More recaps from SoCal Secrets

Here's a recap of Love Stories Of Mary Worth (Harvey, 1949) #1.

"His desperate deception"

Colorized version

Since I'm trying to do at least one comic book cover modification in as many different genres as possible, here's my first entry in the espionage category. It's Spy and Counterspy (American Comics Group, 1949) #2.

WANTED!

Now for some cross-dressed criminals, from a one-shot by Avon: Parole Breakers (Avon, 1951) #2.

Hank Willis, the high-heeled hijacker

And from the other side of the law: Justice Traps the Guilty (Prize, 1947) #88. Is this one too subtle?

She's a policeman!!

The goon is confused. Shouldn't that be "He's a policeman"?

I like the espionage cover with the wig-yanking... I might have airbrushed the spy's hair to make it look more like a male haircut...

Figure-hugging red dress, high-heels, pendant earrings, red lipstick, and blond hair. No, I think that the goon got the pronoun correct. ;-)

[The question of which pronouns to use was one of the things that I debated about when I did the recap. I also thought about adding in the sentence "She's a he!"]

Another cross-dressing criminal, this time headed to the gas chamber. It's from another Avon one-shot: Underworld Story, The (Avon, 1950) #1.

...wearing his favorite red dress.

Frankie may be a crook, but he's a crook with style! I love his beret!

I seem to be stuck on crime comic books [maybe because I haven't found a western to recap:-(]. This time around, it's another undercover cop. It's from Crime Must Pay the Penalty (Ace Magazines, 1948) #27.

Hey! Your voice is lower.

Great job. The story and image work well together. Nice clean-up job too; reconstructing the door like that was pretty nifty.

Great job. The story and image work well together.

The original cover text made this one easy to recap. I've been looking for covers to redo as undercover crossdressing cops and spies, but they've been pretty hard to find.


Nice clean-up job too; reconstructing the door like that was pretty nifty.

Thank you, Andi!

I didn't think that anyone would even notice a detail like that. That's actually what I was hoping for in my initial version. Because that left edge was so crappy, I had just done it all in black down to the paper cutter figuring that nobody would notice [or at least wouldn't say anything ;-)].

But then it started to bug me and I asked myself--how hard could it be to recreate the door? The next version had a simple frame around the whole door, but that didn't look quite right to me. So then I added the couple of cross frames, which was hard guessing at the vanishing perspective on such a narrow object. I still don't think that it is quite right, but it's 'done' for now. ;-)

Here's my go at a recap of a western comic. It's from the short-lived series Roundup (D.S. Publishing Co., 1948) #2. This is another recap where I'm wondering if it might be too subtle, so I welcome any comments or criticisms.

Next up for a new genre recap will probably be a scifi or fantasy recap (and after that, perhaps a superhero recap).

Is she or isn't he?

Boy into Girl version

As I become more proficient in using my various graphics programs, it's tempting to want to go back and redo some of my old recaps. Well I did just that to the "Love Stories Of Mary Worth" cover at the top of the page. I chose that particular cover recap because I had been disappointed with how faded the red dress looked.

I used the "colorize" tool in Paint Shop Pro. For all three pieces of attire that I reworked the color on, I probably overdid the color, making it too saturated. As I learn to use the tool, I should become better at resisting the temptation to overdo the color change.

I used the freehand selection tool to carefully trace the area that I wanted to modify. The colorize tool then lets you select the hue and saturation levels. Anything that's black or white doesn't get colorized, but other colors get changed to the hue that you select.


note: I added the "colorized" version to my post at the top of the page so you can compare both versions side-by-side.

What version of Paint Shop Pro are you using? PSP has a lot of tools for this sort of thing - so many choices it's not always easy to tell which tool you need. Color Replacer is one I use a lot, works with a brush and ignores stuff outside the target color range (so you don't need to use something like the freehand selection tool.)

For a cover like the Mary Worth one, I might just use Smart Photo Fix to tinker with the black/white, brightness, color saturation, etc. for the whole cover. (Though you'd still probably end up with a bright orange dress that'd need further attention.)

As regards the door reconstruction, SoCalSecrets, what can I say? I'm just naturally detail-oriented. Perspective is a bear, especially for people like myself, who can't actually draw.

For whatever it's worth, I rarely if ever increase saturation on a selective basis, because it's very easy to create an artificial effect. If I do want to selectively fix an area of an image (to adjust hair-colour, or fix blotchy skin tones, for example), I use GIMP's Select Region By Colour tool to create a mask, blur the mask a little to avoid hard edges, and then apply the change "through" the mask.

The most common cause of greyish, unsaturated colours on original cover scans is the overall tone distribution. That's usually the first thing I fix on a cover after resizing it to my standard 500px width. See my posting on Tips & Techniques for details. Beyond that, I usually adjust colour saturation for the image as a whole, unless there's some gross imbalance in the original image.