recolour this with modern means. In no way do I mean to compare this to Yomtov's work, it's just a different way to look at the art via modern means. I was surprised how nicely it came out actually; I think it was the dark colour palette of the original that made it look much more murky than it was.

I did find some of the art hard to follow, for example half of Ruckus vanishes in the fifth panel. Yomtov just makes him multicoloured and merges him into the background, which is a viable option at least!

Did I succeed? I'll leave that up to you! All comments welcome!

Description
Thanks to Monzo for the inspiration, here's a recolour of one page from the Transformers Marvel US issue 64, 'Deadly Obsession'. Lines by Jose Delbo, inks by Dan Reed and orginal colours by Nel Yomtov. Script, of course, by the mighty Simon Furman. The original page is here, for your reference: [link]

This issue always struck me as looking particularly murky (I know someone who loves it, it's a matter of taste more than anything), and I was never sure if it was due to the art, dark inking or dark colour palette. Jose Delbo gets a really bad rap over his art, but some of it is actually quite decent, he tends to live and die by his inker and colourist though.

A recent auction had some original lineart, so I decided to recolour a page to see if it could look better, or at least more presentable.

Nel Yomtov's colouring did not help. It was very very dark and blobby, with various characters finding themselves various colours. I know it's easy to look back in hindsight with all our modern technology, (but this was the guy who once gave Scorponok a red nose. I mean come on!). Still, I imagine he got all his books out on time, and his style did work well with Geoff Senior's, when he wasn't colouring Optimus Prime's head upside down of course. Trying to colour 22 pages a month is no easy feat and I respect anyone who can manage that!

Anyway I decided to recolour this with modern means. In no way do I mean to compare this to Yomtov's work, it's just a different way to look at the art via modern means. I was surprised how nicely it came out actually; I think it was the dark colour palette of the original that made it look much more murky than it was.

I did find some of the art hard to follow, for example half of Ruckus vanishes in the fifth panel. Yomtov just makes him multicoloured and merges him into the background, which is a viable option at least!

Did I succeed? I'll leave that up to you! All comments welcome!