Slapping a hardcover on, say, six issues of Green Lantern and charging thirty bucks for it just feels like ridiculous overkill, like one of those stupid sweaters for a dog. There are a few things make some hardcover comics (mainly Marvel's oversized non-premier hardcovers and DC's Absolute editions) worth the pricetag and inconvenience, though:
- Larger size for improved viewing of the artwork.
- Bonus materials like scripts, design sketches, pitches, etc.
- Corrected coloring and/or art.
It's the last one that makes this edition of the Killing Joke worth the money. Reading this recolored hardcover is like seeing a favorite movie in HD for the first time. It is simply absurd how much this slight-seeming story is improved by being colored thoughtfully, thematically, and carefully by the artist himself, rather than by a separate colorist. (John Higgins, in this case, who has done plenty of quality work in other places and shouldn't be scorned too badly for this tempera nightmare.)It never occurred to me to ask why the original was colored largely in arbitrary splotches of pink, yellow, and green, and now I don't know how I ignored it for so long. I wish that someone would go back and do this same thing to the other early Vertigo books where whole pages are colored with undifferentiated washes of green, brown, and yellow. (I'm looking at you, early Hellblazer.)
I could go on for pages about this, but it seems like a good picture-worth-a-thousand-words opportunity. Here's a panel from the original edition (my well-worn third printing):
And here's the same panel from the recolored edition:
The flashback sequences are improved as well, dropped out of sepia into cold black-and-white, with flashes of red popping out Schindler's-List-style. Here's the sepia original:
And Bolland's thematically recolored version:
I can't emphasize enough how much this improves the story. It worth the money for an upgrade if you've only got the old version, and makes the book into a must-buy if you don't own it yet. Last I checked (on Saturday), there was a copy on the shelves; if it's gone, ask whoever's behind the counter to order one for you.Some hardcover collected editions are a waste of time, space, and paper. This isn't one of them.
1 comment:
Everyone should buy the Killing Joke Hardcover. Especially since they don't print the single anymore and the Alan Moore collection it had been relegated to is surprisingly hard to come by. But there are two drawbacks. First, as someone somewhere said, the addition of the exclamation point on the cover ("Smile!") detracts from the crazy of Joker. Given what he is photographing, it's a hair creepier when he is just coldly saying "Smile", like a command rather than a suggestive exclamatory sentence (or word, I guess). Second, the coloring on the flashbacks is disappointing. When I first read Killing Joke, I did not connect the Red Hood to the Joker; I thought they were disparate storylines that would connect. This is because the coloring was not all that different from the rest of the book so it wasn't clearly a flashback. It still reads fine, but it lacks that little bit extra. Still, though, everyone should buy it. Especially with the movie coming out.
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