Sean Clarke :: Gene Colan

Doctor Strange #7, page 8

Artists: Gene Colan (Penciller) , John Romita (Inker)

9 Comments - 1,074 Views - 8 Likes

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in color, as printed

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Artwork Details

Title:	Doctor Strange #7, page 8
Artist:	Gene Colan (Penciller)
Artist:	John Romita (Inker)
Media Type:	Pen and Ink
Art Type:	Interior Page
For Sale Status:	NFS
Views:	1,074
Likes on CAF:	8 9
Comments:	9
Added to Site:	1/24/2021
Comic Art Archive:

Description

Dr. Strange battles Umar and her Dark Dimension demons on this Romita-inked page from 1975. Umar is sister to the Dread Dormammu and mother to Clea (whose father Orini also appears here in panel three). Outside of a handful of work on romance comics, I think this is the only time John Romita applied his brush to Gene Colan's art on a mainstream title. Some will kvetch that Romita overpowers Colan in this issue, but I recognize what each artist brings to the collaboration, and I think the art in Doctor Strange #7 is amazing. This is my hill, and I'm willing to die on it!

John Romita on working with Gene Colan:

"I inked Gene on a couple of romance jobs and a few covers. I didn't ink him a lot. I wish I had done more, but I will tell you he's very hard to ink.

I told Gene that when you get a guy like Jack Abel who knows how to ink you, you've got to cherish him, because Gene works in grays. Now it looks like he's doing blacks, but they're grays and they're subtle. And there's a lot of soft lines and a lot of soft edges. How the hell do you ink those? Where do you soften it up and how do you soften up? You can't use drybrush because you're not doing a pulp drawing. The truth of the matter is that when you ink Gene, you're interpreting his stuff to the best of your ability. Either you get heavy-handed like I sometimes did�I got too heavy-handed a couple of times in his love stories, because, I mean, here was all this gray and I thought it was black. What you need to do is find a way to soften that, or break it up somehow with a line technique.

I thought the answer to his whole situation was to just reproduce from his pencils, but the technology wasn't good enough for those days. Nice litho offset would have been nice, and they could have done his stuff. When he did get stuff done in pencil, sometimes it worked and sometimes, it didn't. But the truth of the matter is he was very hard to ink, but a few guys like Tom Palmer make Colan look like Colan. Jack Abel had a knack with his work that was very good on 'Iron Man." But outside of that, very few guys could ink him. I know Giacoia did and he did a passable job, but it was a little hard, and all of the softness from Colan is gone when you do it with a hard line. I think Gene was lucky to get some of the good inking he did get."

~ John Romita, interview with Jim Amash 2006/2007

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About the Owner

	Sean Clarke Premium Gallery Owner
Joined:	January 2005
Last Login:	September 2025
Country:	UNITED STATES
On CAF:	Premium Member Q&A Sean's Classifieds Sean's Want List Artworks Commented On Liked Art Site Activity on CAF

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Comments on this Artwork

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Filmore W. Bedwick
Member Since 2003

1 - Posted on 1/24/2021

Holy Crap!!! Was there Ever a Better Inked Doc Strange page?!!!! No❣️❣️❣️❣️❣️

artless artmore
Member Since 2013

1 - Posted on 1/25/2021

Cool page, and very interesting interview w/JR! Love the melting fiends in the final panel

Lee Benaka
Member Since 2004

1 - Posted on 1/25/2021

I agree with John Romita that I wish he had done more art with Gene. This page is dynamite!

Dino Mauricio
Member Since 2009

1 - Posted on 1/25/2021

Oustanding DS page and definitely some impressive inks, congrats Sean!

J H
Member Since 2019

1 - Posted on 1/25/2021

Amazing inking and such great art. This is a gorgeous page! And I love that Romita interview, it adds so much to this page. You are killing it with Colan. Big congrats!

Peter Sullivan
Member Since 2006

1 - Posted on 1/25/2021

I'm starting to think you have Colan issues! Can you still eat? Can you afford to? Lol

Mark Levy
Member Since 2004

1 - Posted on 1/26/2021

Super cool page with the expected awesome commentary!

Lars Teglbjaerg
Member Since 2005

1 - Posted on 1/26/2021

Now you are talking!

Dietmar Krueger
Member Since 2010

1 - Posted on 3/10/2021

Stunning!!!

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