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Another big find surfaces in Siegel / Superman copyright docs

Started by markseifert,

85 posts in this topic

tb

tb

Posted
Posted
heres what I mean. its painstaking work. good luck!

 

Thanks, aman.

 

Like jayman points out, there are obviously some issues doing this kind of restoration. But I am really curious to at least get an idea of what this might have looked like.

 

I did one tier. May consider doing another if someone else pitches in...

 

 

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tb

tb

Posted
Posted
start by deciding that this artists used clean lines and not a pointillism effect, like Seurat. I think all the little specks that give this a grainy look were never there. Old copiers tended to add flecks in whiite areas. And each time you copy a copy that grow and migrate. This being a court copy certainly must be a 9th generation copy or so. Its riddle with them.

 

Here's a Russell Keaton original from 1935.

 

keaton.jpg

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Aman619

Aman619

Posted
Posted

nice sample. answers some questions and guesses on my part. His bkgnds on Superman probably were similar to whats in this piece, light parallel line work. Those would turn into dots and dashed when xeroxed/photocopied a few generations. Same for some of his lighter line-shading work too.

 

But, that just makes the cleanup job even harder!

 

I suggest using this new scan to clone from ro replace the dotty bkgnd areas with these parallel lines in the panels where the bkgnds became littered with dots. But leaving other panels pure white as we see in the third panel.

 

But, by starting out with a bad original, its a losing cause. Might as well just fill those bkgnds with grey tone and call it a day.

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Ares

Ares

Posted
Posted
Sam and Molly Kent? hm

Interesting read with a Futute Earth replacing Krypton and Time travel instead of Space travel.

Mentiones this in another thread but it seems they adapted version when they did Superman Red Son.

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binarysunrise

binarysunrise

Posted
Posted
Got one more done...

 

Here's the clean-up I would do. It matches what I have done with thousands of the regular Superman daily strips. While you do lose Keaton's background shading, I can't imagine a newspaper publishing it as such. Are there examples of published versions of Keaton's work?

 

But as mentioned above, I think much of this stuff is just artifacts from copying/printing. Check out the first two panels in the very first strip, and the 3rd panel in the 2nd strip. You can see Keaton's striated shadow lines in the panel corners. Those are quite different from the remaining general dottiness of the copies.

 

Anyways, whatever was lost, I think more is gained by being able to see the remaining artwork.

64796.jpg.ed3a74b4f7d2d7307589d89b7f03208e.jpg

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Jayman

Jayman

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Posted

Deal! (thumbs u

You're doing a great job on them, would you like me to send them to you at a higher res?

I'm cleaning them up at 300 dpi but posting them at 72.

 

Let me know.

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Jayman

Jayman

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Sure, but I'm not going back to reclean the old ones :)

 

Don't blame you!

I can PM them to you as I get them done or if you want to shoot me your email addy I could send them there, either way.

 

Jay

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Jayman

Jayman

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(worship) Feel free to take over! :grin:
I got so cross-eyed working on those lines that I don't think that I could handle another one. :P

 

I know what you mean! lol

How long did that take? I'd have to go outside and hit something with a sledgehammer after too much of working on that! Physical work feels good after hours on the computer doing tiedeous work like that! :insane:

My biggest fear is that someone will post the originals right after these are cleaned up! :eek:

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binarysunrise

binarysunrise

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Posted
(worship) Feel free to take over! :grin:
I got so cross-eyed working on those lines that I don't think that I could handle another one. :P

 

I know what you mean! lol

How long did that take? I'd have to go outside and hit something with a sledgehammer after too much of working on that! Physical work feels good after hours on the computer doing tiedeous work like that! :insane:

My biggest fear is that someone will post the originals right after these are cleaned up! :eek:

 

Well if you think these half dozen strips are bad, I'll send you a decade's worth of the regular superman dailies to try cleaning up :insane:

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Jayman

Jayman

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Well if you think these half dozen strips are bad, I'll send you a decade's worth of the regular superman dailies to try cleaning up :insane:

 

Well if I got paid for doing it I'd complain a lot less! (:

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