The goal is to make a high resolution bitmap of your black line art. This requires a digital scanner. I use the Microtek ScanMaker connected to a laptop PC with a Windows-based operating system. IBM and Mac both support Photoshop, my coloring software, so the following instructions apply to both. If you prefer aesthetic discussions, skip ahead to the color and design section .
Some comics vary, so measure past issues to be sure.
The little interface menu allows me to customize my scan. I select 1200 dpi resolution so all the type and fine lines read properly. This creates a massive file, but I save it in TIFF format with LZW compression, a Photoshop check-box that reduces the file size. Finally, I use my scanner's advanced options menu to set the image tolerance around 140, which eliminates the dropout of fine lines but doesn't close the spaces in the hatch marks. Basically, I eyeball the tolerance settings till the art looks clean and strong.