Mark Evanier wrote on his blog yesterday,
Jack Adler … passed away over the weekend at the age of 93. Jack Adler was a staffer at DC Comics from 1946 to 1981, working in the production department and eventually becoming vice-president in charge of production. What that means: The folks in the production department are the ones who prep a comic book to go to press, taking care of the technical specifications and doing art corrections and mechanical tasks. Adler did all that. And at DC, it meant supervising and often doing the coloring.
It would not be exaggerating to saythat Jack Adler was the guy in charge of color in DC Comics for 35 years. It would actually be understating his contribution because Jack invented many of the procedures and techniques used to print comic books, especially their covers. During that period, he colored most of DC’s covers and even did the color separations by hand on them for many years. He also designed the color schemes of most of their characters…
DC Editor Julius Schwartz called Adler, “The guy who knew more about how to color and print a comic book than any man alive.”…
More in the link.
In today’s digital world, color and production are much easier and less time-consuming. But for most of comics’ history, until 10-15 years ago, all production was done by hand. Adler’s contribution to comics is immense; DC Comics looked as good as they did for decades because of his work. He will be missed.
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