Something that came to mind while I was working on this page: back in My Day, I remember that comics would often depict outer space as blue or purple, and would have huge sweeps of star clusters or gas clouds all the time — anything to avoid large areas of actual black. I also remember the action in space being accompanied by sound effects.
Even today, space movies or TV shows will often have sound in their outer space sequences, and I gather the rationale is to make it “more exciting”. Similarly, I’ve heard that comics in the old days ran into printing problems when they tried to reproduce large black areas, so they were forced to depict something different in order for their book to print. People have their reasons for portraying space this way.
Be that as it may — today’s reproduction technology is now capable of handling large black regions, so we can now use black if we choose. And I choose. Because the blackness and silence of outer space, for me, has always been part of its magic.
So when I show outer space within a comic, it’s black. And silent. Always. 🙂
[PS: this is the hundredth page of this series! Yay!]
