Comic book fans: how often do you notice the lettering?

Cafe Society
1

Now, when you crack open a comic book, you look at the story, the art, the coloring, and when it’s good, you compliment it, but when it’s bad you pan it.

And this is as it should be.

But, do you ever notice the lettering? By the ancient letterer’s code, the only two times someone should notice the lettering is a) when it sucks and b) when another letterer reads the book. By definition, of course, good lettering will be unnoticable, letting the story and the art do their work.

When you read a comic, do you think, “fucking Comiccraft, they do decent work, but ever since they started using computers (OK, they weren’t the first, but still…) everyone else does nothing but footballs! This is even worse than when the first guy got his Ames (?) Ellipse Template and started lettering to fit that. What ever happened to the good old days when Artie Simek was able to fit everything in panel, freehand the balloons and still make it look good? When it looked like Sam Rosen used a felt-tip marker on a dozen books a month but it fit the art perfectly, when Jim Novak did WEAPON X, he hit the sublime spot of incredibly awesome storytelling, making sense of complex dialogue and not tipping his hand to the casual reader. What happened to the days of Dave Sim blowing everyone out of the water with his balloons that left Eisner in the dust?”

OK, the Sim thing isn’t too long ago.

But seriously, if you were to look at a comic, would you even know what a bad lettering job is to criticize it? Would you ever say, “woah, the letterer saved that sequence?”

2

There’s two times I notice lettering:

  1. When it’s so bad I can’t tell what’s going on.

  2. When it’s unusual. Character-specific lettering is the most common, but the most striking, recently, was when I picked up the Ultimate Marvel books (X-Men, Ultimates, and Spider-Man, specifically. I have Daredevil/Electra, but haven’t gotten around to reading it yet), and noticed the letterer used lower-case letters - and not just in unusual cases. Sentences start with capitals and go into lower-case unless it’s an acronym or shouted. Is Marvel doing this with their main universe titles (I haven’t even LOOKED at a non-Ultimate Marvel book for over a decade), or is it a quirk of the Ultimate line?

Absolutely normal lettering (clear and readable, doesn’t give an idea of the character, all capitals) doesn’t stand out for me.

3

I collected Wendy and Richard Pini’s Elfquest when I was in high school, and their letterer should have been taken out and shot.

Every possible word of any significance was bolded for some sort of weird emphasis. It totally distracted from the rhythm of the text and made reading the narration and the dialogue a complete and total pain.

Gah!

4

I had eye surgery a couple years ago and since then I don’t have the contrast I used to. So lettering that isn’t black on white or a vastly different color is hard for me to read.

I also remember noticing it in the original Miracleman comic. The word “Miracleman” was always slightly different. The reason was because it had originally been Marvelman in England and they changed the name to avoid lawsuits with Marvel.

5

Not too long ago, Marvel tried to get one step closer to using only interns (the whole Epic thing) and came up with a mixed-case font that would be used on all projects. It got to most of them (if not all) for at least three or four months before there was nearly a rebellion. People noted that choosing the same font for Spider-Man and Punisher would simply not work and God help you if Ghost Rider showed up at some point. Or Galactus. Would Galactus talk in mixed-case?

Now they’re back to letting the letterer use their discretion which works out fine, but they really need to slap the guy who does Thor: Son of Asgard. Kerning dude, check it out.

I don’t read any Ultimate stuff, so I couldn’t say anything on that side.

6

Yeah, mostly I notice it when it’s hard to read or a freaking distraction. Like the previous poster said about bolding, especially *when it dosen’t seem like it’s for emphasis so you keep wondering why a character would say something like that. Or when you can’t tell if a word is supposed to be italicized or not.

Or when it’s extra special effort - the “Arabian Nights” issue of Sandman had beautiful fairy tale lettering because it fit the story. But it’s not like they did that every freaking issue or anything.

7

(Fixed your coding.)

I’ve not seen this in a long while. I noticed that most of the inappropriately bolded words were also slightly off the line of the rest of the words, so I’ve always assumed they were a late correction of a mistake, or changed dialogue, or whathaveyou.

But, yeah, that’s driven me to distraction since the early 80s.

8

They must’ve hired the typesetter from Mad Magazine.

9

I always notice when what’s-his-face that lettered the old Giffen Justice Leagues letters something, because his work is really distinctive.

Other than that, I tend to notice character-specific lettering when it really sucks. For a while after Heroes Return, they had Thor talking in the most obnoxious font ever.

10

Well, my coding is all wrong but it’s wrong in precisely the same way that the lettering I’m bitching about is, so I’ll call it a cool dash of irony. Yeah, baby.

11

The most unusual/eye-catching lettering job has to be Marvel’s Transformers: Generation 2 comic book series: Not only did they use an angular octagon for the robots’ word/thought balloons, and not only did they have a column of squares (Autobots) or triangles (Decepticons) running along the edge of those balloons, but they even went to the effort of coloring the squares/triangles with the color schemes of whoever was talking/thinking the dialog in question.

I can only conclude someone had lots of free time on their hands to go to all that trouble…

12

Either that or Jackie Harvey.

13

BOB LAPPAN! I love JLI, and I can tell that man’s lettering apart from anyone else. I also like the unique styles of Ken Bruzniak (sp?), who lettered American Flagg!, Blackhawk, and other Howard Chaykin projects, but I cannot stand the mixed-case lettering on Marvel’s books.

14

I don’t pretend to have detailed knowledge of what makes a good or bad lettering job, but as a reader I can and do spot occurrences where the lettering choices have added clarity or emphasis to the story. I’ll even notice when somehow the word balloons are laid out in a way that keep the narrative flow perfectly clear, and still manage not to obscure the art.

Much as I get bored of the constant praise of Sandman, I must say it’s a case where the lettering did a lot to enhance the storytelling.

15

CrossGen had consistently excellent lettering. Dave Lanphear (head of the department) designed a scheme for text boxes that, in most cases, made it immediately obvious who was talking, so you could place them anywhere in the panel without having to worry about cluttering it up if the interesting business of the panel happened to be near the speaker’s mouth. It really opened up the storytelling, IMO.

Character-specific lettering is a mixed bag. I like it when it makes sense and is attractive, but I remember that crappy italicized font they used for every Wolverine speech a few years ago – that was awful, and it made it look like he was growling and shouting even in the quieter moments.

–Cliffy

16

Interesting topic thread. Yeah, I do notice the lettering myself.

I really wans’t aware of what a letterer did until I was 8 years old in the mid '70s, and read Stan’s Soapbox that stated letterer Artie Simek died. (The first obit I ever read and it was in a comic book, no less.)

From there, the only one that used to get my attention was when Tom Orzechowski lettered stuff on Marvel like X-Men. I remember a title in the '80s called Ms. Tree, and when it first came out, they used mechanical style lettering which was kinda spiff.

Right now, I think the only letterer’s style that I currently recognize (without fail) is John Workman.