Back in 1992, when I was the colorist on staff at King Features Syndicate, I got the chance to color the Spider-Man newspaper strip. Usually this would be handled by someone Marvel hired, but if it was a reprint or Marvel hadn’t hired anyone yet, I would fill in.
Ron Frenz was approached to draw the strip at that time and recently posted the pencils for this Sunday page on his Facebook page.
Click on image to see larger.
The inks were done by none other than the legendary Joe Sinnott.
Here’s my color guide followed by the old color chart that the numbers correspond to.
And last but not least, how it appeared in the paper.
As I grew up with Romita’s Spider-Man newspaper strip, any chance to work on Spider-Man I deemed as quite the honor.
Speaking of John Romita – here’s a quick color guide I did when they reprinted his origin story back in March of 1992.
The numbers on this one were on a tracing paper overlay (for clarity).
And here’s how it appeared in the newspapers.
And just for fun, here’s how the strip originally was colored back in 1977.
(Pardon the rubber cement – it’s from my old scrapbook)
And here’s the cleaned up version from the highly recommended IDW Spider-Man newspaper strip collection.
Side note: Despite the fact that I love the limited palette of the original, I thought it would be fun to put my own spin on it.
For more check out Coloring the Sunday Comics.