JLA: The Silver Age Omnibus 1 cover (colour test, 2015)

After the passing of Darwyn Cooke, DC asked Michael Cho to provide covers for the JLA Silver Age omnibuses. He accepted with some trepidation, knowing that his classic style tended to draw Cooke comparisons already, and Cooke was strongly associated with JLA due to his well-received story The New Frontier.

This 7"x6.5" image, entirely original, was produced to experiment with colors. Cho is well known for his dramatic use of limited color palettes, often sticking to a single accent color on a black and white image. This time he opted for three colors and wanted to see how they played together. Note that he used the British spelling "colour."

Unfortunately, my scanner gets confused by strong red images and tends to make other areas of the image inappropriately red-shifted -- in this case, the yellow of the sky and Batman's belt. I compensated in Photoshop, but this made the red more orange than it really is. Compromises! See the additional image for a photo showing the true colors more accurately. If anyone else has better Photo-Fu than me and wants to give it a go, let me know.

I have the consolation of knowing that Cho's published cover (which was colored digitally, I believe) uses different shades of yellow and red anyway; see the additional images. Which color palette do you prefer?