The first thing I discovered was areas of the microfilm image I was using as a template were missing parts and what once had been dark colors had become black blobs. When I remaster from a color image and come across what looks to be a big blob of color I could most times look at it greatly enlarged at a pixel to pixel level, find enough related pixels and connect the dots to reveal the image. But parts of the microfilm were just black or gray blobs. To fill in the missing parts I used examples of similar images from the nearly 80 Mose images we have on hand and my experience from remastering the first dozen prints to recreate what was no longer there. In these areas it won’t be a pixel to pixel reconstruction. But when you place the images side by side with a print remastered from the book any differences in the images are indiscernible to the naked eye.

Of course my favorite part of Vaccination is its timeliness when compared to the events of today. I guess forced vaccination for smallpox was just as controversial then as it would be now. In this episode the Mouse Hound and Billy Bear are at the forefront of the action and Mose and the monkey are support characters. The health department and the police show up at Mose’s door and demands to vaccinate everyone. The monkey protests and claims he’s already had the smallpox and it was a really bad case too. Everyone tries to get away but whole crew ends up being vaccinated but not before getting in a couple of licks of their own.

I love the way Outcault drew the pencil necked geek from the health department. In the first couple of panels he drew him as your smiling helpful dappled-cheeked friend from the health department. Then in the next panel he turns him and the cop into the maniacal twins from hell. It’s enough to make a peace loving bear stop trusting his government.

In the letter Mose explains what we call the Zen of Billy Bear. It seems Billy Bear is a strong believer in "mind over matter", where the cop believes "a mind doesn’t matter". I sure love that bear.

The process for remastering from microfilm has a different sequence of events than having a color print to work from. When working from microfilm I have to choose the palette of colors and style of coloring and make it match everything done from color prints. To create a palette of possible colors I sample colors from other images I’ve remastered choosing colors that were used in similar ways, such furniture, trees, walls, etc., then apply them to the image. One of the things I had difficulty with was the style in which Outcault inked the original. The normal digital tools I’d used to remaster the other images just didn’t work or look right. What I think Outcault did was use different type of pens than he used in the earlier works. To remaster and duplicate his inking styles in some areas of the image I had to create a set of tools that acted more like calligraphy pens.