WAR OF THE WORLDS new German EDITION at Carlsen Comics

For the new German edition of my graphic novel based on H.G. Wells THE WAR OF THE WORLDS, publisher Carlsen and I agreed on a translation of the colored French edition from summer 2020, which was published by Steinkis / Éditions Jungle.

For this French edition, the original version, which Egmont published in sepia tones in 2017, was carefully colored in a slightly desaturated four-color scheme by Xavi M. Montell in consultation with me. Xavi did a great job! His color key, matching very good the epoch in which the story takes place, gives the graphic novel a wonderfuly different expressiveness than the sepia edition. For the four-color version at Carlsen based on this, I took the opportunity to bring back something of my inking in two or three cases, which had been covered a bit by a coloring effect (in the time that we had to give the book an appropriately colored garment for France, Xavi and I hadn’t been able to pay any more attention to it than we were already doing). But I will not end this caption without saying and emphasizing how much I stand (and stood) completely behind Xavi’s work and how grateful I am for waht he did for the book – he really did a great service with the mammoth task of coloring.

But you still take advantage of opportunities when they show up, don’t you? And here it did and felt like a good idea to readjust something again. In the scene above, where the Martians attack London, on the page with Tower Bridge, you can see how I brought some of my old outlines back into the “foreground”, which ‘stepped’ a little more into the background in the French edition (1st picture). I did not do this because I am vain and I think my outlines are so absolutely great – I did it because in a medium like comics and the drawing style that I use as a draftsman within it, the outlines as meaningful, in my eyes, to the plot and its understanding :).

I am very happy with the result and the resulting printing of the new German color edition at Carlsen. It turned out really very beautiful.