The striking colors usually seen in Richard Corben's panel-art stries printed in HM, such as "Neverwhere" and "Arabian Nights," are created through a special adaptation of the normal printing process for color art - that of breaking down a full-color image ino the four basic printer's colors: red, yellow, black, and blue. A photo is made of the original black-and-white art (which is then called continuous-tone art), and that is colored by Richad Corben's process: "It's done over continuous-tone art but it's done with acetate overlays. For each color we have an overlay. Each overlay consists of four levels - the bottom level being the darkest, and the top level the lightest. The overlay is placed over the continuous-tone art, and the darkest part are colored in on the bottom levels to the second and third steps. The highest tone of that color will be put on the top level. It's photogaphed in black and white, overlaying the art so that the tones are photographed with all the tonality of the base art coming through. Even though it is shot in black and white, it is printed in the appropriate color, and this gives the color a look about it which makes it resemble process color art. Of course, wherever the different colors overlap is where they make the primary and secondary colors. I wanted to do tone art and I couldn't afford process films. At the time, they cost about $100 per page, just to make films, and it's much more expensive now. But I wanted this full range of tones and colors, so that's why worked into it. Now I can do a better job with the overlays than I can with full color, in some ways. It becomes more abstract this way. When you can actually see the color you reach a certain point and say, 'Well, that's okay, good enough.' But when you can't see it - when you do each color this way - you're still thinking of the color theme and cary it out to a greater extent than you would if you could see all the colors together. And because the art is in black and white it usally has more detail than if it were done in full color."

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