Thread by @KurtBusiek

Just in case anyone’s actually interested (and pro artists, feel free to weigh in), here’s a few thoughts on the decline in the ubiquity of inkers in mainstream comics:

1. Used to be, back in the 40-80s or so, mainstream comics pencilers penciled fairly loosely. Complete pencils, sure, but pencil textures, not ink textures. And inkers would finish the art for clean reproduction.

That got the jobs done faster. Penciler go fast, inker finish.

2. But as we got a wave of fans-turned-artist in the late 60s onward, and then another wave, and then another, pencils started tightening up.

Artists were learning to draw comics by looking at finished art and duplicating it in pencil, doing the “finish” in pencil.

3. Inkers would then work from those tight pencils, reinterpreting them as needed. But pencilers were thinking in terms of ink textures.

4. Some of those pencilers realized that if they did that last stage in ink, rather than in pencil, they’d have more control of the art and get paid better, to boot.

This was not a new discovery; artists like Steve Ditko and Dan Spiegle had been doing it for decades.

5. Another thing that happened was that as pencilers got more detailed, they got slower, so instead of being able to draw two books a month (or more), they drew one. Or less than one.

And the industry adapted.

6. It became more common for a book not to have one regular artist, but to have a lot of fill-in artists, or even trade off co-artists. This allowed artists to keep working steadily even if they could only do, say, 10 issues a year. Or less.

7. A lot of those artists found out they could make more money if they did full art. For 9 issues rather than pencils for 12. That changed the industry, too.

8. Digital production also changed the way art was done.

First and most obviously, by allowing color art to break free of mechanical separations and blossom into a much more exciting part of the art.

9. Unfortunately for inkers, it meant colorists began doing a lot of what inkers used to do, setting mood, doing dramatic lighting, enhancing the art. So inking became not unimportant, but less important, because color was stepping up.

10. Digital production also meant that you didn’t need crisp line art any more. Comics could publish grease pencil and wash just as easily as a black line.

11. And of course, “digital” inking, which once involved scanning pencils and messing with contrast levels, turned into a craft thing, where you could “draw” in digital line, but it was every bit as “erasable” as pencil.

Doing that final stage of drawing in ink was a lot easier.

12. So all those pencilers who were learning to draw by looking at inked artwork were learning to finish their drawings in black, not gray.

13. So inking began to fade away, sort of like computer lettering killed off hand lettering. Not entirely (even with lettering), but we could see it as writing on the walls even by the late 1980s.

14. There are still inkers, and they still get work, because there are still pencilers who don’t want to do it. But there are more and more pencilers who do want to do it — to control the look of their work, to get the whole line-art check, or just because it’s simpler.

15. Times change. A lot of the artists I worked with back in the 80s or 90s who worked with inkers as a matter of course have started inking themselves. Most of the younger artists I talk to have been inking themselves their whole career.

16. Times change, priorities change, even the tools change.

Used to be, comics artists used zip-a-tone. Today you do that kind of thing in the computer. Tools change.

17. I remember when artists were seeing architects switch to digital, and realize that it meant that their favorite pens and brushes were going to become obsolete (because the architect market was much bigger than the comics’ artist market).

18. Nowadays, people make custom digital brushes, and there’s an explosion of versatility.

Times change. Tools change.

19. There is probably some truth to the idea that publishers can pay a full line artist less than a separate penciler and inker, but I think the idea that that’s forced pencilers into inking is backward. Pencilers choosing to ink made it possible, and publishers jumped on it.

20. But that’s why more pencilers are inking. Training, tools, control, the rise of colorists, production methods, deadline changes and more.

If you love inking, it’s probably best to learn storytelling. Loose layouts and tight inks are how a ton of comics are done.

21. And that’s my thoughts, at least unless I come up with more.

One thing I find fascinating in comics history is the divergence in production methods for comic books and comic strips in the the US.

In comic books, the art became an assembly-line product under the control of the publisher. Stan Lee got to choose who inked Jack Kirby or John Romita or Don Heck.

Once Romita finished penciling a page, it wasn’t his to control any more.

But in comic strips, the art stayed under the control of the artist. Milt Caniff or Leonard Starr might being in a pencil assistant and a background guy, but they’d hold on to the job of inking the main characters because they wanted the strip to look like them, like their style.

So Dick Rockwell penciled STEVE CANYON, Caniff changed whatever he felt like, and inked it. He stayed in control.

I wonder sometimes how that might have worked if comics had developed that way — in John Romita was hired to do SPIDER-MAN, and that meant he roped in any assistants he needed. Maybe he’d do a page rough, have someone else tighten it up, then he’d ink all the main characters...

…and have a background guy finish the rest. He did that a little (inkers often had assistants), but the penciler was always the primary, while in strips the “name artist” controlled the art by doing the finishes.

If John Romita, Don Heck and others had steadily inked themselves, working with assistants who were approved by the artist whose vision was in charge rather than the editor with his eye on the calendar, we’d have seen some pretty cool stuff, I think.