[HN Gopher] The art and history of lettering comics
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       The art and history of lettering comics
        
       Author : O1111OOO
       Score  : 106 points
       Date   : 2024-03-06 21:52 UTC (1 days ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (kleinletters.com)
 (TXT) w3m dump (kleinletters.com)
        
       | ggm wrote:
       | Nothing about herge but his speech bubble font was lovely
        
         | card_zero wrote:
         | Ruined in the recent reprints where they used a handwriting
         | font instead. I mean, an actual digital font instead of hand
         | lettering, and it didn't much resemble the lettering by Herge
         | (or, according to Wikipedia, one Michel Demaret).
        
           | ggm wrote:
           | I wondered who the letterist was. The old b&w has a great
           | cursive which might be Herge himself but I entered the room
           | with Leslie Lonsdale Coopers British translations in the 60s
           | as red spine hardbacks, some of which I still have, and they
           | will have Demartet's font style. The exclamation and question
           | marks stick in my mind for some reason.
        
           | Daub wrote:
           | That is so utterly insane. Criminal! I guess that they were
           | motivated by the ease with which the text could be translated
           | into another language... but still criminal.
        
           | soupfordummies wrote:
           | I found this, is this what you're talking about?
           | 
           | https://www.kimadrian.com/2012/12/casterman-makes-tragic-
           | cha...
        
       | Daub wrote:
       | For an example of comic lettering 'in extremis', look at Charles
       | Crumb (who was the big brother of the famous underground comic
       | artist Robert Crumb). He obsessively drew the story of Treasure
       | Island with a particular emphasis on long conversations between
       | how Long John Silver and Jim Hawkins. Charles Crumb clearly had
       | some kind of psychosis, whereby the text boxes in his comics
       | became larger and larger eventually pushing out the images
       | altogether. The text itself became nothing more than an
       | impression of text (Graphomania?).
       | 
       | Hard to find good examples... a single example at the near bottom
       | of the page here:
       | https://www.lambiek.net/artists/c/crumb_charles.htm
       | 
       | A much later example here:
       | https://blog.mumblelard.com/post/88300090/graphomania-or-cip...
       | 
       | Also check out the documentary on the three Crumb brothers.
        
       | ChrisArchitect wrote:
       | About (https://kleinletters.com/Blog/about-my-book/)
       | 
       | FYI / tl;dr
       | 
       | After about 5 years of back and forth and then not hearing from a
       | prospective publisher about completing his book project Todd
       | Klein decided to take all the work and publish it on his blog
       | here as a series of articles (some previously posted that were
       | part of the content he was building for the book).
        
       | mistrial9 wrote:
       | hey - Todd Klein designed the logo for a Dr Strange from Marvel,
       | it says in tiny print.
        
         | egypturnash wrote:
         | Klein did a ton of work for Marvel and DC since he got into the
         | industry at the end of the seventies.
         | 
         | https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Todd_Klein
        
       | SeanLuke wrote:
       | Fascinating. I happen to own exactly that first issue of Shatter.
        
         | soupfordummies wrote:
         | That's a pretty sick cover. It's like it's "dated" but in a
         | good way. I love that sort of aesthetic, like a "techno/digital
         | nostalgia"
        
       | amyjess wrote:
       | Todd Klein's entire blog is amazing.
       | 
       | Elsewhere he has an entire six-part retrospective on working for
       | DC in the '80s (aside from being a letterer, he was Assistant
       | Production Manager for years) with tons of pictures of their
       | offices and people.
       | 
       | https://kleinletters.com/Blog/the-dc-comics-offices-1982-199...
       | 
       | https://kleinletters.com/Blog/the-dc-comics-offices-1982-199...
       | 
       | https://kleinletters.com/Blog/the-dc-comics-offices-1982-199...
       | 
       | https://kleinletters.com/Blog/the-dc-comics-offices-1982-199...
       | 
       | https://kleinletters.com/Blog/the-dc-comics-offices-1982-199...
       | 
       | https://kleinletters.com/Blog/the-dc-comics-offices-1982-199...
       | 
       | I've been a huge fan of comics since I was a kid, and the "inside
       | baseball" side of the industry has always deeply fascinated me,
       | so reading these articles was pure joy.
        
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       (page generated 2024-03-07 23:01 UTC)