Nelson Yomtov

Nelson Yomtov (born February 29, 1952) was the colourist of every single issue of the Marvel US Transformers comic book. He is usually credited as Nel Yomtov.

Outside of Transformers, Yomtov was also a longtime editor at Marvel Comics before moving to DC for a short while. He moved on from comics to Rosen Publishing, Parachute Press, consulting for Major League Baseball, and in 2008 he was named executive editor at Hammond World Atlas. Yomtov is also a writer, having written several books about baseball and conspiracy-based concepts like UFOs.

Contributions to Transformers

Yomtov coloured all 80 issues of the original Marvel US comics series, and all the miniseries; Universe, Headmasters, The Movie, and G.I. Joe. In fact, until its revival in Generation 2, Nel Yomtov was the only colorist at all on any Marvel US Transformers comics, including the two issues reprinted from Marvel UK. He was also the only creative talent to stay with the book for its entire original run—a lengthy run of 7 years. This makes Nel Yomtov one of the most consistent creative forces in Transformers comics history.

Marvel Megatron's helmet wasn't blue just 'cuz Yomtov felt like it.

Because he was the only colorist ever credited on Transformers, Yomtov has also been given credit for many creative color choices that made the Marvel comics stand out from its cartoon counterpart. Many of these coloring choices, however, are artifacts of production material that would be revised before use in the cartoon. For example, Yomtov colored Megatron's helmet blue or black throughout the comic's run because the first character models for Megatron did so, but the cartoon would change the head's color to silver like the rest of his body. These circumstances similarly affected Yomtov's color schemes for Soundwave and Starscream.

He even made decisions which separated the US comics from their UK counterparts. For example, his Emirate Xaaron was solid yellow, instead of his more varied UK color scheme.

Though Yomtov can be given credit for the colors of all of the internal art, this is not true of the covers, some of which were done in a painterly style by the original artist. Even for those covers which weren't painted, credits for cover art at the time were fairly slapdash, so it is difficult to discern.

Criticism of Yomtov's work

Transformers like to bleach their technology.

Despite the volume of Nel Yomtov's work on Transformers, its quality has often been called into question. Yomtov made many coloring errors—coloring characters the wrong way, making up entirely new color schemes for guys he didn't know, coloring one character as another character and even coloring characters based on their Pretender shells or secondary components.

His colors have often been criticised for laziness, due to Yomtov's fondness for coloring group scenes or backgrounds in block colors. His extensive use of white in later Cybertron scenes, and his love of monochrome (all green! all pink!) flashbacks have also come under criticism. Yomtov's supporters note that many of these techniques are perfectly valid artistic techniques, used to make scenes easier to read or more interesting, or to create higher contrast in an image.

Yomtov's art was especially criticised by children reading the UK comic, who didn't know why the colouring was suddenly less rich and was 'dotty' sometimes. As the comic originally wouldn't admit to running reprints, it couldn't say: "Look kids, in America they have to use a more limited colouring method designed for cheaper paper stock." When questioned in #61, the team simply lied that their artists were experimenting with different techniques.^[1] British fans would, however, slowly work out that the American strips were from somewhere else based on the colouring.

Yomtov has been quoted as saying that it was quite a challenge to keep up with all the new characters that were constantly being introduced at Hasbro's insistence. ^{[citation needed]}

Notes

• The August 1991 "Bullpen Bulletins" depicts Yomtov attempting to prove that, although he "quit [his] jazz group, The Bluesicians" a few months earlier, he's "still the best jazz harmonica player in New York".

References

External links

• Books by Nel Yomtov