[Drusilla lives!]

I must confess that I've always been intrigued as to what those old 3-D comics were like, but since I've never really seen an old GA 3-D comic, I really can't judge as to how effective they were at creating the illusion of depth.  I have seen a few modern 3-D comics and they are indeed rather impressive... so much so that they motivated me to carry out a few experiments of my own on some of my fan art. 



There really wasn't much to find on the internet at the time regarding the actual process that went into making a 3-D comic... at least as it was probably done in the early days of the medium... so my earliest attempts were based on observation (reverse engineering the modern comics I had on hand).  But these were mostly unsatisfactory to me, (as I now know) probably due mostly to the complexity of color.  Ultimately though, I did find a somewhat obscure book on the subject of stereoscopic drawing... which is the actual terminology for the subject/process.



My experience as someone who has actually tried this is that even with modern computers and drawing programs with "layers" it can be a hassle... with none of these, nearly impossible.  So no wonder the early GA attempts fizzled.  And I'm just talking about working with pen and ink line art here (art without color). 

I suspect that much like with the use of "Poser" and comic book art in general today, most modern 3-D comics are probably done with specific computer software that renders the work child's play.   

[RickDeckard525]

Well I always just imagined they printed the pages twice in different colors on the same page, but I don't know. We have some 3D GA here and I am hoping that narfstar or someone else will make a link for me because I don't know how. Or you could just find them yourself. If you need 3D glasses it took me about 3 tries to find the right colors on the internet, but for 3D Kirby's art in Captain 3D it is worth it.

[jimmm kelly]

To be able to produce multiple fields, it would have to be more than just printing the lines off-register in two different colours.

When I get the THREE STOOGES comic in the mail, if I can find a pair of 3-D glasses that works, I'll have a look to see how complex they made it.

I remember as a kid staring for hours through my Viewmaster and I was amazed how they could create mulitple fields of depth. But this was around when I first started to need glasses, and I had a bit of a lazy eye, so it was hard to get it right for both my eyes to see the three dimensions.

Does anyone else remember those things they used to publish in the Sunday funnies where you had to stare at someting so you almost went cross-eyed and it was supposed to be three dimensional? I never could make that work.

I think--if the comic publishers had figured out a way to do it so the comic was still in colour when you looked through the glasses--then it would have been more than a fad and it would have become a regular thing.

[narfstar]

Several books were published with the "magic eye" feature. I could get most to work but it was sometimes difficult. Not sure what you are wanting links to. If you just cut and paste a URL in a post it will link it.

[Drusilla lives!]

I didn't even know we had 3-D comics available to download!

It seems there have been some added since the days back when I was interested in this stuff... not that it would have mattered, since I wouldn't have been able to download them anyway.   

But nevertheless, if you get a hold of a pair of those viewers check out some of Kubert's TOR work really outstanding stuff (I'm speaking from experience)... definitely worth a look.

So they were indeed mono chromatic... with the complexity of color and the poor print quality of the day I can understand.

[Drusilla lives!]

To be able to produce multiple fields, it would have to be more than just printing the lines off-register in two different colours.

When I get the THREE STOOGES comic in the mail, if I can find a pair of 3-D glasses that works, I'll have a look to see how complex they made it.

I remember as a kid staring for hours through my Viewmaster and I was amazed how they could create mulitple fields of depth. But this was around when I first started to need glasses, and I had a bit of a lazy eye, so it was hard to get it right for both my eyes to see the three dimensions.

Does anyone else remember those things they used to publish in the Sunday funnies where you had to stare at someting so you almost went cross-eyed and it was supposed to be three dimensional? I never could make that work.

I think--if the comic publishers had figured out a way to do it so the comic was still in colour when you looked through the glasses--then it would have been more than a fad and it would have become a regular thing.

I think the staring thing you're referring to could be either "free viewing" or alternatively "short focus viewing."  Both techniques involve the use of a stereo pair of images which can be viewed without any apparatus such as 3-D glasses... it can be difficult for some people to fuse the images together, but there are steps that one can take to help the process along.

As for color... now that I think about it... it might have just been that the printing technology at the time just wasn't up to the challenge.  Look at those Kubert pages, (as with regular cimic books) the ink just runs all over... and that's just two colors.  More wouldn't have looked any better... and then all the colors would need to be "shifted" anyway to take into account the colored glasses... what a mess it might be.  Probably would make the comic unreadable to the naked eye.

[jimmm kelly]

I just got my copy of the THREE STOOGES 3-D comic in the mail. I can see what Len Maurer meant about wanting to print it on acid-free paper--the copy I got has really browned, a lot more than other comics I have from the same time period. I'll have to search around to see if I can find some 3-D glasses that will work, but I think the effect won't be so strong because of the browinng and the fading of the colours. I don't know if ordering a higher grade copy would have been worth it.

It's really the most browned comic I've ever seen--except for a few Golden Age Canadian comics held in the UBC Special Collections library.

I'll try scanning a couple of pages for my blog--but I don't know how much I can clean up the image. I'd probably be better off sending my copy to someone like Prof H who is an old hand at restoring scans of comic pages.

By the way, I see that CB+ doesn't have any copies of St. John's MIGHTY MOUSE--unless I'm looking in the wrong place, which has happened before--so they don't have the 3-D issue of that comic. I gather that this is not in the public domain.

[RickDeckard525]

Tor is great, but I don't like the 3D issues.I think I would rather have color than 3D in that case. I don't think that the 3D is implemented very well, once again--can't go wrong with Kirby. Well actually you already know about that because it was on the cover of alter ego. Well I thought I was telling you something special, but I guess not. There Roy Thomas goes again--stealing my thunder!