American Four-Colour Comic Book × American Traditional Tattoo Flash

Shares heavy black line and flat primaries; comic panels add story where flash keeps one emblem.

From the research on American Traditional Tattoo Flash

Mix them and make something American Four-Colour Comic Book American Traditional Tattoo Flash

A sample layout drawn from the recipe: shapes from American Traditional Tattoo Flash, their arrangement from American Four-Colour Comic Book, the finish from American Four-Colour Comic Book. Not a real work, and not an image of either style.

What each style brings

Each part of the design comes from the style with the stronger say in it, and each style gives at least two.

American Four-Colour Comic Book (Golden to Bronze Age) American Traditional Tattoo Flash

Type from American Four-Colour Comic Book: Hand-lettering
All caps
Colour from American Traditional Tattoo Flash: Flat fields
Limited spot colours
Form from American Traditional Tattoo Flash: Stylised figuration
Emblems & badges
Composition from American Four-Colour Comic Book: Framed panels
Sequential narrative
Surface from American Four-Colour Comic Book: Halftone & Ben-Day dots
Misregistration & overprint

The type

Open fonts standing in for each style’s own type, which is often hand-drawn or commercial.

Display · American Four-Colour Comic Book

Fiesta

Bangers, standing in for Pen-lettered comic-book capitals (balloons and captions drawn with pen or brush and a lettering guide, traditionally all in upper case: Sam Rosen, Ben Oda, Artie Simek, John Costanza, Gaspar Saladino)

Text · American Traditional Tattoo Flash

The stock designs of twentieth-century American tattoo shops: eagles, anchors, swallows, roses, hearts, daggers, panthers, skulls, ships, pin-ups and nautical stars, each drawn as an isolated emblem with a bold black outline, black shading and a few saturated flat colours (mainly red, yellow and green) chosen to stay legible on skin for a lifetime. Painted or printed on sheets and hung on shop walls, the designs carry vows, luck and service memories, and the look now travels far beyond the tattoo shop.

Libre Caslon Text; American Traditional Tattoo Flash used Script names and mottoes lettered in ribbon banners and Shaded and drop-shadowed block capitals in the sign writer's manner

The colours

The ground and leading colours come from American Traditional Tattoo Flash, with a counter-accent from American Four-Colour Comic Book. The ink reads on the ground at 4.5:1 or more.

American Four-Colour Comic Book (Golden to Bronze Age) American Traditional Tattoo Flash

#f1e4c8 ground · 36%
#111111 ink · 14%
#f2c12e accent · 18%
#d9262c accent · 14%
#2160ad accent · 10%
#1f7a3a accent · 8%

As CSS

:root {
  --ground: #f1e4c8;
  --ink: #111111;
  --accent-1: #f2c12e;
  --accent-2: #d9262c;
  --accent-3: #2160ad;
  --accent-4: #1f7a3a;
  --font-display: "Bangers", sans-serif;
  --font-text: "Libre Caslon Text", serif;
}

Use it with care

American Four-Colour Comic Book (Golden to Bronze Age): The characters and logos of this tradition (Superman, Batman, Captain America, Spider-Man, the Fantastic Four) are still in copyright and trademarked by their publishers: draw your own heroes, logos and seals in the shared idiom, never ask an image model for these characters or for named artists such as Kirby, Ditko or Eisner, and never present a generated picture as a vintage comic. The period also traded in racial caricature, such as Ebony White in Will Eisner's The Spirit, whose blackface features Eisner later admitted were a conscious stereotype, and its wartime issues drew Japanese people as 'powerful monsters or incompetent subhumans' and, at the Writers' War Board's urging late in the war, Germans as a people who embraced aggression and violence. Give every character, enemies and foreigners included, the same anatomy, dignity and drawing care as the hero; never use skin tint, teeth, eyes or dress as ethnic markers, and do not revive the war cover's enemy caricature in a pastiche.

American Traditional Tattoo Flash: Tattoo flash is the working craft of a living community of tattooers, who still trade, copy and repaint the old sheets by their own customs, and Sailor Jerry Ltd holds the commercial rights to Collins's letters, art and flash: draw new designs in the idiom rather than lifting a named artist's flash for branding or merchandise. Period sheets also include caricatures of other peoples, exoticised hula girls and geishas, and wartime jingoism; leave those out when quoting the style.