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Best Colorist 2011 - Dave Stewart (B.P.R.D., Hellboy, et al)

Dave Stewart's one of my best friends, so I'll be the first to admit I might be biased in how much I love his coloring. Fortunately I have objective proof that Dave's the best, in the form of the Will Eisner Awards for Outstanding Achievement in the Area of Coloring Excellence, an award he's won every summer for a little while now . . .

So why do we have the annual phenomenon of this young potato farmer from Idaho and Oregon winning the award over and over, year in and year out? What is it that earns him such accolades?

Every year when they're getting ready to hand Dave his award, and the presenter reads off the list of nominees and their credits, Dave's resume for the past year is always so long compared to everyone else. Is it the length of the list of credits that win him the award? Probably some people think so, as that's the quantifiable difference between him and the other nominees.

But here's the notable thing about all those different jobs he does—they're all different. He works with many of the best artists in the business, and he has a different style for each one of them. And then, when he takes a job working on someone new, he puts his nose to the grindstone and comes up with another style to add to his bag of tricks. No one is more flexible in terms of his skills and his approach than Dave. Which is worth a few Eisners.

I've heard people say that lettering is the soundtrack of comics—obviously, lettering is what you would be hearing in this silent medium. But I think color serves the purpose of manipulating the tone and mood of a scene. In film, color is usually pretty representational, albeit art directed, while sound design creates a mood totally beyond the imagined "reality" of the story. Color can work like that in comics, and usually does with Dave. He's said he never wants to color another blue sky. A blue sky doesn't say anything—now blue skin, on the other hand . . .

But the number one thing I love in Dave's coloring is the storytelling. Nothing impresses me more in comics than art that tells a story beautifully, clearly, evocatively. And Dave always brings out the very best in the artist, and on hundreds of occasions I've seen him create something better than what was handed to him. The action is more clear, the location more fleshed out, the characters more distinct, the sequence more rhythmic. Yeah, in Dave's hands, color can change rhythm.

Another freelancer once said, "Coloring Hellboy is the easiest job in the industry, red, black, red, black, grey ..." For those who don't see all these other aspects of what Dave brings to his colors, I am sorry. Scott McCloud called comics "the invisible art." He's not the first to use the phrase, and wherever applied, it always indicates an art form that affects the reader on a level they are unaware of. While Dave's colors are often beautiful, their real effect, and the reason so many artists try to work with him, is so much more sublime.

Scott Allie
Editor