Print

[Kracalactaka]

Ok so it has been a minute or two since the last post, this time we compare two books.

there have been two recent scans posted of 3-D comics.

3-D Sheena Jungle Queen #1 by Fiction House https://comicbookplus.com/?dlid=72488 scanned by new scanner, MusashiBugs.

&

3-D Comics, Little Eva #2 by St John https://comicbookplus.com/?dlid=72485 scanned by longtime scanner, OtherEric.



Now comparing the subject matter isn't even like comparing apples to oranges, it is more like comparing apples to steak. For me it is more a matter of noticing the differences in 3-D art by the two publishers.

Additionally, in his posting of the Little Eva book over on DCM Eric was looking for feedback on his scan.

Well I have already formed my opinions on all the above, but I'll save that for later.

So dig out those 3-D glasses. If you don't have any, they are easily and cheaply obtainable on places like eBay and Amazon.

I splurged a bit and spent $4 on a pair like this:



They come in handy for when I come across the occasional 3-D scan or book. (I actually tried editing a 3-D book with my 3-D glasses on once, but it quickly gave me a headache.)

without further ado, begin....

[OtherEric]

Thank you for choosing these, Kracalactaka.

Like I said, I really worry about the 3-D books when I post them, because I have had trouble in the past getting the 3-D effect to work for me on the computer screen at all.  My answer is to rather heavily color correct the pages, which lets me see the intended effect.  To my mind it doesn't do the actual work any favors; but at least I can get a readable scan.  But my eyes and my computer aren't anybody else's eyes and computers, so I really have no idea how it works for other people. 

I will make this offer:  If anybody wants to try messing with the raw files on the book to see if they can get a better effect, let me know and I'll post those as well. 

My thanks in advance for any feedback you can give me!

[paw broon]

I'm way behind in my comic reading mainly due to some ill health in the family, but I noticed Krac had put these two up and I was intrigued. First off, 3d never worked well for me, and I think that's because I'm not very good with colours.  The red/green thing is a particular problem.  Not having 3d glasses, I opened the Sheena and got a headache.  The pages look very dull and I have difficulty figuring out what's going on.  Also, there doesn't seem to be colour there, or at least, I'm not perceiving it.
With some trepidation, I opened the Little Eva and I could see there were patches of colour but I haven't a scooby which colours. This comic is much easier to read than the Sheena, and no sore head. It just looks a little out of focus in places. More importantly, I found the Mars story quite charming and amusing.
As approaching 40 percent of males suffer some level of colour blindness, the market for 3d comics must have not been as big as for standard 2d comics.  Mind you, some comics such as a lot of Charlton and a fair few G.A. comics with off register printing sometimes looked 3d, and glasses don't help

[OtherEric]

Thank you, Paw. 

I hadn't even considered how the book might look without glasses, but I'm quite glad to hear it was readable without them.  A very nice side effect!

One thing that might make a big difference is the art style of the books themselves; the Little Eva has a very simple, cartoon-like style compared to the Sheena.

[Kracalactaka]

I think Erics Little Eva scan turned out better, the 3D seems to "pop" more on the St John book.

[bowers]

 Excellent stuff! Both great scans. I have a 1985 Blackthorne reprint of the Sheena book which is a bit clearer but, of course, not pd.
I find it more difficult to read 3d on a screen than on a paper comic, as I have to use a heavy-duty stare for the glasses to do their job! Takes awhile, but at some point the magic just happens and is well worth the effort. My first 3d comic was a very oversized, coverless copy of Batman 155. Picked it up at a thrift store in the 60's and have no idea who printed it.
Around 1960, the master of low-budget horror(?) films, William Castle, used this same two-color principle in his film, "13 Ghosts". Not actually a 3d film, the cardboard viewer supplied had the two colors one atop the other instead of side by side. The top was a red "Ghost Viewer" and the bottom blue was a "Ghost Remover". When prompted, we were all to look through the red lens to see the "invisible" ghosts. Yes, you could pretty much make out the spooks without a viewer, but it was still a fun gimmick!
A big tip of the hat to our two wonderful scanners! Two thumbs up from me for this excellent choice. Cheers, Bowers

[lyons]

Interesting choice.  The 3-D comic craze began in the summer of 1953, and lasted to the fall.  50 titles were published in this short time frame.  St. John Publishing Co. was the first to hit the newsstands with a 3-D Mighty Mouse, investing heavily in the new process.  When the 3-D craze came to an abrupt end, the financial losses incurred by St. John were nearly ruinous for the small company.  Ironically, the last 3-D comic published by them was Mighty Mouse - the comic that began the 3-D craze only months earlier. 
Great entertainment.  Thanks.         

[The Australian Panther]

Like Paw I have trouble with 3D. I was born with a 'lazy eye' which means that the muscle in one is weaker so they don't pull together. That means my brain favors the stronger eye. I do see the world full color and in three dimensions and don't see double. But I'm not much fun at ball games when the ball is relatively small ( ping pong, tennis, cricket) because the ball is never where I aim for it. Volleyball is my game. But artificial 3D I cannot see. Anybody remember those images that didn't look like anything until you squinted at them and they came into focus? I can't see them either     
Am I right in thinking the comics craze for 3D consisted with a similar craze in the movies which also was short lived? Memory now tells me there was a short revival of this in the movies not so long ago.
I can comment on the comic then. I am not familiar with Little Eva, but the art is very good, although the stories were similar. (both dream stories) I can clearly see the images and read the text of Eva, but unfortunately the Sheena, which I would have been more interested in, is very dark and nearly unreadable to my eyes.   
cheers       

[SuperScrounge]

3-D Sheena

Sargasso of Lost Safaris

[SuperScrounge]

Anybody remember those images that didn't look like anything until you squinted at them and they came into focus? I can't see them either

Autostereograms is the technical term. You don't actually squint as focus your eyes a lot closer than the object with the image until the overlapping images form a picture. The Magic Eye company is, surprisingly, still around and producing products for those who can see the images.

Am I right in thinking the comics craze for 3D consisted with a similar craze in the movies which also was short lived? Memory now tells me there was a short revival of this in the movies not so long ago.

Yeah, back in the '80s there was an attempt to make new 3-D movies. IIRC an episode of Moonlighting was supposed to be filmed in a new technique that would give the illusion of 3-D without glasses, but I don't remember if it happened or not.

Years ago I was looking at a book on 3-D movies and was amused to learn that, at the time of printing, the most successful 3-D movie... was x-rated. *snicker* Well, makes a certain amount of sense. 

[OtherEric]

Just wanted to thank everyone for their replies.  It sounds like my goal of getting workable 3d on the computer screen was a success, even if not a total one.

It wouldn't work as a cbz, but I sometimes wonder if you could separate the two images on one page, and then convert them into a flickering gif to get the 3s effect without glasses.  I've seen some pretty effective gifs with a 3d effect like that, but I think at least some of them had more than 2 frames.

[Morgus]

These two comics were a great idea and a lot of fun, so thanks, guys. The  SHEENA was harder to see on my tablet but came through really nice on the Mac. LITTLE EVA with its less complicated style lent itself to easier viewing on both screens.
Now, the weird part; I sat towards the left of the screen and it helped with the effect on the Mac. Don't know why.
The effect varied on the SHEENA issue from page to page, sometimes you just got the clutter out of the way to be able to see the images in flat effect, but sometimes, the art seemed to sink into the page and you would get the effect of, say, a hand in front of a face outstretched, or a curve in the landscape, on page 11, (very nicely done, by the way..) That was the publisher, I know.
LITTLE EVA was an easier read and was more consistent in the 3-D effects.
But both were a lot of fun, and I'm glad they've been saved. They gave me a bit of eye strain, so I had to look at the art one story at a time, then come back later. FORGET about reading what was happening in the SHEENA stories...THIS was about blondes in animal skins with nice legs.

I think I have some details about the 3-D come back, Panther. Back in '82, Elvira did a 3-D movie on tv and hawked 3 D glasses through 7-11 (a variety chain here). It didn't work that well on screen, but it got good ratings. Rhino records released a single after, and then later on put out some 3-D VHS tapes, yes, complete with glasses. (THE MASK AND ROBOT MONSTER were released, ROBOT MONSTER I got at the time and the effect didn't work.) Now, at the same time Ray Zone was re-releasing some vintage stuff in 3-D to more success...he put out a Wally Wood adaptation of DR JEKYLL/MR HYDE, and helped with the  Michael Gilbert's Mr. Monster releases...3-D High Octane Horror and the like, wonderful, fun re-issues. The effects were great on these, by the way.

The Rhino glasses left over from ROBOT MONSTER were what I read the comics with.

Thanks again for the fun. This was way cool

[positronic1]

LITTLE EVA was a St. John comic, and all the St. John comics used the original 3-D anaglyphic process for comics which was first developed by Joe Kubert and Norman Maurer. Joe and Norm had seen some magazines in Europe which used the anaglyphic 3-D process with photographs and were impressed. They understood how the effect worked visually, and were sure that they could apply the principle to comic book artwork. Experiments were made using various planes of depth, and careful measurements were made. Practicality forced them to limit the effect to 3 or 4 planes of depth. Foreground, middleground, and background elements were separated on different pages, then transferred to acetate cels which could be stacked in one arrangement for a blue-green ink plate, and (after carefully adjusting the positions of the different cels relative to each other) a separate copy of the artwork was made for the red-orange ink plate. Printing registration had to be carefully controlled to close tolerances, or the effect would be ruined. The first 3-D comic St. John published, MIGHTY MOUSE, sold out in days and had to be reprinted, eventually selling something like 3 million copies. St. John decided to invest in the process heavily.

If LITTLE EVA looks better than SHEENA JUNGLE QUEEN, it's probably because most other publishers thought they could reverse=engineer the effect, and save money by not having the artwork specially drawn and designed for 3-D. They'd simply take some existing artwork, make multiple copies of it for as many planes of depth as they wanted, then carefully white-out everything but the elements on a single plane of depth. Doing this with say, 3 or 4 copies of the original art, they'd then make transparencies of the whited-out copies. That would allow them to recombine the planes again, shifting the elements on each plane by various increments to left or right for each of the two color printing plates to be made. When the two Sheena stories were reprinted in 1985 for Blackthorn's SHEENA 3-D special, Ray Zone redid the 3-D effects for the two Sheena stories, so that's why they look better. The effect is almost never as good with stories not designed to exploit the 3-D process, however. For a good comparison to the 1953 3-D SHEENA comic, check out Howard Nostrand's artwork on "Jungle Drum", a story especially drawn for the 3-D process in Harvey Comics' ADVENTURES IN 3-D ("Jungle Drum" starts on Page 7).

https://comicbookplus.com/?dlid=21035

[lyons]

Okay.  I admit I miss the Reading Group.  Anyone else miss it, and the camaraderie of membership it provided? 

[SuperScrounge]

Yes. I miss it. I've sent in dozens of suggestions for possible reads back when this was going. I may not have liked every book, but it was always interesting.

[crashryan]

Matter of fact, I miss the Reading Group, too.

[narfstar]

I took out the 3d what do you all think?

[The Australian Panther]

i'm very impressed. Don't know what technique you used but it worked well.  Wouldn't have thought you could do that. Terrific! 

[SuperScrounge]

Interesting. Lot easier to read now. Does seem to be a slight fuzziness, but maybe that's just my eyes.

[narfstar]

No it is not your eyes. Unable to get all the blue lines out without taking away too much detail. I used magic wand on the blue lines to eliminate them. Then I adjusted the levels. Sheena was way too dark so it was not possible.

[narfstar]

Experimenting here is Captain 3D

[narfstar]

page 2
Looks like something that may be a worthwhile project