Lettering - Here's the accepted take on this: Lettering is the silent soundtrack to a comics story. It's there to provide the reader with the dialogue that propels you between pictures on a page. It shouldn't draw attention to itself in much the way the magic of cinema is lost when you see a boom mike drop into shot. You should not be aware of it...
...ah, that's just crap.
You might as well type the text in yourself, in Verdana. Good lettering IS the soundtrack... and as such should engage the reader (not by loads of fancy fonts on the same page... that's just confusing grandstanding and does take the reader out of the story) but by enhancing the comics reading experience. Good lettering has character, adds character to the story. In the UK a Judge Dredd story just ISN'T a Dredd story without Tom Frame's lettering. Tom's no-nonsense, finely spaced, tall text is as much a part of Mega City One's environment as Dredd's helmet or badge.
When I got to do some X-Mens a dozen or so years back, I knew it was 'real' when I saw that Tom Orz had lettered the work. He is a major part of that classic X-Men experience...
Some artists letter their own work- Dave Gibbons’ work doesn't look complete without his font, even if these days it might be on computer. That is as much a part of Dave's work as his masterful use of shadow or panel design...without it, it's still good work, but with it - that's the real deal. Tim Sale's lettering is also an integral part to his art- someone else might be more traditional, but it'd take away from the overall feel of the work.
The lettering on Asterix and Tintin also contribute to the feel of the work (just to broaden this from an Ameri-centric perspective), particularly the robust, playful and dynamic work on Asterix which exactly mirrors the style of the artwork.
Richard Starkings and all his munchkins at Comicraft have managed to square the circle on 'computer' lettering- they fonts they employ (based on their own handwriting) are all clear but distinctive. They don't look laboured or mechanical- a feat in itself.
Sometimes the letterer is actually the most important part of the comic, creating the mood, establishing the feel of the book. Is this overreaching? Nope.
TODD KLEIN. Who actually defines 'Sandman'? Neil Gaiman created the character, and wrote some marvellous stories. Many artists drew those stories - in a variety of wild and interesting styles. But there are more stories, outside of Neil's award winning run, and the one constant (apart form the guiding hand of Karen Berger, of course) is Todd. All the subsequent Sandman projects have pretty much been lettered by Todd (Someone's now going to find whole mini-series by other hands I know) but in the comics public's eye, it's really a Sandman project if it has Todd's elegant confident handscript across it.
THAT is how important a letterer can be.
Mike Collins has worked on many properties, including Batman, the Transformers, Captain Britain, Dourdevil and Judge Dredd.Alonzo Washington:
A good letterer is someone who can spell, write neatly and has a style that makes a reader feel like the comic book is talking to them. Most of them are underrated but their contribution to the world of comic books are very important. Although, none of them are truly famous. Maybe this website will change that.
Alonzo Washington is the creator of Omega Man and a noted black rights campaignerRoger Langridge:
There are good hand letterers and bad hand letterers, and there are good computer letterers and some downright awful ones. Either method is fair game, but the best letterers are those who remember that good lettering is apart of the artwork; it's not just there to convey information, it's also part of the overall design of a page. There are considerations of balance, flow and legibility to be taken into account. This is the bare minimum required to do a decent, no-frills lettering job -- to put the same thought into the design of the lettering as the artist puts into the design of the artwork.
Then there's a whole other level of personality. The best letterers of all time, the acknowledged masters like Abe Kanegson (The Spirit), Walt Kelly (Pogo), Dave Sim and the like, really do have entirely distinctive styles which nobody else could quite replicate. And even if somebody succeeded, they'd probably be seen as plagiarists, because each of these people has a style that is as personal as their artwork.
The final consideration is probably appropriateness. This is the biggest problem with computer fonts -- there are a lot of terrific lettering fonts out there, but nearly all of them are geared towards superhero comics, and something with a bit more personality, a quirky line or a delicate sensibility usually looks awful with a generic superhero font stamped all over it. Ultimately, if you want to do something outside of the superhero/action-adventure genre, you're better off learning how to letter by hand. If you can draw, you can letter -- the same rules of design, balance and clarity apply -- you just have to practise, practise, practise!
Roger Langridge’s work can be most recently seen in a humorous Hellboy story in Dark Horse’s Hellboy: Weird Tales.Alan Grant:
I have to take exception to the statement "each letterer usually has no distinctive style". Check out Tom Frame's lettering on Judge Dredd, which he's handled for 25 years now. Compare it with, say, Steve Potter's lettering on the old RoboHunter stories. Then compare both with John Aldrich's lettering on Strontium Dog, and Pete Knight's on the Rojaws and Hammerstein stuff.
Two of the above are great letterers, and two aren't. It's 20 years since I worked in the office with these guys, but today I can still tell their lettering apart in an instant.
A good letterer is sensitive primarily to the story being told: his captions and balloons must be fitted to ensure the reader can follow the story easily, but without destroying any of the artwork. Lettering is a highly-skilled craft--try to do even one line of same-sized lettering yourself, and you'll see what I mean. The very best letterers take things a step further, and deserve to be called artists in their own right.
Most comic lettering doesn't look the same. Almost all letterers--at least established ones--have their own distinctive styles. Many letterers have indeed put their distinctive styles onto computer programmes, and use these for their work.
I don't know how one becomes a letterer. I do know that back in the 50s/60s--the heyday of British comics--letterers were among the top earners in the business. Tom Frame used to drive a Rolls Royce.
Alan Grant is maybe most famous for his Batman and Judge Dredd work, and can currently be seen with Judge Anderson and “Half-Life” in the JD Megazine.Bill Rosemann:
Anyone out there hoping to break into the biz as a letterer should study he work of Dave Lanphear. His creations never upstage the work, but instead supports the art, cleanly & clearly communicates the script, and carries forward the story momentum. He even invents alien dialogue and fonts! Top it all off with a ever-present smile and a pro's dedication and you have one of the best letterers working today.
Bill Rosemann is the Vice President of Publishing at CrossGen.Antony Johnston:
“What makes a good letterer? Is it someone who can write neatly in a proportioned space or is there more?”
A multitude of things. Someone with good handwriting (or a good selection of fonts...), who understands how the eye moves across a comics page and panel, who will make the lettering as much a part of the art as the pencils and inks. And someone who will actually read the story they're lettering, understand its rhythm and apply their skills correctly.
“What separates a good letterer from a bad one? I mean each letterer usually has no distinctive style unlike an artist or writer.”
This just isn't true. With hand-letterers, each has a very distinctive style simply because of their handwriting. But even when computers are used, an observant reader can spot the difference between, say, Todd Klein and Richard Starkings. Both excellent letterers who seldom put a foot wrong, yet give them the same comic to letter and you'd end up with two very different (though equally good) versions.
Look at balloon placement, balloon *shape* even, the tendency (or lack of) to break balloon edges with dramatic exclamation dialogue, the calligraphy on caption boxes, how much thought and variety goes into box and balloon outlines... There's a wealth of personalisation that goes on in lettering, but because it's an 'invisible art' - one that has achieved its aim if you essentially don't notice it's there - it often goes unnoticed. Which is kind of the point, of course, but if you're interested in becoming a letterer then you should be looking at these things and tearing them apart to see what works...
As for what separates the good from the bad, well that's mainly down to readability. If you can't follow what's going on in a comic because you can't tell who's saying what, then right off you've got a bad letterer. Whereas if the art is incomprehensible but you can still work out what's going on, chances are you've got a good letterer.
(My favourite example of this is Spawn: Bloodfeud which, despite being penned by Alan Moore, I found utterly incomprehensible and artistically bewildering, but was saved by the always-excellent Tom Orzechowski. His lettering was all I could follow to work out what was actually going on...)
“As most comic lettering seeming to look the same surely letterers could be replaced by a PC, why has this not happened?"
Because there's much, much more to lettering than just spelling the words correctly (as stated above). Computer lettering has actually been around for a while, but - much like when desktop publishing took over from lick-and-stick design in the '80s - it soon became apparent that having a computer did not automatically make you a good letterer...
Antony Johnston is a writer of many comics, the upcoming “Julius” is one, perhaps his finest work to date being the just-released trade “Three Days In Europe”.Fiona Avery:
Most of the letterers I work with are graphic designers. The position of text on the page is as much a part of the artwork as the art itself. But letterers not only have to worry about the artistic concerns of empty space and composition, they need to put balloons where the information isn't covering up important parts of the visual story. So they have an even more difficult time of it than the average graphic designer who's putting down words for an ad.
Add to this the fact that balloons must flow in a way that pulls the eye down the page and you have a lot of stuff to think about when putting balloon placements down. After having done a few balloon placements in my time, I really tip my hat to the letterer who can not only give me what I've asked for, but do it in an artistic way that I couldn't see. I am just a plain ol' writer you know. That's why there are specialists out there.
Fiona Avery plays in the Marvel Universe, with Wildstorm at DC, and is the creator of No Honor.Stephen Holland:
Hmm. I think I see where the question is coming from.
But it's only in corporate comics that there's anything like the uniformity of style you describe. A quick glance outside of that narrow arena - at the Drawn & Quarterly, Expo or Blab anthologies - will show you hundreds of different techniques and hand-written fonts, bubbling with life and at one with the drawings. Two artists I've particularly admired are Dame Darcy (Meatcake), whose dialogue snakes round the curves of her characters and landscape like an airborne melody, and Donna Barr's beautiful, organic flourishes. And come to think of it, there's nothing quite like the volcanic eruption of Roberta Gregory's Bitchy Bitch reaching oestrogen overload, with the accompanying lettering becoming a virtual snarl.
Given last week's reply, however, few of you will be surprised that I put Dave (Cerebus) Sim at the top of the list of most distinctive and inventive letterers of the day. Not only does he manage to convey the mood of what is being said through the size, form, and space inside of any given word balloon, but he's even managed to convey different levels of consciousness (if not fully fledged split personalities) when they battle for prominence in extended sequences of internal dialogue. And we haven't even begun to discuss the lettering itself used, variously, to denote volume, assign character, satirise trademarks and logos, and - in the case of sound effects - mirror the actions which create the noise itself (see particularly the end of Reads, where the cathedral surrounding the throne on which Cerebus and "Cirin" do battle disintegrates around them).
But the truth is, of course, that lettering doesn't have to be so extravagant to help tell the story required. Some might say - with some justification - that such self-indulgence can be counterproductive if it interferes with the narrative flow. It halts you as you rubberneck it.
I don't have much to say on standard lettering (what is there to say?), but having listened to Eddie Campbell extolling the virtues of the lower case for so long, it was quite the surprise to see Marvel suddenly dispense not only with most of their capital letters, but (huge relief) also the excess of exclamation marks. Compare Bendis's dialogue with anything from Marvel's first thirty years! Look at all that shouting! See! It's insane!
I will, however, make one more value judgement: there's little I loathe more, visually, than to see a page of beautifully hand-rendered art grotesquely botched by computerised lettering. Not all computerised lettering does this, but when it does, it jars horribly. Of course it can be used for deliberate effect, like Sienkiewicz uses a typewriter font in "Stray Toasters," but on the whole, please no.
Stephen Holland runs Page 45 in Nottingham with Mark Simpson and Tom Rosin. He also provides a monthly column for Comics International. This is a very old photo.Scott Allie:
“What makes a good letterer?”
A good understanding of comics storytelling and graphic design, and a really consistent hand. Whether you're doing it by hand or on the computer, you have to know how to move the eye around the page correctly, you have to be able to shape the block of words and the balloon nicely ... it doesn't sound hard, but I see a lot of horrible computer lettering where the tools available should make it all but impossible to do it wrong.
“Is it someone who can right neatly in a proportioned space or is there more?”
That's a big part of it, but you really have to be able to draw to some degree, just to do the letters themselves and the balloons, but for sound effects to be good, you really have to have a sense of drawing ... again, whether it's digital or by hand. The computer can give you a lot of cheats to create good sound effects, but if you don't have the sense of an artist, you'll just toss out crappy distorted fonts instead of good sound effects.
“What separates a good letterer from a bad one? I mean each letterer usually has no distinctive style unlike an artist or writer.”
Thanks to computers, this is becoming more true, but a lot of good letterers are distinctive--Todd Klein, Dave Sim, Stan Sakai, Clem Robins, Gaspar. Sound effects also reveal the letterer's style, and that makes a lot of the difference between good and bad. In the age of computers, inventiveness is a big part of what makes a letterer count. People can criticize the factory-level output of Starkings Comicraft, but you look at Danger Girl, and that is some amazingly imaginative lettering. Starkings constantly adapts and uses the machine to do things that would be wrist breaking for the old hand letterer.
“How does one even become a letterer? Do they send a nice handwritten CV?”
These days, you buy a font, or get someone like Blambot to design one for you, and you practice. Actually, as an editor, a letterer is probably the only part of the team which in nine years I've never "discovered". I did convince Michelle Madsen to do her first lettering work, but I already knew what she was capable of as a computer artist, so I think that doesn't count.
“As most comic lettering seeming to look the same surely letterers could be replaced by a PC, why has this not happened?"
Letterers don't get replaced by PCs, they get replaced by people using PCs. Every hand letterer I've worked with in recent years, I've encouraged them to get familiar with computers. Some resisted, but they broke down. I still use hand lettering on some books, but it's just cheaper and quicker to use computer lettering. I bemoan the slow demise of the hand letterer, but there are still a lot of small-press purists learning the whole job and doing it all by hand, god bless 'em.
Scott Allie edits and writes for Dark Horse – a trade of The Devil’s Footprints is just out, and is not only a superb collection but is an excellent story too.Lee Dawson: I have to defer to one of my co-workers, who is passionate about lettering. Michael David Thomas is the Assistant to our President Mike Richardson and has also lettered a few of our Star Wars books. [Take it away, Michael.]
The questions are interesting and bring up salient points about production in the comic book industry that most people do not think about in the course of reading them. This, of course, seems to be in spite of the flip and demeaning tone in which they are asked. So, consider that the last shot across the bow as I answer these in a straightforward manner.
"What makes a good letterer? Is it someone who can write neatly in a proportioned space or is there more?"
"What separates a good letterer from a bad one?"
These two questions dovetail into one another and I have lumped them together for that reason.
For the first question, I have to paraphrase the Supreme Court when they defined pornography in the 70s: “I can't define it for every situation, but I know it when I see it.” There are, however, a couple of across-the-board rules to use as a rule of thumb when looking at what makes a good letterer.
- Despite the purpose of lettering as a tool to convey information in a comic book, lettering should almost be invisible. The sign of a good letterer is one whose works melds with the art and blends in to the point where you don't consciously see it. The easiest way to spot a bad letterer is when you notice flaws that stop the reading of the comic dead in its tracks (text not fitting balloons, covering art when not necessary, unnecessary amount of fonts and point sizes, etc.)
Readability as part of an overall design is followed throughout the issue (or series in some cases). One of the most important aspects of lettering is to make sure that the balloons can be read in a logical and orderly fashion (following left & right and up & down). Though some of these problems happen at the writing and art level, there are many comics that are unreadable because the lettering causes confusion as to what's supposed to be read first.
- Consistency as part of an overall design is followed throughout the issue (or series in some cases). If someone talked in a balloon style that was spooky or rough, then it needs to be done the same way throughout. Same with using a specific font for one character's speech, although I have a mini-rant about the use of this which I will use in another question.
“Each letterer usually has no distinctive style unlike an artist or writer.
As most comic lettering seeming to look the same surely letterers could be replaced by a PC, why has this not happened?"
I lumped two more questions together because of the overlap again.
Before we begin, however, I have to say that you patently wrong when you say that letterers as a group have no distinct style. In order to talk about this, a distinction has to be made about letterers in a pre-computer and post-computer context.
Letterers pre-computer had all sorts of style and distinction. They worked by hand and their art were the credits, the balloons, the words and the sound effects. Bill Oakley (Starman, early X-Men), Todd Klein (Sandman, ABC books) and Tom Orzechowski (X-everything) are some of my favorite low-tech guys who made books fun and readable. When you understand that Orzechowski was paid by the page and not the word, you understood how much work he was doing by hand fitting all that Claremont dialogue and exposition into any given issue. And it looked beautiful.
Here's a great example, if slightly obscure. X-Men #145 and #146. Written, pencilled, inked and colored by the same team. But the letterers were different. Joe Rosen on #145 and Tom Orzechowski on #146. While fundamentally the same, the look of the book and the pages were very different. There was a significant change in their gestält as there was when Janice Chiang lettered #148.
I could name dozens of letterers with distinct styles, just as distinct as the fonts that are used for the lettering process anymore.
Which segues nicely into the second part of this discussion regarding the computer age of lettering. In your assessment that letterers have no distinct style, I would say you're mostly correct. Anymore, the distinction of name with type style has been supplanted with fonts. Marvel has gone completely homogenous with their lettering. DC is adopting some of the same attitude. And most independents are using fonts bought from Comicraft or other vendors for use in their comic books. It's cheaper and quicker. So if the style isn't distinct, it comes down to competency in design and placement when working in Illustrator and/or Photoshop when you're lettering over the artwork. And you can fall back upon the three precepts above to judge lettering in a homogenous context.
Two side notes:
1. There are those who are working in fonts that used to be hand letterers or are doing a mix of both these days. Chris Eliopolous (Savage Dragon, Marvel books), Todd Klein (Sandman, 1602), Tom Orzechowski (X-Treme X-Men) and Clem Robins (100 Bullets, The Losers) are some of the last hold-outs who have finally caved in and made fonts based on their type designs in order to secure jobs for the future. Orzechowski has made no bones about the fact that he detests the computer lettering (its "cold" feeling offends him), but he ended up having to do it out of purely practical reasons. I would argue that these fellas - while even having to use fonts for their craft - have maintained their styles because they're designed off their style and haven't sold them to the retail market.
2. Most letterers getting into the biz, for some reason or another, believe that they should use as many different fonts as possible in order to tell the story set before them. Walk before you run. Just because you have 200 fonts doesn't mean you have to use them. Use the older books as a guidebook for this. Go look at X-Men #137 and count how many type styles were used in order to differentiate Dark Phoenix and Wolverine and the Imperial Guard, etc., etc. Most of that was accomplished by different balloons. But essentially, it was just Orzechowski's style that pulled it through, not using Spookytooth, Wildwords and Clobberin' Time for three different characters.
How does one even become a letterer? Do they send a nice handwritten CV?
Everybody's story is different for this one. Pre-computer, some of these guys wound up doing it because it was the only thing they could do and they were good at it. Some of them were graphic designers who specialized in logos and lettering was a logical extension. You'll have to do a search on Google for these stories. For some more insight, you can also read about lettering in an article I did in June 2000: http://www.comicbookresources.com/news/newsitem.cgi?id=229.
Post-computer, some of it is by necessity. Robert Kirkman had a font developed for him by Blambot and he uses it and others for all of his books. And it works well. Some really never developed a knack for drawing. After itching to break in, they found that they playing with type and design and are process geeks who love the production aspects of the business, like myself.
No easy pat answer for it. Although, I keep hearing John Bender-to-Carl-the-Janitor inflections in your questions and am inclined to think you don't really care about the answer anyway.
Lee Dawson is the publicity guru for Dark Horse comics.Alan Donald:
To be a good letterer you need to be called Tom Frame or Todd Klein. Simple as that. Klein's work on The Sandman was not simply distinctive but revolutionary and showed a trend that should have been followed. The letterer’s art would have been forced to the fore and one could have seen out beautiful synergistic art form become further enriched by this new trend. Mind you it is probably best nobody did follow suit, look what happened when everyone tried to do dark heroes after The Watchmen and DKR, or shiny covers etc.
Who are they? What do they do? They help with the story telling. If they do their job right then nobody notices them. It is that simple. The letterer needs to convey the speech, captions and thoughts in as unobtrusive way as possible. Their work should not detract from the art, slow down the story or in any way impede the tale at all. It is fair to say you will probably never notice a good letterer but you will always notice a bad one.
Originality is good (such as Klein, or even the 'journal' style seen in Batman:Year One and then later Legends of the Dark Knight), so is simplicity. Personally I like an organic feel to the text and I can't really stand obvious computer generated text as it just jumps off the page.
Beyond the highly original work of Klein I do actually have a favourite letterer and I doubt I am alone in my choice; Tom Frame. For decades Mr Frame has delivered the goods for 2000AD and I feel he deserves a hell of a lot of recognition for it. I don't know why or how but you can always tell a Tom Frame panel, it reads well, it makes good use of space both to fill the bubble and avoid intruding too much. He is in short an unrecognised genius of the comic book world. I wish I could put my finger on what it is about his work that makes me feel this way towards it but I can't as is perhaps fitting.
Lettering is an art form that does tread water. I really believe more should have been done in light of The Sandman. Batman should always have a black speech bubble with bold or scratchy text etc, much like the other piece of original lettering, Arkham Asylum by Gaspar Saladino. Saladino and Klein...man. That is lettering as art.
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