The artist is okay, but he needs to learn how to portray action rather than merely illustrating a scene.

It's a pity, to my mind, that digital ink or pencil-shot coloring are eliminating inking almost entirely -- some of these guys, Austin and Palmer, most notably, lend a wonderful illustrative quality to pencils; and Janson and Palmer are among the very best where stylized mood and texture are concerned.

But then, "illustrative" is not a fashionable style in American comics these days -- hyperrealism dominates the superhero genre, while Impressionism and surrealism the autobio/drama indies. Manga encompasses a wide range of art and story styles and arguably isn't a genre of comics so much as a national-origin marker or a publishing format, but I'd say that a fine, illustrative line characterizes the foreground figures if you think of the stereotypical "manga look." (Of course, coloring doesn't come into the equation where manga is concerned.)

Oh, another question on coloring -- what's to be said about photrealist painting, both as a substitute for pencilling and a finish for it?

Then again, I've said I would trade in computerized coloring if inking were better across the board. How about a salute to one of the great, unsung inkers in the industry? One Tom Palmer is worth fifty Jim Lees.

At the same time, there are some artists who do better with the primary/secondary heavy palette of, say Tom Smith, who seems to use a modified flat-color aesthetic rather than an effects-heavy one as does D'Armata. Similarly, you need a Laura Martin to work on someone like Hitch or Cassaday, where the sensibility is more that of a fantasy/sci-fi CGI blockbuster movie than an action thriller of the sort that Brubaker writes. But then Martin might rank with Lynn Varley as one of the more flexible colorists working in comics, someone who seems capable of taking on a number of different styles as the project requires. I don't see that with D'Armata here; his choices seem to reflect a particularly cinematic aesthetic.

The best analogy for comics is usually cinema, and I'd say this is no exception. Coloring does for a comic what the color design component of cinematogrpahy does for a film. Whatever you think of a film like American Beauty, its color sense was brilliant. Likewise, whatever you thought of Van Helsing I think it must be admitted that the bizarre use of color leaching in so many of its scenes was a serious detriment to what was written as a colorful set piece. And comics are much the same, I think -- I've seen otherwise well-executed stories damaged by terrible coloring decisions and otherwise badly-executed stories enhanced by wonderful color choices.

You've also got folks like Steranko and Starlin among the the realm of "pencillers who color their own work." I know that the earliest examples I've seen of things like sepia-toned flashback sequences and high-contrast "fifth ink" effects in American comics were in their work. Of course, Starlin and Steranko were also among American comics' second generation of self-trained production wonks/auteurs. (The first generation's big names, I'd argue, would be Harvey Kurtzmann and Bernard Kriegstein, but neither of them had the kinds of printing technology or access that Steranko did.)

I didn't read Disassembled, but I don't see any problem with the coloring in the page you excerpted. D'Armata is simply using stylized (and unrealistic) color as a way to strike mood, which is common in film and fine art.

Ultimately, that's the direction coloring is going in comics. Technological and economic restraints made coloring an afterthought for decades; the most important job for colorists was to get the characters' costumes right. Even though we've had better coloring technology for about 15 years now, it's just now that we're seeing colorists taking a more dynamic role in producing art. I've often been annoyed by coloring which seemed to work at cross purposes with the line art, but that's not the case with D'Armata. Part of the credit should go towards Epting for treating D'Armata as a collaborator rather than another step on the production assembly line.

It's telling that more line artists are wanting control over the coloring process as well. Frazer Irving and Daniel Acuna both color their own work, and I expect more artists will join them. It just doesn't make any sense to treat drawing and coloring as two separate steps. I don't think they were ever treated as such in Europe, where the better paper quality allowed for more detailed coloring at an earlier stage.

In Daredevil, the shadows blend more together with the figures, lending everything a muted feel, because the setting is almost always subdued or depressed. I felt the first couple issues did have an overlay of gloss on them, and made Lark's work look indistinctive compared to Epting's because of the coloring, but he's gotten much better at setting as Daredevil has progressed.

The thing about D'Armata is he has an authorial vision. Anyone's pencils under D'Armata look similar to the other D'Armata work, a rare achievement to a colorist, hence the esteem. He does amazing work at capturing settingm but still focusing on character.

Villarubia as the best colorist? Maybe, but he's much more psychadelic and, dare I say, artistic, to do straight up superhero work like D'Armata's work in New Avengers or Captain America. They hit two different styles, and while Villarubia may be the better colorist, D'Armata is no slouch.

My choice for primo colorist? Probably... Joe Villarrubia. Off the top of my head.