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You'll know Richard Starkings and Tom Frame if you've read any British comics from the 80s. Those guys monopolised everything published by Fleetway between them.
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Jul 23, 2017 11:31
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John Costanza (no relation) is pretty cool, he lettered Kirby's Fourth World comics, Dark Knight Returns and Moore and Bissette's Swamp Thing among lots of other iconic comics.
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Jul 23, 2017 11:51
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Teenage Fansub posted:You should deffo start to recognize John Workman. Look at any Simonson Thor. But did Workman do the amazing onomatopoeia or was that Simonson himself?
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Jul 23, 2017 11:52
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joehonkie posted:But did Workman do the amazing onomatopoeia or was that Simonson himself? Letterers do the onomatopoeia, yeah.
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Jul 23, 2017 12:09
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Yeah. Big KATHOOMs in Tom King's Batman is what clued me in. edit: I'm guessing King told him to just whip out the Thor-type fonts, no matter the incongruity. 
Teenage Fansub fucked around with this message at 12:31 on Jul 23, 2017 |
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Jul 23, 2017 12:26
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If you know one letterer by name, let it be Tom Orzechowski
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Jul 23, 2017 12:35
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Teenage Fansub posted:Yeah. Big KATHOOMs in Tom King's Batman is what clued me in. I bet Batman would love hanging out in Asgard. *prays to the many-angled ones to speed the inevitable Warner/Disney merger*
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Jul 23, 2017 13:09
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Can everyone who posted a letterer post an example of their work (if you haven't)? I'd love to see a bunch of distinctive lettering work side by side.
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Jul 23, 2017 13:34
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A Strange Aeon posted:Can everyone who posted a letterer post an example of their work (if you haven't)? I'd love to see a bunch of distinctive lettering work side by side. The previously mentioned Richard Starkings founded Comicraft about 25 years ago, it's pretty cool to browse through their online store of fonts; there are several based on the hand-written fonts of creators like Dave Gibbons and Joe Kubert, not to mention Starkings's pre-digital work on various books. Are you interested primarily in people whose main gig is "lettering" as opposed to cartoonists with distinct styles? Because at that level it almost comes down to handwriting, but there are still some people with cool handwriting.
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Jul 23, 2017 14:28
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Edge & Christian posted:I always remembered Gaspar! as a kid buying back issues because his name was just GASPAR! but he did a huge amount of DC covers and logos and just regular ol' lettering for DC from the Go Go Checks era through Ambush Bug through Arkham Asylum. Todd Klein himself calls Gaspar his "inspiration" in a pretty extensive memorial retrospective. I guess just how does a letterer win an Eisner each year? What are they winning it for, exactly? I can see how an artist or writer creates something the industry wants to reward, but lettering doesn't strike me as an artistic craft exactly. So I feel like I'm missing something.
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Jul 23, 2017 15:50
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A Strange Aeon posted:I guess just how does a letterer win an Eisner each year? What are they winning it for, exactly? I can see how an artist or writer creates something the industry wants to reward, but lettering doesn't strike me as an artistic craft exactly. So I feel like I'm missing something. They get an Eisner because their craft is essential to the aesthetics of the medium, as well as ease of reading. Without them every comic would look as awful and be hard to read as Order of the Stick, where the loghorreic walls of text are rendered in comic sans Lightning Lord fucked around with this message at 16:40 on Jul 23, 2017 |
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Jul 23, 2017 16:37
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A Strange Aeon posted:I guess just how does a letterer win an Eisner each year? What are they winning it for, exactly? I can see how an artist or writer creates something the industry wants to reward, but lettering doesn't strike me as an artistic craft exactly. So I feel like I'm missing something. Todd Klein won the Eisner for lettering 15 out of the first 16 years, and is the only non-cartoonist to win it as near as I can tell. Klein is very good at lettering (and has designed a lot of iconic logos, put in a lot of work to letter in multiple distinctive fonts in the 1980s before computer lettering was a thing) but there is/was also probably a halo effect that Todd Klein appeared on the ballot with the names of all of the Gaiman/Moore/etc. books people were already voting for in the other categories, so why not pick those books on the next line too? Since 2009 (except in 2011, when Todd Klein won again!) the Better Lettering has gone to cartoonists who absolutely did things with text in their comics to set them apart from other comics. Chris Ware is a two-time winner for lettering, which is part and parcel of his wins for "best publication design" too, this isn't a master example of his work but it's one of the first text-heavy pieces I found online.  David Mazzucchelli's Asterios Polyp is another Eisner winner for lettering and another example of how lettering can be an artistic craft, with every character having a distinct font on top of having a different art/coloring style for anything in their point of view.  Another two-time winner is Stan Sakai for his own lettering of Usagi Yojimbo, which isn't showy (and is in part a halo effect of people just liking Sakai's entirely self-produced book) but here's a good article about it and the strength of good lettering in general.
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Jul 23, 2017 16:39
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Lightning Lord posted:They get an Eisner because their craft is essential to the aesthetics of the medium. Without them every comic would look as awful as Order of the Stick, where the loghorreic walls of text are rendered in comic sans Look at sandman where every Endless has a different font that helps with their personality
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Jul 23, 2017 16:39
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Saga's lettering also deserves a lot credit for creating narration that isn't just cluttered text boxes and both compliments and sometimes elevates the art.
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Jul 23, 2017 17:26
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Lightning Lord posted:Letterers do the onomatopoeia, yeah.
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Jul 23, 2017 17:41
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Ken Bruzenak is another letterer from the 1970s/1980s who deserves attention, his Big Two work tended towards being on forgotten books for Marvel in the 1980s and DC in the 1990s, but prior to that he did distinct and unique treatments for a lot of the darlings of the 1980s indie scene, from Mr. Monster to Nexus to American Flagg, which is another great example of 'lettering as design' from Bruzenak, experimental layouts from Chaykin, and just generally an underrated influence on much bigger names and books that came after. The whole "TV monitors as Greek Chorus" thing that people have endlessly ripped off from The Dark Knight Returns was a self-professed American Flagg rip off.  Bruzenak won the Best Letterer three years in a row when the Harvey Awards started before they (less severely) fell into a Todd Klein k-hole. He's still one of the only non-cartoonist letterers (besides the aforementioned Tom Orzechowski and John Workman, and I guess technically Chris Eliopoulos, who is a cartoonist who also letters for other people) to win the award. Other cartoonists to win the Harvey, with their own distinctive use of dialogue/sfx/captions include Daniel Clowes, Terry Moore, and the Even More Problematic But Also Even More Brilliant Than Howard Chaykin winner, Dave Sim.
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Jul 23, 2017 18:18
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Clayton Cowles made an Ask/Tell thread a few years ago about comic lettering; it had some interesting details and anecdotes. It's even on the live forums still: https://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3736698&userid=0&perpage=40&pagenumber=1
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Jul 24, 2017 01:47
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Stephen Amell from that tv show "Hawkeye" did something pretty great at comic-con. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o9aZJpIixJE
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Jul 24, 2017 16:37
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We don't deserve that man.
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Jul 24, 2017 16:39
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Amell is too good for us.
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Jul 24, 2017 18:15
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We need more of that dude.
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Jul 24, 2017 20:10
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Lurdiak posted:Stephen Amell from that tv show "Hawkeye" did something pretty great at comic-con.  (only possible reaction)
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Jul 24, 2017 20:19
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mrchoupon posted:Clayton Cowles made an Ask/Tell thread a few years ago about comic lettering; it had some interesting details and anecdotes. It's even on the live forums still: https://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3736698&userid=0&perpage=40&pagenumber=1 This was informative and cool! Thanks everyone for all the lettering info--was something I always had questions about!
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Jul 25, 2017 02:30
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Edit: made a mistake. Nm
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Jul 25, 2017 06:55
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A friend of mine got a gig doing art for a small press, one of those outfits that's producing a comic as a pitch document for Hollywood. (I know, and so does she, but money's money.) I've seen some of the finished pages, and the lettering was done by someone who obviously did not know what they were doing. The font choice, the balloon placement, I think even the kerning just looked like a mess. I don't have examples to show, but it definitely makes a difference.
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Jul 25, 2017 23:27
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So I have been listening to a book on Audible called "Professor Moriarty and the Hound of the D'Aubervilles." It follows the criminal exploits of Professor James Moriarty and Cnl. Sebastian Moran. It is basically the Earth-3 version of a Sherlock Holmes story (Moriarty breeds wasps, like how Holmes breeds bees.) But it is very enjoyable. And it's full of references to other pop culture people like the Lone Ranger and Fu-Manchu. But I came across a really surprising one. One of the chapters opens with a British officer hiring the duo and paying with a massive emerald. When they ask him how he got it he tells them he pulled it from an idol north of Kathmandu. At that point Morane goes into a tangent about how you never mess with gems on idols as they are always more trouble than they are worth. And he lists a bunch of cursed jewels. "The Moonstone, the eye of Klesh, the All seeing eye of the Goddess of Light, the Crimson Gem of Cytorak and the Pink Diamond of Logash." Now of the I know the Eye of Klesh is from a HP Lovecraft story. And the Moonstone and gem of Cytorak as from Marvel comics. I can't place the other two but I also figure they are references. Still it was really cool to hear it name dropped like that.
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Jul 26, 2017 11:57
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The last one is The Pink Panther.
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Jul 26, 2017 12:00
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The Question IRL posted:So I have been listening to a book on Audible called "Professor Moriarty and the Hound of the D'Aubervilles." Kim Newman is a huge Marvel fan and credits two things as setting him on the path to becoming a writer: the first is sitting up late to watch the Béla Lugosi Dracula movie when he was a kid; the second is his grandmother buying him a Marvel comic. I think that book's great. I love the Legion of Late Victorian Super-Villains assembled by Moriarty in the last story. It's loosely set in the same continuity as Newman's Diogenes Club stories, which I recommend if you can get hold of them, as is a similar novel called Angels of Music, which is Charlie's Angels in Paris during La Belle Époque, in which the Angels are (initially) Christine Daae, Trilby O'Farrell and Irene Adler and Charlie is the Phantom of the Opera.
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Jul 26, 2017 13:33
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Newman also dresses like Doc Holiday in every picture I've ever seen of him.
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Jul 26, 2017 16:02
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Technically the Moostone predates Marvel by like 100 odd years.
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Jul 26, 2017 16:35
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Gaz-L posted:Newman also dresses like Doc Holiday in every picture I've ever seen of him. I believe he also used to carry a cane with a sword in it. I'm not sure if he beats Alan Moore for obscure metatextual references but he comes close if he doesn't. Wheat Loaf fucked around with this message at 17:15 on Jul 26, 2017 |
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Jul 26, 2017 17:09
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https://twitter.com/TomKingTK/status/889505454409236481 Tom King is very funny on twitter y'all need to get on that follow
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Jul 26, 2017 18:31
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I love the superhero toy match-ups his "children" make. https://twitter.com/TomKingTK/status/886015834480668673
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Jul 26, 2017 18:50
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Oh poo poo, Bad Horse!
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Jul 26, 2017 23:35
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Senior Woodchuck posted:Oh poo poo, Bad Horse! Dr Horrible is the best thing Joss Whedon's done since season three of Buffy, and also the last good thing he's ever done.
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Jul 27, 2017 00:49
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Skwirl posted:Dr Horrible is the best thing Joss Whedon's done since season three of Buffy, and also the last good thing he's ever done. What about Much Ado About Nothing?
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Jul 27, 2017 01:04
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Doctor Spaceman posted:What about Much Ado About Nothing? The only positive to that is that it functions as an easily accessible way to tell first-timers "you need to consider color when making anything black and white". That film is a visual debacle.
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Jul 27, 2017 01:10
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END ME SCOOB posted:The only positive to that is that it functions as an easily accessible way to tell first-timers "you need to consider color when making anything black and white". That film is a visual debacle. Fillion playing Dogberry as a Caruso-esque TV cop parody is really funny, tho?
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Jul 27, 2017 02:24
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Gaz-L posted:Fillion playing Dogberry as a Caruso-esque TV cop parody is really funny, tho? I'm glad someone else agrees that Fillion is the beautiful gem in that turd.
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Jul 27, 2017 03:06
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RandallODim posted:I'm glad someone else agrees that Fillion is the beautiful gem in that turd.  I actually really like the film as a whole and think almost all of the cast does good performances. Double I kinda think Amy Acker's Beatrice is better than Emma Thompson'sNathan Fillion delivering "Let us examination these men" and donning a pair of shades like it's the loving CSI Miami cold open is just hysterical, however. Gaz-L fucked around with this message at 16:05 on Jul 27, 2017 |
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Jul 27, 2017 16:03
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