Nelson Yomtov

Nelson Yomtov (born February 29, 19??) was the colourist of every single issue of the Generation 1 Marvel US Transformers comic book. He is usually credited as Nel Yomtov.

Outside of Transformers, Yomtov was also an editor, and writer; writing 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, Movie, vs. G.I. Joe. In fact, until its revival in Generation 2, Nel Yomtov was the only colourist 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 5 years. This makes Nel Yomtov one of the most consistent creative forces in Transformers comics history.

Because he was the only colourist ever creditted on Transformers Yomtov has also been given credit for many creative colour choices that made the Marvel comics stand out from its cartoon counterpart. Yomtov can be creditted with making Soundwave purple, giving Megatron a black helmet, and deciding that Hot Rod should be magenta.

He even made decisions which seperated the US comics from their UK counterparts. For example he coloured Emirate Xaaron solid yellow, instead of his more detailed UK colour scheme.

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Criticism of Yomtov's Work

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

His colours have often been criticised for laziness, due to Yomtov's fondness for colouring group scenes or backgrounds in block colours. His extensive use of white in later Cybertron scenes, and his love of mono-chrome (all green! all pink!) flashbacks have also come under criticism. While 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, the sheer volume of their use has caused many to question Yomtov's... work ethic.

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.

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Cover Credits

It should be noted that while Yomtov is creditted for colouring all 80 issues of the original Transformers comics, he probably did not colour the covers. The artists and colourists for comic covers are seldom creditted, and are often not the interior artists. Certainly, at the time at Marvel comic covers were not usually coloured by the interior colourist, partly because such different techniques were used for the higher quality colouring seen on the covers.

So what are we saying? That he did colour the covers? That he didn't? Well, basically what we're saying is we don't know. The techniques and style used to colour Transformers covers don't generally match Yomtov's interior colouring. However, there's no real evidence he didn't colour the covers. The implication is, basically, that it is difficult to criticise Yomtov's work based on these covers, because we simply don't know if he did them or not.