"Ghost Gallery" Project -- Collectors' Assistance Requested

[MAitchPrice]

Memo to Fiction House collectors: Mike Price, here, writing in connection with a project that Craig Yoe and I are contemplating for Yoe Books' Chilling Archives of Horror series at IDW Publ. We're considering the development of a 150-page anthology of the pioneering Ghost Gallery stories, as published in Fiction House's Jumbo Comics from issue No. 42 onward.
We wish not to distrupt anyone's valuable collections, but we do request that any owners of good-condition first printings consider providing us with high-res (300 DPI or greater) scans in TIFF files, actual size or larger, of whatever Ghost Gallery yarns might come to hand. (Craig and I have not yet begun to select specific stories; better to find out first what issues might be available from this seldom-seen magazine.)
We'll be looking to compile 10 or 12 of the eight- to 10-page Ghost Gallery stories.
Contributor credit will be given in print to all who participate.
Collectors can make contact via Facebook (page: Michael H. Price). The Ghost Gallery book will tie in, as well, with myForgotten Horrors series of movie-history books.
Craig and I look forward to hearing from anyone who can assist in the compilation.

[darkmark (RIP)]

Hi, Mike!  It's good to see you here.

[MAitchPrice]

And thanx for the welcome. Glad to be here. Hoping to see some traffic on this search.

[Yoc]

Hi Mike,
I'll email you soon with a lead on the JVJ Jumbo issues scanned by Snard.  Hge has his raw files still.

-Yoc 

[MAitchPrice]

And thanks for the memo. Looking forward to whatever develops. -- Mike Price

[Yoc]

Hi Mike,
I have forwarded you Snard's email.

Good luck!
-Yoc

[MAitchPrice]

Yoc --

All thanks for your assistance in rounding up a selection of "Ghost Gallery" yarns for Craig Yoe's and my project. Most grateful. Restorations all but complete, and just now finishing up the accompanying manuscript.

-- Mike Price

[Yoc]

Congrats on this Mike and please let us know when it's available for purchase.

-Yoc

[tilliban]

Greetings, Aitch!
This is your horror friend Tillmann from Germany.
I sadly have no GG scans.
But if you should hit a dead end with Snard's existing scans, I might ask Jim V. if he can provide me with JUMBOS to scan.
First, however, someone should read the stuff and decide what to choose.
 

[MAitchPrice]

Tillmann --

And thanks to you for the memo. Craig Yoe and I are by now well-equipped with representative "Ghost Gallery" materials; two sets of restorations are in progress -- one, recapturing the weathered-page look; and the other, with more extensive color-correction and re-saturation, and with pure-white margins, more emphatic word-balloon placements, and crisper lettering. We are retaining the authentic captions and dialogue in both instances, of course. I've just now finished the historical text and identified the key artists and some of the assembly-line inkers. Just about to ship the Foreword, well ahead of deadline. The anthology should see publication by autumn.

-- MHP

[Yoc]

Hi Mike,
Sounds interesting!  Will both sets of restorations be available to people?

[MAitchPrice]

"Will both sets of restorations be available?" you ask... Smart question, and thanks for the show of interest. We'll probably go with the weathered-page appearance for the Yoe/IDW series, for the sake of consistency with the earlier volumes. I'll be stockpiling the leftovers for eventual use, possibly in my "Comics from the Gone World" series at Cremo Studios. I like both sets of versions about equally, but of course when restoring or reworking a page I cannot resist the temptation to beef up a weak panel border or correct a misspelling or an imbalance in the original hand-lettering/kerning/leading. Same goes for the clunky syntax and grammar of many such stories, which often were composed so hastily as to let the finer details slide. (I carry this approach to the extreme in most of the "Gone World" books -- replacing trite and overobvious dialogue with absurdities and Vaudevillian wordplay.) Our pal Tillmann Courth has written some insightful words on the "Gone World" project at the Fifties Horror site.
-- MHP

[Yoc]

Interesting!  Thanks for sharing your thoughts on restoration Mike.  Mistakes in the actual stories is not an area I had thought of.  I was more wondering about the artwork side of it.  Being frank, I've never been a fan of the DC/Marvel school of bleach white page backgrounds and much prefer the weathered look you mention.  I can tell you how many times have I heard 'all the scans need is the musk smell of a 50 yr old comic!'  There newsprint is part of the experience.  Sure a reprint can't capture the smell but it could appear to be on newsprint.  As an editor I try to lessen the yellowing or tanning of a book when it's excessive but I still try to leave it looking like it was printed on newsprint.  I understand there are technical considerations for these collections but is there really a need for the bleach white and garish colouring of a typical DC/Marvel archive?
It's all in the eye of the beholder I guess.

Thanks again for sharing a please do feel free to elaborate on any of the aspects involved on producing such a collection.

-Yoc

[MAitchPrice]

Yessir -- two schools (or more) of thought on the restoration issue, each with merit. I often deal with high-res scans from original artwork, but the greater volume lies in the mouldering newsprint, itself. My preference is to make the colors (or greyscale conversions) stand out more strikingly from the page, rather like framing a painting. When I have a full-bleed project, I'll probably go with the newsprint texture. Learned much of that approach, recapturing the look of the pulp page, from Bill Blackbeard, back when he and George Turner and I were still working with plates from the engraving plant.

When dealing with the no-bleed format, I lean toward the white margins and gutters and then reinforce the black borders with true blacks in regimented dimensions. Uniform framing is my preference, rather than the diminished borders that come as a consequence of the aging and deterioration of the newsprint. De gustibus, and all that, y'know. A full-color restoration requires several layers (notably, the separate layer for restored lettering), and a great deal of oversaturation (on one color layer, for example) to override the gamma-filtering that deepens the blacks. (Blues and red-blue dot-screen areas turn extremely muddy on those grainy newsprint pages when sufficient gamma-filtering is applied to pop the blacks.)

I ordinarily blur the dot-screens into a more painterly texture, often augmented with the standard filters (watercolor, embossing, etc.) at varying intensities according to the size of a panel. For this one set of the "Ghost Gallery" stories, I am preserving the coarse dot-screens but correcting the more remarkable color-bleeds.

Haven't really codified my proprietary process into a Restoration Manual, but probably will do so during the year ahead. It's basically a PhotoShop translation of the organic techniques I use when restoring damaged oils, acrylics, and watercolors for my gallery clients.

Just occurred to me to mention that my Foreword credits the Digital Comics Museum among our sources of encouragement and practical assistance for this "Ghost Gallery" effort. Would you like to be mentioned by your given name? Please advise.

-- MHP

[Yoc]

Hi Mike,
Fascinating stuff.  I'm quite enjoying this and very informative.  I've been helping with editing raw scans from others since late 2005.  I've used three versions of PhotoShop starting with 6.0 and know the app as a tool is very powerful but I've never dug super deep into the guts of it or the theories behind how to make a page look as good as it might.  I've always just gone by 'does it look good to my eye'.  I've saved some Actions that I turn to and will try in combinations to try for the best I can get while not creating a super sized jpg.  I've never tried using the watercolour or embossing filters.  These days I've got more raw files than I can cope with so speed has become an issue.  I can edit a typical Rangerhouse raw scan of 52pgs down to between 25 and 45mins depending on how beat up the original book is.  I'll never be as good as JVJ, Darwination or Cimmerian32 are with their work but I can only imagine the time they (and you) must need to get such good results.
I hope you don't mind me rambling on here.  One of the biggest jobs I ever had was correcting terrible colour registration problems in a scan of Fox's Phantom Lady #19.  The printing was just awful in that book.  This one took me months with long breaks between efforts on it.  I kept thinking 'why isn't there a filter available that can correct these kind or errors?'

Do you you use a set font for the lettering or try to match it as close as possible and have several to choose from?  If you do one day produce a Restoration Manual I'd Love to read it!

Thanks for the offer but everyone online knows me by my Yoc or full Yocitrus name.  Including  DCM in your forward is very appreciated.  I think you will agree GA collectors and scanners are among the best people you could meet.  Helping run this site and getting to know the people that are integral part of our GA hobby has given me immense pleasure since I joined the staff many years ago now.  Long may we continue!