Sandman #1 and Adventure #436 1 1

[iganatz]

Cliffs:  Long winded walls of text and photos; Sandman #1 may actually be only one of 5 printing errors; some production person in late 1974 had a really stressful day.

I recently discovered some long forgotten books of mine (Intro/Noob thread here: https://www.cgccomics.com/boards/topic/433089-questions-from-old-hand-turned-noob/).  I began the fun process of going through them individually, alphabetizing, bagging and boarding with the intent of selling them all.  It’s a slow process so far, because I find myself reading a lot of books I haven’t seen in decades.  Once everything was sorted, I started taking a closer look.  I discovered the cover printing anomaly of Kirby’s Sandman #1.  I’ve got 3 copies of the standard blue cover and one of the so-called purple variants.  It wasn’t until I started looking online that I realized that collectors valued them differently from one another.

Soon after, I discovered that I had 4 copies of Adventure Comics #436.  Of the 4 copies, 3 of them contain a purple field on which the Adventure logo is printed, and one of them is blue.

I did a search online for variants for this issue and, unlike Sandman #1, discovered no discussion of the variation for Adventure #436.  An image search returned photos (mostly) of the purple field.  Color is notoriously difficult to judge by looking at photos online; the photographer may light poorly, the colors of the file may be altered for any number of reasons, color profile mismatches can cause all kinds of issues.  (I work with color and print professionally).  That being said, few of the images appeared to have the blue field.  A sampling of available cover scans online:

Mycomichop.com had 9 copies available for sale, 8 appear to be purple and one appears to be blue: https://www.mycomicshop.com/search?ivitems=7309901#45588212

The blue one is priced the same as the purple ones, which begs the question, what makes a variant desirable or more valuable than the “standard”?  There are clearly less purple “variants” of Sandman#1 and the market has deemed those desirable.  There are clearly less blue “variants” of Adventure #436, yet the market has not deemed those more desirable than the standard purple.  I’m not shilling to try and argue that the variant should be worth more (my copies are all low grade and I no longer buy comics).  I’m just fascinated by how the market works.

Wait, there’s more!  I had time on my hands and a special new vape cart so I spent the night doing some digging.  When I placed copies of Sandman and Adventure next to each other, it was clear that these variants might not be mere coincidence.  Massive runs of web offset printing (the method used for most publications) is still not an exact science.  Even with color profiling and standardized papers and ink sets, lots of variables can cause colors to shift during the printing process.  There is usually either a production person, an art director (or both) on press to “sign off” when everything looks great.  On a press that can fire off many thousands of impressions per hour, you try to nail the look down quickly.  The printed materials that came off the press prior to sign off are usually destroyed.  In the 1970’s, there were no color profiles or standardized ink sets and so there was a lot more “play” in the process of large scale printing.  The person who would be giving final sign-off and the master pressman likely worked together often and had a rapport, required because there would be a lot of stop/start in the process.  They would pull some sheets, decide that they needed to push (add) more magenta, or pull (subtract) cyan, etc.  Then they would start the process again and hopefully achieve sign off as quickly as possible so as to avoid cost overruns.

I put the two groups of books side by side and looked closer.  It is often evident when one color has been arbitrarily increased on printed materials.  This is much easier to see in photographic reproduction.  The client may decide, for example, that their logo, which is supposed to always be this color, is lacking in say, magenta.  Then they push magenta in the ensuing run until that logo looks just right.  This may adversely affect a skin tone in a photograph adjacent to the logo.  The client may decide that it is acceptable for the subject’s skin to be too red so long as the logo looks the way he or she believes it needs to look.  These differences are less evident in comic books, which often contain striking primary colors and color contrast not found in photographs.

Bear with me, I’m long winded, but I’m getting to the good stuff.  If the colors on the Sandman cover were simply pushed or pulled, you would see differences between the two variants in other areas of the cover.  For example, when they were on press with the Sandman cover, had they decided that the purple was unattractive as it was coming off press and they wanted to achieve a deep blue (which exists on most of the printed copies), they would have had to significantly push the cyan and pull the yellow inks.  Had they done that, you would see differences between the books in other areas that also utilize cyan and yellow.  Those color differences are particularly apparent in neutral tones, like that of the blanket on the person sleeping below the Sandman.

I’ve taken the group shots of the covers and quickly digitally separated them to illustrate that the above is not  what happened.

Had they pushed and pulled colors on press, you would see a change in the densities of inks in the blanket, especially on the yellow and cyan plates.  See the example below; the densities are essentially unchanged, see the red X  (please pardon my shadow on the photos).  Also, changing ink densities during the print process increases cost, something that comic book publishers, working on slim margins to begin with, would avoid like the plague.

Most likely what happened is that one or more of the acetates required to make the printing plates was misplaced at the printing plant and this was not realized until DC’s person on press noticed the purple cover.

There was a very limited color palette available to colorists.  They would make notations for the color separation house as to specifically which colors were to be used.  From these instructions, the separator would create 10 acetates (essentially film containing 25% tones, 50% and 100% for each of the 3 colors cyan, magenta and yellow and 1 100% acetate for black), which were then sent to the printing plant to make 4 plates ( one for each color).  The paper then went through the printing press for each color, receiving ink once from each of the four different plates.

Generally, the black plate is printed first, followed by the three colors.  My conspiracy theory is that whoever was overseeing the press run for DC was having a sandwich in the commissary and when he was called up to give sign off he saw the purple of the Sandman cover and gave it the stink eye.  Furthermore, there may have been a number of other presses on the floor cranking out other DC titles, which he would then have checked up on.  I looked up the publication dates for both books and they were both published with a stated release for December 1974.

So Adventure #436 and Sandman #1 were very likely being printed at or around the same time, as were a number of these other books.  Of the 26, besides the two under discussion in this thread, the following books also appear to have strange purple skies: 

Additionally, this Kamandi cover doesn’t make sense to me from a color standpoint.  I haven’t checked to see who the colorists on any of these issues were, but it seems unlikely that anyone paid for a living to create dynamic color schemes intended to grab viewers’ eyes would use that weird brown color.  The brown shadows feel “thin” as though something’s missing.  A very dark blue would make much more sense against the white, yellow and red than the color seen here:

Online searches revealed no deep blue versions of either the Superman or Weird War books, but sure as shootin’ I found versions of Kamandi with a deep blue/black instead of that ugly brown on some copies:

All five of these covers were very likely being printed around the same time at the same plant.  There was a company that had a virtual monopoly on comic book printing in the 70s.  I read about it last night when I was digging online but forgot to save the link.

My theory:  when the printing company was creating the plates for these books, at least one cyan acetate (and as many as 1 magenta and 2 cyan acetates) were somehow misplaced and not used when they created the plates.  The books went to press.  Whoever was in charge didn’t notice when reviewing the Superman and Weird War books.  You have to remember that this person was likely overseeing the printing of all of DC’s titles and the pressure to sign off and get them out the door on budget was likely paramount.  So those two books didn’t raise any red flags and went out the door as is.  At some point during the runs for the other 3 books, he noticed that the colors looked “off”, probably while reviewing sheets for Sandman, where it’s most noticeable. He was probably payng special attention to the Sandman as it was a first issue and one of Kirby’s books (at this point they were worried about being able to retain him and he would return to Marvel not long after).  At this point he must have made the decision to halt printing of those 3 books.  The pressmen could have then pulled the plates and begun production on other books while the new plates for those 3 books were produced.  In order to avert total budget disaster, they would have released the already produced “purple” books and then completed the print run with the “correct” plates.

Sidebar:  according to recalledcomics.com, there are actually 3 versions of Sandman #1, a “pink”, a “purple”, and the standard “blue”.  (source: http://www.recalledcomics.com/Sandman1Purple.php)  I would argue that the “pink” version (which is what I appear to have) is the one that caused production to be halted and the “purple” was an attempt to push the colors with the existing plates.  When they realized that they couldn’t get there from here, they remade the plates which resulted in the final blue covers. 

So, in my opinion, the purple Sandman “variant” is actually one of five instances of variation caused by a mistake at the printing plant when they were producing the December 1974 issues of DC comics.  Since it seems likely that there are only purple versions of Superman #282 and Weird War #32, I guess we could say that there are no “variants” of those in the market.  There appear to be two versions of Kamandi #24 and Adventure #436 available.  Whether or not those variants have any more value than the “standard” colors is something for the market to determine.  The market has already made a determination about Sandman #1.

I had a lot of fun last night and today digging into this.  If anyone else gets any enjoyment from having read this, then that’s gravy.

 

cheers

 

iganatz

 

P.S. if you’re game, here are two good articles for lay people on how color was reproduced for comic books prior to the advent of desktop publishing in the 80s:

http://facweb.cs.depaul.edu/sgrais/comics_color.htm

http://www.comicartistsdirect.com/articles/coloring.html

[Brock]

This is impressive... thanks for sharing!

[iganatz]

My pleasure Brock.  

And here, I thought I was being all original and stumbled upon a rare instance of major quality control fail.  Little did I know that these problems have ben endemic throughout the history of the medium.  Some spare time today turned up a wealth of information about crazy errors making their way into the marketplace.  Hard to believe these errors could happen again and again and again.  I wonder what the turnover rate for quality control positions is at these plants.  Below are a few threads that already exist here on CGC for those interested.

My personal new favorite is the one where they swapped the cyan and magenta plates on part of the run for Fantastic Four #110

https://www.cgccomics.com/boards/topic/424042-printing-error-books/

https://www.cgccomics.com/boards/topic/117158-celebrate-the-manufacturing-errors/

https://www.cgccomics.com/boards/topic/24774-qa-comic-production-flaws/

 

[divad]

Yes, very impressive. Not to spoil the fun, but are any of these actually rare enough to monetize the differences? Or is the collector base too small?

[jools&jim]

On 5/16/2018 at 5:32 PM, iganatz said:

 Hard to believe these errors could happen again and again and again.  I wonder what the turnover rate for quality control positions is at these plants...

I think it's entirely plausible that this sort of thing happened simply because the end product was just some stupid comic book for kids, and nobody really gave a  !

[jools&jim]

10 hours ago, divad said:

...are any of these actually rare enough to monetize the differences? Or is the collector base too small?

https://www.ebay.com/sch/i.html?_from=R40&_nkw=fantastic+four+110+error&_sacat=0&LH_Sold=1&LH_Complete=1

[jools&jim]

How 'bout "color (error?) variants", or whatever, for a genuine BA key...?

[Lazyboy]

On 5/16/2018 at 4:32 PM, iganatz said:

And here, I thought I was being all original and stumbled upon a rare instance of major quality control fail.  Little did I know that these problems have ben endemic throughout the history of the medium.  Some spare time today turned up a wealth of information about crazy errors making their way into the marketplace.  Hard to believe these errors could happen again and again and again.  I wonder what the turnover rate for quality control positions is at these plants.

Variance in mass production is normal. Comics were very cheap mass production. There are very few true errors like the FF 110.

[RockMyAmadeus]

Hmmmm.

I dunno.

I've been considering this since it was posted, and I am of the opinion that Sandman #1 is nothing like the other books, which were just variances in ink levels. 

It is my opinion that Sandman #1 was a genuine error that was fixed.

[iganatz]

On 5/18/2018 at 11:51 PM, divad said:

Yes, very impressive. Not to spoil the fun, but are any of these actually rare enough to monetize the differences? Or is the collector base too small?

It seems pretty small to me.  Having done a lot more digging, I can see that errors are fairly commonplace.  The market decides which books command a premium and which don't.  The two Bronze books that I see selling at a premium are FF 110 and Sandman 1.  

On 5/19/2018 at 10:42 AM, jools&jim said:

I think it's entirely plausible that this sort of thing happened simply because the end product was just some stupid comic book for kids, and nobody really gave a  !

For sure.

On 5/19/2018 at 10:48 AM, jools&jim said:

https://www.ebay.com/sch/i.html?_from=R40&_nkw=fantastic+four+110+error&_sacat=0&LH_Sold=1&LH_Complete=1

Yep FF 110 is definitely cool enough that people will pay a little extra for the "variant". 

On 5/19/2018 at 5:29 PM, jools&jim said:

How 'bout "color (error?) variants", or whatever, for a genuine BA key...?

This one is really cool.  Looks like the 50% cyan acetate was lost during platemaking for the initial run, then a new plate was made correctly for the remainder of the press run after discovery.  You can see the 25% cyan acetate made it onto the initial plate because there is light blue in some areas which would otherwise be white in its absence.  

On 5/19/2018 at 8:44 PM, Lazyboy said:

Variance in mass production is normal. Comics were very cheap mass production. There are very few true errors like the FF 110.

This is simultaneously true and not true IMO.  I would argue that missing acetates during plate making are no more or less "true" errors than mistakenly swapping plates during the press run.  It sure looks more cool than the others due to the nature of the error.  Here's another nice one I noticed thanks to a seller's thread here on the forums:

This is, to me, truly rare in that the paper roll somehow was wildly misregistered when successive inks were run.  The people who signed off on this one truly did not give a...

https://www.cgccomics.com/boards/topic/433671-potpourri-of-saba-dcmarvel-all-other-publications-some-are-unique-and-rare-included-matt-baker/

On 5/20/2018 at 3:00 AM, RockMyAmadeus said:

Hmmmm.

I dunno.

I've been considering this since it was posted, and I am of the opinion that Sandman #1 is nothing like the other books, which were just variances in ink levels. 

It is my opinion that Sandman #1 was a genuine error that was fixed.

I wish there were true, if only to justify my excitement while researching and posting about my "discovery".  However, the nature of the error (missing acetates which required remaking the plates) seems like a common error (see the Swamp Thing posted above and the other books from DC in December 1974).  Sandman #1 is uniquely cool only because there are 3 versions:  (1) the initial pinkish purple cover that was discovered, (2) the purple version, which was the attempt on press to fix the problem by pushing the ink levels, and (3) the final, correct version produced from remade plates.