Style combination · Contrasts
American Four-Colour Comic Book × Mexican Historieta
Paquín and Pepín began with American syndicated strips and Novaro brought in the American comic-book format in 1949, but the Mexican historieta keeps one sepia or green ink and tonal wash where the American book has four flat colours over Ben-Day dots, and melodrama where it has superheroes.
Mix them and make something American Four-Colour Comic Book Mexican Historieta
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) Mexican Historieta (Pepines to Sensacionales)
- Type from American Four-Colour Comic Book
- Colour from Mexican Historieta
- Form from Mexican Historieta
- Composition from American Four-Colour Comic Book
- Surface from American Four-Colour Comic Book
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
Together
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 · Mexican Historieta
The mass newsstand comics of Mexico, read by adults as much as children, whose format shrank from the large pepines of the 1930s to pocket digests. It has two phases: from the 1930s to the 1970s, melodrama, romance and adventure serials such as Memín Pinguín, Lágrimas, Risas y Amor and Kalimán, drawn in tonal wash and printed in one sepia, brown or green ink on cheap paper; from the late 1970s, small full-colour pocket westerns and erotic 'Sensacionales' of caricatured barrio types. Both sold every issue with hand-lettered balloons and a lurid painted colour cover.
Comic Neue; Mexican Historieta used Hand-lettered balloon and caption text written by a letterer on each page and Bulging, outlined masthead capitals with exclamation marks, drawn as part of the cover
03
The colours
The ground and leading colours come from Mexican Historieta, 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) Mexican Historieta (Pepines to Sensacionales)
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#ebdfc3ground · 36% -
#5b3a24ink · 14% -
#f2c12eaccent · 18% -
#d9262caccent · 14% -
#2160adaccent · 10% -
#2a9fd2accent · 8%
As CSS
:root {
--ground: #ebdfc3;
--ink: #5b3a24;
--accent-1: #f2c12e;
--accent-2: #d9262c;
--accent-3: #2160ad;
--accent-4: #2a9fd2;
--font-display: "Bangers", sans-serif;
--font-text: "Comic Neue", cursive;
}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.
Mexican Historieta (Pepines to Sensacionales): Memín Pinguín is drawn in the 'darky' iconography of blackface, and his mother as a 'mammy' caricature; his 2005 Mexican stamps were criticised by the White House press secretary ('racial stereotypes are offensive no matter what their origin'), Jesse Jackson and the Hispanic civil-rights groups LULAC and NCLR, so do not copy his features or use racial caricature of any kind, and give every character the same anatomy and drawing care. Kalimán is an Orientalist figure, a turbaned 'prince of India' and mystic: do not take him as a model for exoticised 'Oriental' types. The Sensacionales and the Libro Vaquero covers sell women's bodies to male readers and are often called machista: draw adults with dignity and consent and leave out the stock 'easy woman'. Memín, Kalimán, La Familia Burrón, Lágrimas, Risas y Amor and El Libro Vaquero are still owned by their publishers and heirs: draw your own characters and mastheads, never ask an image model for these characters or a named artist's hand, and never present a generated page or cover as a vintage historieta.
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 Mexican Historieta
- Escuela Bruguera (Spanish Humour Comics) Contrasts · Two Spanish-language humour lines of the same decades: Bruguera's tebeos are flat-coloured slapstick for children, while the Sensacionales caricature adult barrio and market types in crowded, fully painted scenes with sex and double meanings.
- Mexican Calendar Chromo (Cromos calendáricos) Pairs well · Both are mid-century Mexican mass pictures painted for the street and the home; borrow the chromo's glowing painted pin-up and romantic scene for a historieta cover, and keep the outlined masthead and the boxed cover line.
- Argentine Adventure Historieta (Oesterheld–Breccia) Contrasts · Both are Latin American newsstand comics of the mid-century with colour kept for the cover; the Argentine adventure historieta builds its pages from solid black brush ink and side light around an auteur's hand, while the Mexican historieta models its figures in tonal wash, prints them in one brown or green ink and tells anonymous, industrial melodrama.
- Fotoromanzo (Italian Photo-Romance) Contrasts · Both sold sentimental melodrama in sequential panels to a mass, largely female and working-class readership; the fotoromanzo photographs actors, while the historieta draws its lovers in wash, and José G. Cruz's photomontage melodramas and the first, photonovel issues of Lágrimas, Risas y Amor sit between the two.
- Filipino Komiks Contrasts · The nearest cousin: another mass anthology of romantic serials with painted covers. Komiks model their figures in hatched and feathered black brush line; choose the Mexican historieta for tonal wash in sepia ink and for the pocket digest with its crowded painted cover.