Hello, first time poster here. I'm hoping someone has some ideas about an interesting couple of Kenner Canada coloring books I recently bought. Both have the Chewbacca cover. One of them looks like a typical coloring book with regular paper pages and drawings in black. The other is very different and I can't find any information about it. It has two sets of pages that are stapled into the cover. The pages are more like wax paper than regular paper. And the drawings are all in blue. I attached a few photos:

Books like the same on the outside ...



Books look similar on the outside, but inside the odd copy ... waxy paper and blue line drawings:




You can see the spine of the two bunches of pages stapled into the middle:



Just for comparison, here's a page from the more typical book:



Does anyone have any ideas? I thought the book with the blue drawings could perhaps be a proof of sorts -- there is one page with some corrections mentioned for features missing on the Falcon -- but that's just a guess. Any help would be most appreciated. Thanks!

I can ask in a specialist facebook group if you like?

aussiejames wrote:

I can ask in a specialist facebook group if you like?

That would be fantastic -- thank you!

Scott Bradley "Interesting. The regular colouring book releases were just black line drawings on newspaper-type paper. My guess would be that these are one set of the many master sheets used on the Ditto/Gestetner machines used to print the colouring books. The reason I think it may be a master sheet is that all 3 images shown are complete mirror images (see Jawa/R2-D2 example below) to the images that appear in the coloring book (I assume that the images shown above are NOT flipped using a cellphone?). The master sheet images would have created the reversed images in the books as they were rolled through the drums on the copying machines. Also, the images shown above did not come in the Chewbacca colouring book either; they came in a different book - the Luke/C-3PO book I believe. This looks as if someone (a copy operator ?) simply took the master sheets off of the copier and placed them inside an available cover after the copy run was completed. It would be nice if the owner of these would give a little bit more info on them such as where they were bought, are there any signs of glue, are there any duplicate wax/non-wax sheets etc.. Thanks for sharing these."



I believe you can contact him : http://web.ncf.ca/cn333/starwars.htm

I really appreciate it, aussiejames. I'll reach out to him directly and report back here anything I find out.

[quote="aussiejames"]Scott Bradley "Interesting. The regular colouring book releases were just black line drawings on newspaper-type paper. My guess would be that these are one set of the many master sheets used on the Ditto/Gestetner machines used to print the colouring books. The reason I think it may be a master sheet is that all 3 images shown are complete mirror images (see Jawa/R2-D2 example below) to the images that appear in the coloring book (I assume that the images shown above are NOT flipped using a cellphone?). The master sheet images would have created the reversed images in the books as they were rolled through the drums on the copying machines. Also, the images shown above did not come in the Chewbacca colouring book either; they came in a different book - the Luke/C-3PO book I believe. This looks as if someone (a copy operator ?) simply took the master sheets off of the copier and placed them inside an available cover after the copy run was completed. It would be nice if the owner of these would give a little bit more info on them such as where they were bought, are there any signs of glue, are there any duplicate wax/non-wax sheets etc.. Thanks for sharing these."

Thoughts from a Spartan printer (did Marvel & DC comics) : "Given the makeup of a coloring book, they very well could have proofed it as a blueline interior with the actual color proof stapled onto the blueline interior. The paper looks a little thin, but they could have used a different material than what I'm used to. We certainly had thicker and thinner blueline material, of greatly varying quality, through the years I worked in printing. What he's describing, and what I'm seeing, are very likely bluelines. I would also like to know if the cover on it feels different than the cover on the actual comic. It could be an actual production proof. It could also be a situation where there was no color production proof for the cover, due to a variety of reasons, and the printer took an actual printed cover off the line and stapled it to the blueline proof interior, and that was archived in the files. Every job printed typically has a production sample, as well as the actual approved proofs that were used for quality during production."

Other thoughts/speculation "this was a printers archive or file copy, and these "bluelines" are the production proofs, and printed sample, that were archived by the printer when this job was produced.

There is a possibility that the cover too may be a proof, however my gut tells me that the more likely scenario is that these bluelines are salvage and he used the book as the folder to file/archive it. Smart too as the paper is of course different as my friend suggested, but it is still imaged in a manner that would make it sensitive to light, so keeping it folded away in a book is a great way to save it. "

Thanks very much for this!  My initial thought was a prouduction, but I wonder if the images in the "bluelines" or production proofs would be mirror images to the images printed in the actual books like the ones I have. Would you mind asking your friend if bluelines were printed with mirror images? If not, it would seem like Scott's suggestion of these being master sheets for the Ditto/Gestetner machines used to print these might make some more sense. On the other hand, the fact that one of the pages has notes regarding possible missing pieces of the Falcon points to being a proof.

The cover, by the way, feels the same as the regular Kenner Canada coloring book I have.

Thanks again for your time with this!

aussiejames wrote:

Thoughts from a Spartan printer (did Marvel & DC comics) : "Given the makeup of a coloring book, they very well could have proofed it as a blueline interior with the actual color proof stapled onto the blueline interior. The paper looks a little thin, but they could have used a different material than what I'm used to. We certainly had thicker and thinner blueline material, of greatly varying quality, through the years I worked in printing. What he's describing, and what I'm seeing, are very likely bluelines. I would also like to know if the cover on it feels different than the cover on the actual comic. It could be an actual production proof. It could also be a situation where there was no color production proof for the cover, due to a variety of reasons, and the printer took an actual printed cover off the line and stapled it to the blueline proof interior, and that was archived in the files. Every job printed typically has a production sample, as well as the actual approved proofs that were used for quality during production."

Other thoughts/speculation "this was a printers archive or file copy, and  these "bluelines" are the production proofs, and printed sample, that were archived by the printer when this job was produced.

There is a possibility that the cover too may be a proof, however my gut tells me that the more likely scenario is that these bluelines are salvage and he used the book as the folder to file/archive it. Smart too as the paper is of course different as my friend suggested, but it is still imaged in a manner that would make it sensitive to light, so keeping it folded away in a book is a great way to save it. "