Style combination · Contrasts
American Four-Colour Comic Book × Métal hurlant Science-Fiction Comics
The American newsstand comic tells superhero stories in ruled panel grids with flat four-colour dot tints on newsprint; Métal hurlant, and Heavy Metal as a glossy full-colour magazine, told adult science fiction with sex and violence, painterly colour and pages exploded into single visions.
Mix them and make something American Four-Colour Comic Book Métal hurlant Science-Fiction Comics
01
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) Métal hurlant Science-Fiction Comics (Mœbius, Druillet & Les Humanoïdes Associés)
- Type from American Four-Colour Comic Book
- Colour from American Four-Colour Comic Book
- Form from Métal hurlant Science-Fiction Comics
- Composition from Métal hurlant Science-Fiction Comics
- Surface from American Four-Colour Comic Book
-
Métal hurlant Science-Fiction Comics avoids halftone & ben-day dots: this is where the two pull against each other, which is the point of the contrast.
02
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
Signal
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 · Métal hurlant Science-Fiction Comics
The adult science-fiction comics of Métal hurlant, the Paris magazine founded in 1974 by Mœbius, Philippe Druillet, Jean-Pierre Dionnet and Bernard Farkas. Mœbius's fine pen line and luminous colour set tiny figures in vast, silent deserts; Druillet exploded the page into baroque architecture and painterly double spreads. Sometimes wholly wordless, as in Arzach, and often dreamlike and erotic, it was carried abroad by Heavy Metal from 1977 and shaped film design from Alien to Blade Runner.
Archivo; Métal hurlant Science-Fiction Comics used Pen-lettered balloon capitals and Monumental drawn title lettering
03
The colours
The ground and leading colours come from American Four-Colour Comic Book, with a counter-accent from Métal hurlant Science-Fiction Comics. The ink reads on the ground at 4.5:1 or more.
American Four-Colour Comic Book (Golden to Bronze Age) Métal hurlant Science-Fiction Comics (Mœbius, Druillet & Les Humanoïdes Associés)
-
#f3e9cfground · 36% -
#1b1a1aink · 14% -
#d9262caccent · 18% -
#a3243faccent · 14% -
#2160adaccent · 10% -
#e7a487accent · 8%
As CSS
:root {
--ground: #f3e9cf;
--ink: #1b1a1a;
--accent-1: #d9262c;
--accent-2: #a3243f;
--accent-3: #2160ad;
--accent-4: #e7a487;
--font-display: "Bangers", sans-serif;
--font-text: "Archivo", sans-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.
Métal hurlant Science-Fiction Comics (Mœbius, Druillet & Les Humanoïdes Associés): The stories, characters and drawings of Mœbius, Druillet, Bilal and the other contributors remain in copyright with their authors, estates and publishers: build your own worlds, creatures and title lettering in the shared idiom, do not ask an image model to imitate a named artist, and never present a generated picture as a page from the magazine. The magazine's adult register also ran to sexualised depictions of women; keep that choice deliberate and give women the same agency and drawing care as the heroes.
04
The two styles
05
More combinations
With American Four-Colour Comic Book
- Victorian Letterpress & Wood Type Pairs well · Both are cheap letterpress print that shouts to passers-by; borrow the playbill's stacked display capitals, banners and rules for a comic cover's blurbs and price box, while keeping the comic's hand-drawn letters and keyline art.
- Risograph & Indie Print Culture Pairs well · Riso's few flat inks, grain and overprint suit a small-press homage to four-colour comics; keep the black keyline, panel grid and hand lettering, and let riso's misregistration stand in for newsprint's.
- Pop Art Graphics Contrasts · Roy Lichtenstein enlarged the comic book's Ben-Day dots and single panels into ironic gallery icons; choose the comic book itself when the picture must tell a story across a page of panels at printed size, sincerely, with the dots as small colour tints rather than the subject.
- Push Pin Style Contrasts · Push Pin also drew outlined figures in flat colour in New York, but as single illustrations with revived Victorian and Art Nouveau display faces and witty ornament; switch to the comic book for sequential panels, balloon lettering and dot-screen tints on newsprint.
- Googie & Atomic Age Pairs well · Silver Age artists drew in the same postwar key: Arlen Schumer calls Carmine Infantino's Flash as sleek and streamlined as Detroit's tail fins; add Googie's boomerangs, starbursts and atomic motifs to a science-fiction cover or splash page.
- Lianhuanhua Picture-Story Books Contrasts · Both tell stories in inked drawings; lianhuanhua gives each pocket-sized page one framed monochrome picture with a caption beneath, while the American comic book packs a page with ruled panels, balloons, sound effects and flat four-colour tints.
- Ligne Claire (Franco-Belgian Clear Line) Contrasts · Both tell stories in ruled panels with balloon lettering and flat colour; ligne claire closes every form with a clear contour and no hatching, and keeps its colour free of dot screens and misregistration, while the American comic book models with feathered brush blacks and prints dot tints slightly off register on newsprint.
- Korean Webtoon Graphics Contrasts · Webtoon's single vertical phone-scroll strip, open gutters and digital gradients belong to the era that replaced hand separations; return to the newsstand comic for a dense page grid of panels, dot tints on newsprint and no gradients.
With Métal hurlant Science-Fiction Comics
- Ligne Claire (Franco-Belgian Clear Line) Contrasts · Both grew from Franco-Belgian albums, and the magazine also printed clear-line artists such as Yves Chaland and Serge Clerc; ligne claire closes every form with one even, unhatched contour and flat colour in tidy panels, while Métal hurlant hatches and stipples its detail, modulates its colour and breaks the page into tableaux.
- Synthwave / Outrun Contrasts · Both picture the future as a 1970s and 1980s fantasy, but synthwave uses neon gradients, chrome and a perspective grid on black; switch to Métal hurlant for hand-drawn, pale desert light and alien organic forms.
- Story Manga (Postwar Japanese Comics) Contrasts · Hayao Miyazaki said he directed Nausicaä under Mœbius's influence; manga stays black and white with screentone, speed lines and fast cinematic cutting, while Métal hurlant slows down into colour tableaux and, in Arzach, tells whole stories without a word.
- Art Nouveau Pairs well · Druillet drew the huge structures behind Lone Sloane partly from Art Nouveau and Gothic cathedrals; borrow Art Nouveau's whiplash frames and arched borders to turn a science-fiction splash page or cover into a baroque altarpiece.
- Solarpunk Contrasts · Both paint pale, luminous futures full of biomorphic forms, and solarpunk counts Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind among its models, a film Miyazaki said he directed under Mœbius's influence; solarpunk is utopian, verdant and floral, while Métal hurlant sets lone figures in empty alien deserts and colossal architecture, tells adult stories with sex and violence, and breaks comic pages into tableaux.
- Surrealist Graphics Pairs well · Mœbius's silent deserts and metamorphosing creatures share Surrealism's dream logic and long empty perspectives; add its uncanny juxtapositions to a science-fiction landscape, but keep the comic's sequence of drawn panels.
- L'Association and French Alternative Comics Contrasts · Luminous colour, vast science-fiction vistas and painterly spreads against small black-and-white books about dreams, illness and family: the two poles of adult French comics.
- Underground Comix Contrasts · Adult comics of the 1970s in two opposite registers: painted, luminous science-fiction vistas against cheap, crowded black-and-white satire.