Posted in: Comics | Tagged: Comics, entertainment

Terminal Point And The Miracle Of Duo-Shade

Bruce Zick writes,

I killed myself on the Terminal Point comic books, all because of that damn Duo-Shade paper. You brush two different liquids on the chemically treated paper and two different shades of grey magically appear. Mad Magazine artists Wally Wood and Jack Davis used it in the 1950's as did thousands of illustrators back then.

So there I was in 1993 working on a Dark Horse series called Terminal Point, brushing the chemicals into my inked Terminal Point artwork, reveling as grey tones mysteriously appeared. It was like creating a lushly rendered painting. It was exhilarating and TIME CONSUMING!! It took forever to do one page, mostly because I just couldn't help myself. I was in love with Duo-Shade.

And Terminal Point was the perfect project. I had cut my teeth on Duo-Shade a year earlier on The Zone Continuum and now I was ready to fly to a higher level of art. The story was filled with incredible machinery, bustling cityscapes, beautiful film noir dames and men in huge suits wearing wide-brimmed hats, all wanting, needing, crying for Duo-Shade greys. I worked days on a single page, wanting each one to be perfect. As I look at the artwork today I can't imagine affording the ridiculous amount time to paint the pages.

Printing technology was simpler in the nineties; comics were printed on brownish newsprint with grayish blacks. But now Terminal Point has been digitally remastered by Caliber Comics into a new graphic novel and printed on slick bright white paper with shiny deep rich blacks. And sumptuous, glorious, lovely grey tones. I had to wait 25 years to see how good the Duo-Shade could really look, and now you get to see it too.

Just remember that my young self slaved away so that you could see Duo-Shade—the relic of a long gone era of illustration. They don't make the paper anymore. It's gone forever as computers took over the process of comic art production. Yes, the miracle paper is indeed gone, but not Terminal Point—the book that killed me.

And if I could, I'd do it all over again.

Terminal Point can be found here.

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