Now I know Marvel didn't do the coloring in-house in the early days; this is why there are no colorist credits and why (presumably) there are some glaring color errors (green Scarlet Witch, I'm looking at you), although, to be fair, Stan made his fair share of naming errors that cannot be attributed to defenseless third parties.

I'm assuming that this is the reason for the retouched Marvel digital subscription back issues? Something to do with making sure the original colorists can't claim copyright or something like that?

I hope there's some legalistic hand-waving going on there, because otherwise I'm mad at Marvel. At first I kinda dug the retouches, how it made things clean and newish feeling. But the more I compare scans of the real thing and the touched-up official versions, the more I hate the touched-up versions.

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As far as I am aware, the backissue is cause they are working from current back. Most of the non-new stuff they put in is in the 90's latley. My guess is they see the 70's as unimportant. I doubt there is a legal issue, since they have most of the 60's in the digital subscription. They add a smattering here or there from the 70's, but it is usually just the really popular stuff, and less so the smaller titles.

As for colorists, it is my understanding that the distributor handled most of the coloring. Marvel didn't have their own colorist until the very late 60's.

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I always hated the ones where the plates were misaligned so all the colors are shifted outside the lines. Annoying.

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do you happen to have any side-by-sides as examples of this?

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Do not bore me with such trite cliches. For I have you in my clutches, and should I choose, I could snuff out your insignificant lives in an instant.

Here's a page from Daredevil #13, just because that's the issue I'm on. On the left is the touched-up version from the Marvel Digital Subscription. On the right is a scanned version of the real comic.

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FWIW, in the above example, I don't see the benefit. I'm against revisionism in general. Han shoots first, Huck Finn sails with Nbomb Jim, etc.

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This was the world that I had created. I know what I have to do to fix it...to make things right. There's no problem that can't be solved.

I agree; the touched-up versions don't have the depth of the originals or the subtlety. They are at best neutral changes but are more often detractions. That's why I was wondering if they were forced to make the change because of some legal constraint.

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I've heard that some of the recolored stuff from the 80s/90s looks amazing.

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Do not bore me with such trite cliches. For I have you in my clutches, and should I choose, I could snuff out your insignificant lives in an instant.

The fire doesn't look as good new as the older version. However, the "WOK" frame looks much better retouched than the older version does. It's too bad they can't combine the two.