When did Marvel stop coloring Black people gray?

If you’re looking for the short answer, it’s 1965 and/or 1967. The answer I offer in The Color of Paper is less precise: “Until the late 1960s, the skin of Black characters was typically rendered with equal parts yellow, magenta, and cyan, which on off-white paper produces gray-brown or taupe, including, for example, Gabe Jones in Marvel’s Sgt. Fury and his Howling Commandos #1 (May 1963).” Since CMYK, the standard coloring system for comic book until roughly the mid-1990s, used codes to designate precise percentage-sized dot combinations, I added that “before 1970 Marvel colorists assigned Black characters a gray-brown or taupe skin color coded Y2R2B2 (25% yellow, 25% magenta, and 25% cyan on off-white paper),” and after 1970 they used “Marvel’s new standard for Black skin: YR3B2 (100% yellow, 50% magenta, and 25% cyan).” That new combination, though more difficult to produce consistently, created a more naturalistic skin color. I assume that was the reason for the change. It was not…