8 INKING

Inking is a funny discipline. Its role has changed over the years. Originally, the inker was supposed to trace the line work the penciller had laid down on the page. The way the printing press operated at the time, it needed thick black lines to reproduce, so the inker’s job was to make sure the penciller’s work made it onto the final product.

Over time, printing presses got better and the need for inkers started to dwindle (it never disappeared, but it became less necessary). As a result, inkers began to experiment with their craft, making it something more than tracing.

Today, the inker must bring something unique to the drawing board. The right inker on a project can make it really sing and the wrong inker can destroy good pencilled pages. Inkers now expand on the work of the penciller. It often depends on what the penciller wants the inker to do. Some pencillers like an inker who can do something diff erent to his work; others want the inker to strictly follow their line strokes. A good inker is able to look at the page in front of him and figure out how he can bring out the best in the line work. The inker deals with light and dark contrasts. He deals with light sources, with foreshortening, with separating planes in the three-dimensional field, and with a hundred other factors. His work is not easy and it is often overlooked by the public.

For this chapter, I went to three of the finest inkers working in comics and asked them to tell us what they do in their own words.

• Klaus Janson, famed inker of Batman: The Dark Knight Returns and Daredevil, among other things.

• Mike Perkins, inker on Captain America, among others.

• Karl Kesel, who has worked on hundreds of fine comic books, most notably Fantastic Four.

All three of these gentlemen are fantastic pencillers in their own right and so make ideal candidates to talk about the separation of inking from pencilling. Trust me, the line can get blurry.

Inker’s Tools

The inker uses many of the same tools as the penciller, including a drafting table and light boxes. In addition to these tools, the inker uses:

Ink

Brushes

Eraser

White correction fluid

Photocopies of pencils

Scanner

Klaus Janson’s Inks Over John Romita Jr.’s Pencils

John lays down very deliberate lines and Klaus extrapolates from what John indicates. Note the thick shading on the face in the last panel. That shading was reserved for only the final panel to give it a more ominous tone.

The Gray Area #1: ©2005 John Romita Jr. and Glen Brunswick. Used with permission.

The Inker’s Job

Inkers must make sure that all the information on the page is portrayed clearly. Adding shadow to certain planes and people will emphasize the prominence of a particular element. A good knowledge of anatomy and an understanding of the structure of real-world surroundings is not only the responsibility of the penciller.