Proper Galactus

Just another reason I prefer to read Silver Age comics in Marvel’s black & white Essential reprints. When I take a look at Fantastic Four #48, for example, I can fill in the colors in my mind’s eye. Therefore, I get to see a proper Galactus, like this:



But when I read the same story reprinted in the slicker Marvel Masterworks line, I am forced to see a Galactus who looks like a reject from some outer-space Christmas pageant.



For all the wonderfully expressive work done by colorist Stan Goldberg and his assistants throughout the 1960s, it is all too clear sometimes that they were coloring as fast as possible. The wildly shifting color schemes Galactus displayed in his first several appearances shows that they didn’t always have the luxury of doing much design work in advance. Hindsight now makes the color in these old comics more of a distraction than an enhancement.