Although I actually prefer reading duck comics in English, most of those I own are in French (since I live part time in France, part time in the French-speaking part of Belgium). Been reading them since I was a child, and I've noticed a rather dramatic shift in coloring around the early 2000s.
Around the same time, I started getting my hands on American editions of duck comics, so I could understood that the shift in question was made in an effort to be more faithful to the original (American) coloring. Now, I get the reasoning – even though I don't necessarily approve it, but that's another matter entirely.
The problem I have with this, however, is that the colors may now be more faithful (Scrooge in red coat, silver money in the bin, and so on), but the overall look of the comics has become consierably more... drab. Case in point, this here comparison, using an excerpt from Don Rosa's The Richest Duck In The World (sorry about the horrible quality):
Note that the last panel clearly was in a snowy environment, so they actually did fix the landscape. However, the overall impression of the new coloring is rather dull to me. Grey Fabergé egg, grey egg boxes, grey uniform on the Czar, grey marbles, grey columns...
What do you people think? Are there any other French/Belgian fans around here?
I would imagine that by now, most Don Rosa reprints use the Rosa-approved Fantagraphics coloring, at least the ones that want to be able to use the Don Rosa name in promoting their books, as I think he’s had his name copyrighted or trademarked or something in Europe.
I would imagine that by now, most Don Rosa reprints use the Rosa-approved Fantagraphics coloring, at least the ones that want to be able to use the Don Rosa name in promoting their books, as I think he’s had his name copyrighted or trademarked or something in Europe.
Probably. And the Rosa-approved coloring by Egmont has been in use for many years now. I believe the coloring in Fanta's books is largely based on that, albeit tweaked here and there according to Don's wishes.
Juicy McDuck, the shift in coloring you noticed was when Hachette stopped recoloring Egmont stories themselves and began using Egmont's color directly.
Deb, the Glenat (French) complete Rosa series uses a mix of earlier Hachette color and (more typically) Egmont color, though both are quite heavily edited according to Don's wishes. Still, the basic "Egmonty" look of the color is often still there, with lots of reds, greens, and especially turquoises.
Mesterius, the coloring in Fanta's DRL is NOT based on Rosa-approved Egmont, at least not most of the time. Instead I had Don compare most pre-existing colorings of each story: American, Egmont, French (when original), Italian, and Greek (when original). I had him pick his favorite and then I'd modify /that/ version of the color to make further tweaks. So it's kind of like each story was an improvement from whichever version, around the world, he already considered best.
YES!! I've had this problem in modern reprints of stories since the 2000s. When I look back at French coloring back in the 90s, it tended to be bright and beautiful without being overly flashy, and had subtle paint splashes for some shading.
Also, a lot of Brazilian-made comics had weird and random coloring when originally published, but when localized in France, the coloring was made more subtle and professional.
Juicy McDuck, the shift in coloring you noticed was when Hachette stopped recoloring Egmont stories themselves and began using Egmont's color directly.
Deb, the Glenat (French) complete Rosa series uses a mix of earlier Hachette color and (more typically) Egmont color, though both are quite heavily edited according to Don's wishes. Still, the basic "Egmonty" look of the color is often still there, with lots of reds, greens, and especially turquoises.
Mesterius, the coloring in Fanta's DRL is NOT based on Rosa-approved Egmont, at least not most of the time. Instead I had Don compare most pre-existing colorings of each story: American, Egmont, French (when original), Italian, and Greek (when original). I had him pick his favorite and then I'd modify /that/ version of the color to make further tweaks. So it's kind of like each story was an improvement from whichever version, around the world, he already considered best.
Ah, so that's how it is! Not sure where I got it from that the starting point was the Egmont coloring; maybe I just assumed it since Fantagrahics' Library edition seems to be largely based on Egmont's overall.
Fantagraphics' story selection per volume was based on Egmont's Hall of Fame—so we could use their (story-keyed) front covers as our back covers, and since it translated into ten volumes that could easily fit in two-book slipcases.
But Fantagraphics' "Behind the Scenes" texts came to us from all over the place; they're a mixture of items Rosa wrote for Egmont's Hall of Fame, Egmont's later Don Rosa Collection (a nine-volume set), certain German albums, and various Gladstone and Gemstone issues; I generally used a mixture of sources, trying to create the most detailed version of Rosa's background information possible. Luckily, while the Egmont books were not printed in English themselves, Rosa and Egmont between them had saved about 97% of the original English versions of his texts. (In about 3% of the cases, Rosa and I translated something back from Norwegian if we had to...)