A letterer is a member of a team of

comic book creator developed specialized terminology. Several attempts have been made to formalize and define the terminology of comics by authors such as Will Eisner, Scott McCloud, R. C. Harvey and Dylan Horrocks. Much of the terminology in English is under di ...

s responsible for drawing the comic book's text. The letterer's use of

typeface A typeface (or font family) is a design of Letter (alphabet), letters, Numerical digit, numbers and other symbols, to be used in printing or for electronic display. Most typefaces include variations in size (e.g., 24 point), weight (e.g., light, ...

calligraphy Calligraphy () is a visual art related to writing. It is the design and execution of lettering with a pen, ink brush, or other writing instruments. Contemporary calligraphic practice can be defined as "the art of giving form to signs in an e ...

, letter size, and

layout In general terms, a layout is a structured arrangement of items within certain limits, or a plan for such arrangement. Specifically, layout may refer to: * Page layout, the arrangement of visual elements on a page ** Comprehensive layout (comp), ...

all contribute to the impact of the comic-book-reading experience. The letterer crafts the comic's "display lettering": the story's title lettering, creator credits, and any specialized captions that appear on the story's first page. They also craft the lettering that appears in the word balloons, also designing the various

sound effects A sound effect (or audio effect) is an artificially created or enhanced sound, or sound process used to emphasize artistic or other content of films, television shows, live performance, animation, video games, music, or other media. In m ...

that appear within the comic book story. Many letterers also design logos for the comic book company's various titles.

History

Origins

By the time comic books came of age in the 1940s, the huge volume of work demanded by publishers had encouraged an assembly-line process, dividing the creative process into distinct tasks: writer,

penciller A penciller (or penciler) is an artist who works on the creation of comic books, graphic novels, and similar visual art forms, with a focus on the initial pencil illustrations. In the American comic book industry, the penciller is the first step ...

, letterer,

inker The inker (sometimes credited as the finisher or embellisher) is one of the two line artists in traditional comic book production. After the penciller creates a drawing with pencil, the inker interprets this drawing by outlining and embellishing ...

, and

colorist In comics, a colorist is responsible for adding color to black-and-white line art. For most of the 20th century this was done using brushes and dyes which were then used as guides to produce the printing plates. Since the late 20th century it is ...

. By the late 1940s, it became possible to make a living just lettering comic strips and comic books for artists, studios, and companies that did not have the time or desire to do it in-house. The career of freelance letterer was born, and by the 1950s, letterers such as

Gaspar Saladino Gaspar Saladino (September 1, 1927 – August 4, 2016) was an American letterer and logo designer who worked for more than sixty years in the comic book industry, mostly for DC Comics. Eventually Saladino went by one name, "Gaspar," which he wrote ...

, Sam Rosen, and Ben Oda were crafting full-time careers as letterers for

DC Comics DC Comics (originally DC Comics, Inc., and also known simply as DC) is an American comic book publisher owned by DC Entertainment, a subsidiary of Warner Bros. Discovery. DC is an initialism for "Detective Comics", an American comic book seri ...

Marvel Comics Marvel Comics is a New York City–based comic book publishing, publisher, a property of the Walt Disney Company since December 31, 2009, and a subsidiary of Disney Publishing Worldwide since March 2023. Marvel was founded in 1939 by Martin G ...

, and King Features. Letterer and logo designer Ira Schnapp defined the DC Comics look for nearly thirty years. Starting in 1940, he designed or refined such iconic logos as ''

Action Comics ''Action Comics'' is an American comic book/Comic anthology, magazine series that introduced Superman, one of the first major superhero characters. The publisher was originally known as Detective Comics Inc., which later merged into National ...

'', ''

Superman Superman is a superhero created by writer Jerry Siegel and artist Joe Shuster, which first appeared in the comic book ''Action Comics'' Action Comics 1, #1, published in the United States on April 18, 1938.The copyright date of ''Action Comics ...

'', ''

The Flash The Flash is the name of several superheroes appearing in American comic books published by DC Comics. Created by writer Gardner Fox and artist Harry Lampert, the original Flash first appeared in ''Flash Comics'' #1 (cover date, cover-dated Jan ...

'', and ''

Justice League of America The Justice League, or Justice League of America (JLA), is a group of superheroes appearing in American comic books published by DC Comics. The team first appeared in '' The Brave and the Bold'' #28 (March 1960). Writer Gardner Fox conceived t ...

'', while also creating the distinctive appearance of DC's house ads and promotions. (Schnapp also designed the

Comics Code Authority The Comics Code Authority (CCA) was formed in 1954 by the Comics Magazine Association of America as an alternative to government regulation. The CCA enabled comic publishers to self-regulate the content of American comic book, comic books in the ...

seal, which was a fixture on comic book covers from all major companies for over forty years.)Kimball, Kirk
"The Big Chill," Dial B for Blog #376 (Oct. 10, 2006).
Retrieved July 21, 2008. DC Comics used a stable of more than 20 letterers in the comics they published in the 1950s and 1960s (some of the letterers — like Jerry Robinson and Dick Sprang — were more well known as artists): * John Costanza * Jon D'Agostino * Ben Oda * Jerry Robinson *

Joe Rosen Joe Rosen (December 25, 1920 – October 12, 2009) was an American comic book artist, primarily known for his work as a letterer. Over the course of his career with Marvel Comics and DC Comics, Rosen lettered such titles as ''The Fantastic Four'' ...

George Roussos George Roussos (; August 20, 1915 – February 19, 2000), also known under the pseudonym George Bell, was an American comic book artist best known as one of Jack Kirby's Silver Age of comic books, Silver Age inkers, including on landmark early is ...

* Ira Schnapp * Dick Sprang Starting in around 1966, Ira Schnapp's classic, art deco-inspired look was replaced by the pulsing, organic style of Gaspar Saladino, who redesigned DC's house style for the

counterculture A counterculture is a culture whose values and norms of behavior differ substantially from those of mainstream society, sometimes diametrically opposed to mainstream cultural mores.Eric Donald Hirsch. ''The Dictionary of Cultural Literacy''. Ho ...

era.B.D.S
Interview with Gaspar Saladino in "Silver Age Sage," The Silver Lantern: A Tribute to the Silver Age of DC Comics (May 25, 2007).
Retrieved July 18, 2008. Gaspar became the cover letterer for all of DC's books throughout the 1970s, and even " ghosted" as Marvel Comics' "page-one" letterer for much of the same period.Kimball, Kirk
"Gaspar Saladino — The Natural,"
Dial B for Blog #489 (Sept.). Accessed May 18, 2011. Gaspar's work became so iconic that various independent comics publishers which sprang up in the 1970s and 1980s – such as Atlas/Seaboard,Kimball, Kirk
"Gaspar Saladino — Atlas Shrugged!"
Dial B for Blog #497 (Sept.). Accessed May 19, 2011. Continuity Comics, and

Eclipse Comics Eclipse Comics was an American comic book publisher, one of several independent publishers during the 1980s and early 1990s. In 1978, it published the first graphic novel intended for the newly created comic book store, comic book specialty stor ...

– hired him to design logos for their entire line of titles. From 1930 through the 1990s (with a few exceptions), the letterer added their lettering, in pen and ink, on the same original art page the penciler drew. The penciled art was then inked after the letterer had completed their work on the page. At DC Comics during the "

Silver Age The Ages of Man are the historical stages of human existence according to Greek mythology and its subsequent interpretatio romana, Roman interpretation. Both Hesiod and Ovid offered accounts of the successive ages of humanity, which tend to pr ...

" of the 1960s, pencilers were required to "rough in balloons and sound effects" for the letterers to use as a working guide. An accomplished letterer was able to adapt his or her style to the style of the art for that particular book.

Computer lettering

The evolution of desktop publishing powered by computers, especially those made by

Apple An apple is a round, edible fruit produced by an apple tree (''Malus'' spp.). Fruit trees of the orchard or domestic apple (''Malus domestica''), the most widely grown in the genus, are agriculture, cultivated worldwide. The tree originated ...

, began in the 1980s, and started having a gradual impact on comics lettering soon after. One of the first users of computer-generated lettering was writer/artist John Byrne, who made fonts from existing lettering. (Incidentally, Byrne made use of existing lettering by other artists, such as

Dave Gibbons David Chester Gibbons (born 14 April 1949) is an English comics artist, writer and sometimes letterer. He is best known for his collaborations with writer Alan Moore, which include the miniseries ''Watchmen'' and the Superman story " For the M ...

, without their permission.Klein, Todd
"Computer lettering," Todd Klein: Lettering – Logos – Design.
Retrieved July 23, 2008. Now Byrne uses a computer font based on the handwriting of letterer Jack Morelli – with Morelli's permission.)Byrne Robotics FAQ
Creative Process
Retrieved December 2, 2005. Other early users of computer lettering were David Cody Weiss and Roxanne Starr, who experimented in computer lettering with

Bob Burden Bob Burden is an American comic book creator, comic book artist and writer, best known as the creator of ''Flaming Carrot Comics'' and the ''Mystery Men''. Early life Burden was born the eldest of three siblings in Buffalo, New York. His fath ...

's '' Flaming Carrot Comics''. Computer lettering really started making an impact with the availability of the first commercial comic book font, "Whizbang" (created by Studio Daedalus) around 1990. In the early 1990s letterer Richard Starkings and his partner John Roshell (formerly Gaushell) began digitally creating comic book fonts for use on computers, and started Comicraft, which has since become the major source of comics fonts (though they have competition from others, such as Blambot). In deference to tradition, at first computer lettering was printed out and pasted onto the original artwork, but after a few years, as comics coloring also moved to desktop publishing, digital lettering files began to be used more effectively by combining them directly with digital art files, eliminating the physical paste-up stage altogether.

Wildstorm Comics Wildstorm Productions (stylized as WildStorm) is an American comic book imprint. Originally founded as an independent company established by Jim Lee and Brandon Choi to publish through Image Comics, Wildstorm became a publishing imprint of DC C ...

was ahead of the curve, Marvel came around a few years later, and DC held to traditional production methods the longest, but now nearly all lettering is digitally applied. In the early years of the 21st Century, the mainstream American comics companies moved almost exclusively to in-house computer lettering, effectively ending the era of the freelance letterer.

Chris Eliopoulos Chris Eliopoulos (born September 30, 1967) is an American cartoonist and letterer of comic books. Early life Eliopoulos attended the Fashion Institute of Technology in New York City from 1985 to 1989. He majored in graphic design and minored in ...

designed the fonts for Marvel's in-house lettering unit, and Ken Lopez did the same at DC.Contino, Jennifer
"ABCs with Orzechowski," Comicon.com: The Pulse (Dec. 30, 2003). Retrieved July 17, 2008.
Since then the trend has swung the other way, with most comics publishers once again using freelance letterers rather than in-house staff. Nearly all use computer and digital comic book fonts.

Tools and methods

On-the-board

The traditional comic book letterer needs little more than a lettering guide, a pen or brush,

India ink India ink (British English: Indian ink; also Chinese ink) is a simple black or coloured ink once widely used for writing and printing and now more commonly used for drawing and outlining, especially when inking comic books and comic strips. In ...

, and white paint for corrections. Some situations required the letterer to use

vellum Vellum is prepared animal skin or membrane, typically used as writing material. It is often distinguished from parchment, either by being made from calfskin (rather than the skin of other animals), or simply by being of a higher quality. Vellu ...

overlays on top of the original art.

EC Comics

The lettering in the comics of the sensationalist

horror comics Horror comics are comic books, graphic novels, black-and-white comics magazines, and manga focusing on horror fiction. In the US market, horror comic books reached a peak in the late 1940s through the mid-1950s, when concern over content and the ...

publisher

EC Comics E.C. Publications, Inc., (doing business as EC Comics) is an American comic book publisher. It specialized in horror fiction, crime fiction, satire, military fiction, dark fantasy, and science fiction from the 1940s through the mid-1950s, nota ...

(c. 1945 – c. 1955) was different from other publishers – its mechanical appearance gave it a sterile aspect, and helped define the particular style of comics EC was known for. EC's letterers achieved their particular look by using a Leroy lettering set, a device popular amongst draftsmen and architects. The Leroy lettering set consisted of a stylus and a pantographic lettering form.Burns, Casey
"Squa Tront and Spa Fon (2001)"
Casey Burns official website. Accessed May 21, 2011.

Computer lettering

Most Marvel and DC books are now lettered using a graphics program such as

Adobe Illustrator Adobe Illustrator is a vector graphics editor and Computer-aided design, design software developed and marketed by Adobe Inc., Adobe. Originally designed for the Apple Inc., Apple Mac (computer), Macintosh, development of Adobe Illustrator began ...

Adobe Photoshop Adobe Photoshop is a raster graphics editor developed and published by Adobe Inc., Adobe for Microsoft Windows, Windows and macOS. It was created in 1987 by Thomas Knoll, Thomas and John Knoll. It is the most used tool for professional digital ...

Adobe InDesign Adobe InDesign is a desktop publishing and page layout designing software application software, application produced by Adobe Inc., Adobe and first released in 1999. It can be used to create works such as posters, flyers, brochures, magazines, ...

, and a

font In metal typesetting, a font is a particular size, weight and style of a ''typeface'', defined as the set of fonts that share an overall design. For instance, the typeface Bauer Bodoni (shown in the figure) includes fonts " Roman" (or "regul ...

that resembles hand lettering. Computer lettering provides a lot of technical shortcuts, especially by combining the lettering work directly with digital art files, eliminating the tedious physical paste-up stage altogether. Some letterers handwrite part of the script. Hand-lettering is often used for sound effects and

onomatopoeia Onomatopoeia (or rarely echoism) is a type of word, or the process of creating a word, that phonetics, phonetically imitates, resembles, or suggests the sound that it describes. Common onomatopoeias in English include animal noises such as Oin ...

in comics. There are also still comics artists and inkers who prefer to have the lettering directly on their pages. First, it saves drawing time (not having to put art where a big caption will be); and second, comics tell a story, and a page of comics art without the lettering is only half the story. Long-time letterer John Workman toes a middle ground between traditional and digital lettering. In addition to his "on-the-art boards work", Workman has been electronically hand-lettering by way of a Wacom tablet.

Awards and recognition

The

Shazam Awards The Academy of Comic Book Arts (ACBA) was an American professional organization of the 1970s that was designed to be the comic book industry analog of such groups as the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. Composed of comic-book professio ...

, given from 1970 to 1975, had a "best letterer" category. Both the

Harvey Award The Harvey Awards are given for achievement in comic books. Named for writer-artist Harvey Kurtzman, the Harvey Awards were founded by Gary Groth in 1988, president of the publisher Fantagraphics, to be a successor to the Kirby Awards, which were ...

s (given starting in 1992) and the

Eisner Award The Will Eisner Comic Industry Awards, commonly shortened to the Eisner Awards, are awards for creative achievement in American comic books. They are regarded as the most prestigious and significant awards in the comic industry and often referred ...

s (given starting in 1993) have a "best letterer" category. Todd Klein has won the Eisner award for lettering fifteen times and has won the Harvey Award for lettering eight times. Ken Bruzenak,

Chris Ware Franklin Christenson "Chris" Ware (born December 28, 1967) is an American cartoonist known for his ''Acme Novelty Library'' series (begun 1994) and the graphic novels ''Jimmy Corrigan, the Smartest Kid on Earth'' (2000), ''Building Stories'' (2012 ...

, John Workman, and

Dan Clowes Dan or DAN may refer to: People * Dan (name), including a list of people with the name ** Dan (king), several kings of Denmark * Dan people, an ethnic group located in West Africa **Dan language, a Mande language spoken primarily in Côte d'Ivoir ...

have all won the Harvey Award for lettering multiple times.

Letterers and lettering studios

Notable letterers

* Diana Albers *

Jim Aparo James N. Aparo (; August 24, 1932 – July 19, 2005) was an American comic book artist, best known for his DC Comics work from the late 1960s through the 1990s, including on the characters Batman, Aquaman, and the Spectre (DC Comics character), Sp ...

* Ken Bruzenak * Janice Chiang * John Costanza *

* Tom Frame * Todd Klein * Ken Lopez * Jack Morelli * Jim Novak * Bill Oakley * Ben Oda * Tom Orzechowski *

Annie Parkhouse Annie Parkhouse (née Halfacree) has been one of the leading letterers in British comics for over 30 years. Biography Beginning her career working on ''Lion'' for IPC magazines, she has since provided dialogue for many DC Comics titles and '' ...

* Bill Pearson * Nate Piekos *

* Sam Rosen *

* Ira Schnapp * Artie Simek * Richard Starkings * John Workman * Bill Yoshida

Artist-letterers

Cartoonists known for the lettering on their own comics: *

* John Byrne *

Eddie Campbell Eddie Campbell (born 10 August 1955) is a British comics artist and cartoonist. He was the illustrator and publisher of '' From Hell'' (written by Alan Moore), and the creator of the semi-autobiographical ''Alec'' stories collected in ''Alec: ...

Daniel Clowes Daniel Gillespie Clowes (; born April 14, 1961) is an American cartoonist, graphic novelist, illustrator, and screenwriter. Most of Clowes's work first appeared in ''Eightball (comic book), Eightball'', a solo anthology comic book series. An ''E ...

* Jean (Moebius) Giraud *

Rian Hughes Rian Hughes is a People of the United Kingdom, British graphic designer, illustrator, type designer, comics artist and novelist. Overviews Hughes has written and drawn comics for ''2000 AD (comics), 2000 AD'', Vertigo CMYK and ''Batman Black ...

Walt Kelly Walter Crawford Kelly Jr. (August 25, 1913 – October 18, 1973) was an American animator and cartoonist, best known for the comic strip ''Pogo (comic strip), Pogo''. He began his animation career in 1936 at The Walt Disney Company, Walt Disney S ...

* Frank Miller *

Stan Sakai is a Japanese Americans, Japanese-born American cartoonist and comic book creator. He is best known as the creator of the comic series ''Usagi Yojimbo''. Early life Sakai was born Masahiko Sakai (坂井雅彦) in Kyoto, Japan, to Akio and Ter ...

Dave Sim Dave Sim (born 17 May 1956) is a Canadian cartoonist and publisher, known for his comic book ''Cerebus the Aardvark, Cerebus'', his artistic experimentation, his advocacy of self-publishing and creators' rights, and his controversial political an ...

Ty Templeton Tyrone Templeton is a Canadians, Canadian comic book artist and writer who has drawn a number of mainstream titles, TV-associated titles, and his own series. Career Templeton first received attention for ''Stig's Inferno'' (Vortex Comics), now ...

* Frank Thorne *

Companies

Companies and studios that create fonts and provide computer lettering: * Blambot * Comicraft

References

{{reflist

External links

* Evanier, Mark
"Lettering part 1," POV Online (Jan. 10, 1997)
an

* Klein, Todd
Todd Klein: Lettering – Logos – Design.
* Thomas, Michael
"The Invisible Art in Plain Sight: A Look at the Art of Lettering," Comic Book Resources (June 9, 2000).

Ninja Lettering – extensive website devoted to the craft of comic book lettering

Balloon Tales – the Comicraft studio's online guide to comic book lettering
Comics terminology Visual arts occupations