After bouncing around at a few local colleges in upstate New York, Randy Gentile made the decision to move to New York City where he attended Pratt Institute. He landed an internship in the famous Marvel Bullpen and was able to turn that into a full-time gig in the now defunct Marvel in-house lettering department. He later transitioned to Chris Eliopoulos’ Virtual Calligraphy lettering studio.
With VC he lettered damn near every Marvel book at one time or another including Amazing Spider-Man, Fantastic Four, Incredible Hulk, Iron Man, Uncanny X-Men, Punisher, and Marville… wait, Marville?
Anyway, after 7 years of lettering Randy decided to make a go of it on his own without the aid of Chris “Obi-Wan” Eliopoulos. Since then he’s begun lettering for DC Comics where his work can be seen in funny books like Batman, Detective Comics, Gotham Underground, Teen Titans and Booster Gold.
Outside of his lettering work he self-publishes an autobiographical comic called NYComix and an uber-fast paced superhero strip called Randall. Both comics have been featured on Comic Geek Speak and Fanboy Radio.
When he’s not wallowing in lettering self-pity he spends his time in Brooklyn along with his lovely wife, Ereisa and their three cats Finnian, Don Fanucci and Olive.
The Kirkman Manifesto
All the buzz in comicdom recently has been about Robert Kirkman's viral video urging creators to leave mainstream comics and to focus their endeavors in the creator owned scene.
A little background will help those who aren't up to date on this stuff. Kirkman was recently made partner with Image Comics and has left Marvel Comics completely. He now only writes his creator owned books: The Walking Dead, Invincible and The Astounding Wolf-Man. Previously with Marvel he had worked on books like Captain America, (lettered by yours truly) which was an Avengers Disassembled Tie-In, Ultimate X-Men and others. His most successful book was the Marvel Zombies mini-series also lettered by yours truly. Man, Kirkman owes me a beer!
Anyway, Kirkman is one of those guys who has been hit with lightening twice by creating two of the most successful creator owned titles in recent history... I was late to the boat on Walking Dead but having just read the first trade it's flat out amazing work and I'm sure most folks kind enough to read Font You! don't need me telling them that. He also writes Invincible... the best superhero book on the stands that doesn't involve characters owned by multimillion-dollar corporations.
To have one hugely successful creator owned book is next to impossible... when it happens twice you're dealing with a creator who is one part lucky, one part insanely talented.
For some reason Kirkman's Marvel work just never caught on like his Image stuff has. Yeah Marvel Zombies was huge but you'd think an indie darling like Kirkman would be able to parlay his Image success into a solid run on Spider-Man or the Hulk or something, you know? But now with the release of this video you can see why that hasn't happened... he's an artist who wants to do his own thing. That's not to say that he doesn't have love for the Spider-Man's of the world... he said it himself that he's Marvel's target audience. But he aspires to more.
"Do your own thing"... it's a phrase that you might notice comes up quite a bit in my columns. It's the artists who Do Their Own Thing that are remembered and that inspire up-and-coming creators to reach new heights with their own creations.
Why should a young creator only dream of standing on the shoulders of creators who have come before them? That's not to say that you shouldn't thank your stars and garters for everything Stan Lee and Bob Kane and Frank Miller have done for you and it's also not to say that writing or drawing Batman isn't a viable aspiration. But speaking from an artist's perspective you have to want more. Those giant's shoulders should be a step, not the pinnacle.
Before Star Wars George Lucas tried to obtain the rights to Flash Gordon, thankfully he was unsuccessful and turned that into creating a space fantasy of his own. Imagine if Mike Mignola stopped pushing himself after drawing Batman... or if Frank Miller stopped after Daredevil and Batman.
These should be frightening thoughts for any comic fan.
Kirkman is right. Marvel and DC shouldn't be the sum of your dreams. It should be a stop along the path leading you to your own place of artistic fulfillment.
Stan Lee didn't create Spider-Man as the end-all-be-all of comics. He had an idea for a comic and executed it. How many creators now aren't doing that because they're hung up on some corporate character that has been around for 40 years? Sure, not every creation is going to wind up being the next Sin City... but it just might be and I'd love to see more people try.
Kirkman's video is aimed towards the elite group of creators who are at the top of the industry right now.
In a quick interview I conducted with Hawaiian Dick creator B Clay Moore, he gave a bit of insight as to the benefits of publishing creator owned work. "There are big names who could sell through Image less than half of what they sell through Marvel or DC and make a lot more money."
When Moore told me that I couldn't help but think-- why would you pump all of your creative juices into someone else's character when you can have free reign with your own comic and make MORE money?
Look at Bendis' Powers. A comic that started as an Image book and, in my opinion, Bendis' best work by far. Now, it's a Marvel book that is clearly on the back burner... hitting the stands every few months disappointing fans like myself who miss the crime fiction writing Bendis of old.
Kirkman wants these guys to take their creator owned books and make them their top priority. Maybe it's an impossible dream he's pushing for, but it doesn't sound like it should be.
Look at an artist like Dean Haspiel. 
Haspiel toes the line between independent comic star on books like Harvey Pekar's American Splendor... web comic pioneer with the Ac-Ti-Vate online comix collective where his strip Fear, My Dear headlines the best and most innovative web comic site on the web... to strips like Street Code on DC's Zuda Comics web site.
"My personal career solution is to keep my feet planted firmly in both alternative and mainstream ponds. Bring certain projects to the Big Two and get paid to make comix while manifesting creator-owned fare on my own time/dime until those efforts get printed into sexy collections [oops, I mean, graphic novels]."
--Dean Haspiel
It's an interesting conundrum Kirkman has drummed up. Where do we go from here? What's the next step to bring comics into forefront of people's consciousness?
The Dark Knight is now the #2 grossing film of all time... yet a fraction of those people who clearly love a superhero fix walk into their local comic shop and pick up the Caped Crusader in all his four color glory.
Something needs to change... and I'm happy guys like Kirkman are speaking up and doing something about it.
Thanks for reading.
Font You!
--Randy
*Special thanks to B Clay Moore for the quote. Check out his work in Hawaiian Dick and '76 from Image and Casey Blue from Wildstorm. Another thanks goes out to my Brooklyn dawg Dean Hapiel. Check out his upcoming work in The Alcoholic [with writer Jonathan Ames] from Vertigo, and Mo & Jo: Fighting Forever Together (with writer Jay Lynch) from RAW Jr., "Next Door Neighbor", a bi-weekly webcomix anthology for Smith Magazine (which he edits), and "Street Code" [for Zuda] and "Billy Dogma" in FEAR, MY DEAR [for ACT-I-VATE].
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