Editing Inker (section)

== History ==
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For a long time, inking was considered a minor part of the comics industry, only marginally above [[letterer|lettering]] in the pecking order. In the early days of comic books, many publishers hired "packagers" to produce entire books. Although some "star" creators' names (such as [[Joe Simon|Simon]] and [[Jack Kirby|Kirby]] or [[Bob Kane]]) usually appeared at the beginning of each story, the publisher generally did not care which artists worked on the book. In the early days, the creator of the feature would get credit for as long as they worked on the feature, but when they were replaced by other artists, no name credit would be given to them. Packagers instituted an [[assembly line]] style method of creating books, using top talents like Kirby to create the look and pace of the story and then handing off the inking, lettering, and coloring to largely anonymous – and low-paid – creators to finish it.

Deadline pressures and a desire for consistency in the look of a feature led to having one artist pencil a feature while one or more other artists inked it. At [[Marvel Comics]], where the pencil artist was responsible for the frame-by-frame breakdown of the story plot, an artist who was skilled in story-telling would be encouraged to do as many books as possible, maximizing the number of books they could do by leaving the inking to others. By contrast, at other companies where the writer did the frame-by-frame breakdown in script form, more artists inked or even lettered their own work. [[Joe Kubert]], [[Jim Aparo]] and Alex Toth would usually pencil, ink and letter, considering the placing of word balloons as an integral part of the page, and artists such as [[Bill Everett]], [[Steve Ditko]], [[Kurt Schaffenberger]], [[Murphy Anderson]], and [[Nick Cardy]] almost always inked their own work (and sometimes the work of other pencilers as well). Most artists, however – even experienced inkers of their own work like [[Lou Fine]], [[Reed Crandall]], [[Will Eisner]], and [[Alex Toth]] – at times hired or allowed other artists to ink their drawings. Some artists could make more money by pencilling more pages and leaving the inking to others; different artists with different working methods might find it more profitable to both pencil and ink, as they could place less information and detail in the pencil drawings if they were inking it themselves and could put that detail in at the inking stage.

Due to the absence of credits on most Golden Age comic books, many inkers of that period are largely forgotten. For those whose names are known, it is difficult to compile résumés. Inkers like [[Chic Stone]], [[George Papp]], and [[Marvin Stein]] embellished thousands of pages during that era, most of which are still unidentified.