Strippers

[Gary Leach]

Timo:

>> From Eta Beta:
>> There was originally an interesting pebble, or seed there which
>> attracted our poultry's attention, but an eager editor had "cleaned"
>> it off.
>
> Editors didn't read their stuff? At least so it seems. That thing 
> would've required visual reading to understand what was going on in 
> that picture. Well, maybe those editors were just too busy. Hundreds 
> of acetate films going through their hands with nearing deadline. A 
> spot is a spot, and it should be removed.

These weren't editors that handled the acetates - or rather, 
lithographic films - but strippers. These were craftsmen who set the 
films up in impositions to burn printing plates, and one of their many 
duties was to check the films for blemishes. Such film checks were 
never, ever performed by editors - this was part of the print 
production stream, a wholly separate area from the editorial. By the 
time the editors saw the results of the strippers' work it was in the 
finished printed product, and in the realm of comics - done fast and 
dirt cheap - there was no going back to press for anything other than 
the most catastrophic reasons.

That periods were not used because strippers might mistake them for 
blemishes is, in fact, not the reason for the use of the exclamation 
point. Strippers were not idiots - they knew perfectly well what 
periods were. The reason periods were not used in the early days of 
comics was that the metal printing plates - we're talking dirt cheap 
production here - were the lowest grade possible, and the tiny plinths 
of etched raised metal that produced periods just had a tendency to 
snap off before or during print runs. Exclamation points produced 
stronger plinths, so these were utilized instead, and became common 
practice.

In truth, the exclamation point could have been retired by the early 
1970s, when even the old letterpresses of Spartan Printing were 
converted to using plastic plates. But the exclamation point had simply 
become part of the established "look" of American comic book lettering, 
and it took quite a long time to even begin thinking of utilizing the 
period.

For Gemstone, of course, there is the fact that every Barks story uses 
exclamation points. We certainly won't be going in and changing them to 
periods. So the "exclamation point" look will persist for a while yet.

Gary