Todd Klein's Blog, page 38

LOGO DESIGN FOR COMICS

From DOCTOR STRANGE: SORCERER SUPREME #72, Dec 1994, image © Marvel, logo design by Todd Klein

Logo design is an important element of comics, both creatively and from a sales standpoint. A strong, memorable logo helps sell the product, and will help buyers identify more comics like ones they already enjoyed. Here’s an overview of comics logo design, above is one of mine, and more about how it was designed is HERE.

A variety of comic strip logos from the 1900s to the 1950s, images © the respective syndicates and copyright holders, logos ® the respective owners

Comics logo designs began in comic strips, but were not as important there because those strips appeared inside newspapers. Buyers might have purchased any paper, especially Sunday ones, for the comics sections inside, but specific strip logos were not the selling point. Some creators didn’t use them at all, or used them rarely, like George Herriman on Krazy Kat. Some did new logos for every Sunday page, like Winsor McCay on Little Nemo in Slumberland, and Richard F. Outcault on Buster Brown. Most strip logos were by the artists themselves as far as we know, though in the samples above, Hal Foster’s letterer Frank Armstrong might have had a hand in the Prince Valiant logo, and the Terry and the Pirates logo was by Milton Caniff’s studio-mate Noel Sickles. Strip logos did prove useful for marketing and branding when the strips were licensed for other kinds of products, or reprinted in book form. The Tarzan logo above, designer unknown, might be the best-known today, and it’s still being used, as are the Prince Valiant and Peanuts logos.

Pulp magazine logos from the 1930s and 1940s, images © the respective owners, logos ® the respective owners

A more important precursor to comic book logos were those on pulp magazines in the early 20th century, with slick, bright covers enclosing cheap pulp paper and black and white type and illustrations, all competing for reader attention on newsstands. They were flashy, colorful, exciting and enticing, calling to buyers from the racks where often only the top third of the magazine was showing. Even before the cover art, the logo was the draw, and if a reader had enjoyed previous issues, they’d be looking for that distinctive logo again. The skills used by the unknown designers often came from show card lettering, the kind of work seen in signs and advertising. All magazines and newspapers needed a good logo, and there were all kinds of pulp magazines, but most pulps were meant to appeal to the common man and provide the kind of action and thrills they were getting in movie theaters and on the radio. Other magazines of higher paper quality and perhaps more sophisticated editorial content also needed strong logos, but they tended to be more conservative and sedate, generally done with type or type-based logo designs.

From FAMOUS FUNNIES #3, Oct 1934, Eastern Color; MARVEL MYSTERY COMICS #4, Feb 1940, Timely/Marvel Comics; DETECTIVE COMICS #2, April 1937; and ACTION COMICS #13, June 1939, the last two from National/DC Comics, all images © the respective owners.

You’ve seen these logos before, but take a moment to study them. They’re just as bright, bold, and exciting as the pulp magazines they were directly competing with for reader attention. Notice that the titles were often short so the logo letters could be large. Some  publishers had art directors or designers on staff to provide logos, but in the new field of comic books, that assignment was more likely to be given to an artist or letterer, and once again the names of those people are often unknown. That’s true for all of these. Early logos designed for Malcolm Wheeler Nicholson’s National Allied Publications like DETECTIVE COMICS might have been designed by artist staffers Vincent Sullivan or Whitney Ellsworth, but that’s a guess.

From SUPERMAN #6, Sept-Oct 1940, image © DC Comics

By the time of SUPERMAN #6, When the company had become National Comics, Ira Schnapp created a newly revamped logo based on the earlier designs of artist Joe Shuster, but he said he didn’t do any before that. In the early days it made sense for artists to design logos, as they understood the properties and characters, but artists didn’t always have the graphic design skills needed for good logo design. That’s when letterers were brought in. As comics changed over the following decades, those changes were reflected in the logos, as we’ll see.

Early comics logos from 1939 to 1942, images © the respective owners.

Other early comics logos relied on similar tactics of bright, colorful, large letters, short titles, and exciting graphics, with perhaps MYSTERY MEN COMICS being the least impressive in this group. Speed lines and angles for FLASH COMICS and WHIZ COMICS add motion and energy, the flames in THE HUMAN TORCH and the notches in HIT COMICS add interest. CAPTAIN AMERICA, designed by Joe Simon, adopts a memorable patriotic flag theme, and BATMAN, designed by Jerry Robinson, uses a sinister bat shape to intrigue buyers. Drop shadows add depth to many of these logos, and Art Deco design elements, popular at the time, are included in BATMAN and ALL-AMERICAN COMICS. The use of elegant open script in Harry G. Peters’ WONDER WOMAN logo gives it a softer feel, perhaps attempting to appeal to girls. Open letters were common to allow a contrasting color. Like the pulp logos, early comics were all about standing out and selling the product. Many would have been readable from across the street! While some comic strips were aimed more at children and some toward adults, (many families were reading the newspapers), comic books most often targeted readers in search of action and adventure, like the pulp magazines. Superheroes were all the rage in the first decade of comic books, and their colorful costumes and impressive powers played well on the bright four-color covers and pages. Other genres were represented, including humor, but many companies saw the success of Superman as the pointer toward profits.

Late 1940s and 1950s comics logos, images © the respective owners.

After the end of World War Two, superheroes began to lose their appeal, and a wider range of genres came into the field. Logos followed the same general plan as before, but the colors were sometimes muted, the names started to get longer, and new design effects were used to try to make titles stand out from the crowd, and it was an ever-growing crowd! Al Feldstein designed memorable logos like WEIRD SCIENCE for EC Comics, Ira Schnapp was heading into space and tackling Hollywood humor for DC, and Ed Hamilton was getting creepy at ACG. At the company now known as Marvel Comics, Artie Simek was designing conservative logos like TWO-GUN KID, and more creative ones like BATTLE. Otto Pirkola’s CASPER logo and cover design appealed to kids, as did the Walt Disney titles from Western/Dell, and JUGHEAD and other Archie books were popular too. Notice the vertical smoke spelling Fantasy on WEIRD SCIENCE, the grungy, ragged edges of FORBIDDEN WORLDS, the round humor of JUGHEAD, the impact of bullets on BATTLE, and the dollar sign in UNCLE SCROOGE. For a while graphic violence and adult subject matter flourished in crime and horror comics, but push-back from parents, distributors and the government led to the self-censorship of the Comics Code Authority, and the industry had to be content with gearing most of their product to children.

1960s and 1970s comics logos. images © the respective owners

The 1960s and 1970s saw comics striving for more thoughtful writing and making end-runs around censorship. While many comics logos looked back to the styles of the past, some were pushing into new territory. At Marvel, Sol Brodsky and Artie Simek designed logos for the new line of Marvel Comics with nods to non-comics advertising styles like THE FANTASTIC FOUR At DC, Gaspar Saladino was bringing new energy and artistry with logos like SWAMP THING. Artists Joe Staton on E-MAN and Jim Steranko on X-MEN integrated their unique styles into their logos. Marvel was pulling anti-hero stories from pulp writers like Robert E. Howard, beginning with CONAN THE BARBARIAN. Underground comics avoided the mainstream distribution system completely, and were able to handle any topic, no matter how adult, with Robert Crumb leading the way on titles like ZAP COMIX. Harvey Pekar and Mike Friedrich were two of the new voices in small independent publishers, and their books like AMERICAN SPLENDOR and STAR*REACH, the latter with a fine logo by letterer Tom Orzechowski, were finding new audiences. Overseas, 2000 A.D. in England and MÉTAL HURLANT in France were capturing the attention of young fans outside the usual comics channels. Variety was flourishing in comics and logos.

Four covers from the 1980s and 1990s, images © the respective owners

By the 1980s, the comics distribution system was changing from the dying newsstand model to comic shops geared to collectors. In the new model, logo identification by readers became less important. Buyers in comics shops tended to follow favorite writers and artists as much or more than particular titles, and covers were reflecting that in several ways. First, creator credits on covers were becoming common. Second, logos no longer needed to stay in the top third of the cover, and also no longer needed to be prominent enough to be seen from a distance, though many still were, like Jeff Smith’s BONE. Artist Dave Gibbons and type designer Richard Bruning broke the mold with their WATCHMEN design, the strong logo running down the left side, and cover art featuring extreme close-ups that were essentially the first panel of the story. Dave McKean’s cover designs and logos for THE SANDMAN series used photography, mixed media, muted tones, and mysterious images that intrigued readers and ranged far from traditional comics. Frank Miller’s BATMAN: THE DARK KNIGHT RETURNS made the cover all about the art, with the logo in small type, more like a movie poster than a comic cover, a trend that would continue in the coming years.

More 1980s and 1990s logos, images © the respective owners

Small press publishers and creators like Kevin Eastman and Peter Laird were having surprising success with their long-named TEENAGE MUTANT NINJA TURTLES, following in the footsteps of The Hernandez Brothers on LOVE AND ROCKETS (with a retro logo by myself). New publishers were making inroads at the comics shops with books like Howard Chaykin’s AMERICAN FLAGG! (logo by Alex Jay), Todd McFarlane’s SPAWN (logo by Tom Orzechowski) and Mike Baron and Steve Rude’s NEXUS. At Marvel, a new approach to their characters by writer Kurt Busiek and artist Alex Ross allowed Joe Kaufman and Alex to bring their unique design skills to the logo for MARVELS, making great use of negative space. Comics readership, once in a steady decline, began to rebound with all this new creative energy and output, and continues to do so in the 21st century, with every year seeing the launch of new titles, new publishers, and new fan-favorite creators. And comics and comics characters are no longer a niche genre in the media: comic book movies and TV shows are bringing the characters to much wider audiences. A few of them have even used logos from the comic books.

What goes into a good comic book logo? I have suggestions.

Elements of a Comics Logo Design by Todd Klein, © 1994, Superman and Raven logos ® DC Comics, American Gods © Neil Gaiman

Above is something I put together for a logo design workshop, with a few updated examples. Most logos I design today are finalized on my computer with Adobe Illustrator and Adobe Photoshop, but they usually begin with hand-drawn sketches, as described here. 

One thing that has changed a lot since 1994 is the amount of information and reference material available online. If you can’t find it there, it may not exist, but on the other hand, there’s so much it can be overwhelming. Sometimes a good look around at things you own and love will be a better starting point. Note that this information applies equally to story titles, sound effects, and any display lettering, though logos take the most time and require the most attention, as they will hopefully be used often and placed prominently.

In 1994, I wasn’t advocating the use of desktop computers for logo design, even though I’d begun doing that myself. Today, it’s a given, but I still recommend starting with traditional art tools and hand-drawn sketches.

When you begin your design with existing fonts, you’re missing out on part of the creative process, one that can lead to completely new ideas if you’re lucky. Someone else made the initial design decisions, you’re just adding on your own tweaks. Try actually creating letters, it can be rewarding.

Perspective and three-dimensional shapes are another thing computers can do for you, but understanding the basics will help you come up with new ideas.

Okay, I admit that computers are often a time-saver for adding different effects to letters. You can knock out a half dozen versions of your first idea quickly. But some of these effects are still hard to do well digitally, though others are available that can’t be drawn.

Another thing that has changed over time is the idea that comic books should have a logo with some kind of visual reference. A man who is super. A man with spider powers. An Amazon warrior. A woman with hulk-like strength. A master of the mystic arts. I’m sure all the good visual title ideas are not used up, but titles today are often non-visual and therefore more difficult to create a design for. Words like “Coda,” “Excellence,” “Commute,” and “Crowded” have all been used as comics titles with hardly a visual idea among them. Yes, it can be done, but it’s easier with something visual to start with. One good thing about all those titles is that they’re short! 

Each upcoming generation of comics creators and letterers finds new approaches to logo design, or new inspirations from old ones that may have been overlooked, forgotten, or simply not appreciated enough. The hardest thing to do in any creative field is to be original, and if you’re going to make comics, it’s the most important. If you’re on that journey, good luck!

The post LOGO DESIGN FOR COMICS appeared first on Todd's Blog.

And Then I Read: MERLIN’S SISTER by J. A. Thornbury

I’ve read quite a few novels dealing with King Arthur and the legends and stories surrounding his rule and court, a subject also known as the Matter of Britain. There is no historical record of Arthur so far discovered, he may have been a real person, or not. Most versions of his story were written hundreds of years after the fact, the most important being the Historia Regum Britanniae by Geoffrey of Monmouth (1136), and Le Morte d’Arthur by Thomas Malory (1485). Both those works are fictional, and set the stories in medieval times. This book takes place in a much earlier era, around 500 AD, not long after the Roman Empire withdrew from the country in 410 AD, a time when a possible post-Roman Briton Arthur might have lived and ruled, and a time which ties in to some archaeological research. The book also includes some of the legends and stories that fit in with this approach, but for instance, there are no knights in shining armor, and no round table. The map of Britain included uses all Roman names for places, with a list of current names beside it, but the Latin names are used throughout.

In this book, Arthur is raised in Cumbria in northwest England, the adopted son of Ector and Drusilla, with their own son Cei. When Arthur is a boy, Merlin arrives to tutor him. This is familiar from other versions, but there are a few twists. We eventually learn that Merlin is himself the king of a section of Britain, and his sister Ganieda is queen in another section. The country at this time has no overall ruler, but is divided into small kingdoms, and part of eastern Britain is held by the Saxons, invaders from Germany who war upon the Britons, trying to expand their holdings. The country needs a unified king, and at a meeting to discuss that, the familiar gambit of a sword in a stone that can only be pulled out by the true king, is engineered by Merlin, and of course Arthur is the only one who can remove it.

From that point forward, this book is different from others I’ve read, in that Arthur must first do battle with rivals for the throne, and when he accomplishes that, he and his united country must take on the Saxon invaders. The central portion of the book covers these battles and struggles, and is well written. During this time, Arthur also meets a beautiful young maiden, Gwenhwyfar (Guinevere) at the court of his mother at Tintagel in western Cornwall.

Some of the book also focuses on Merlin’s life and activities both with and without Arthur, bringing more of the old legends into play, and there is treachery and danger that even his ability to sometimes see the future can’t always protect him from. I’m a bit puzzled about why the book is named after his sister Ganieda, as she plays a minor role until near the end.

I have a favorite author about King Arthur, T. H. White, whose books The Sword in the Stone and The Once and Future King are the ones I love best on this topic. Where this book covers the same ground, it doesn’t do it as well. In areas not covered by White, this one appealed to me more. I’m not sure if I will read the rest of this trilogy (only the second book is out so far), but I may, and I can recommend this one.

Merlin’s Sister by J A Thornbury

The post And Then I Read: MERLIN’S SISTER by J. A. Thornbury appeared first on Todd's Blog.

JOHN COSTANZA – Letterer and Artist

Written, drawn, and lettered by Costanza, from G.I. COMBAT #133, Jan 1969. This and all DC art © DC Comics

In the late 1960s, a new letterer was brought into the field by Joe Kubert, and he began a prolific career at DC, Marvel, Western, and other publishers as both a letterer and an artist of humorous and funny animal stories and cartoons. He was one of the busiest guys in comics from the 1970s through the 1990s.

John Costanza, Dover High School Yearbook, 1961

John Costanza was born Aug 14, 1943 in Dover, New Jersey to an Italian father and a Puerto Rican mother, John and Teresa. In a 1983 interview with David Anthony Kraft in Comics Interview #5 (June 1983, Fictioneer Books), John remembered:

I have been drawing children’s stuff ever since I was a young boy and worked in my grandfather’s barber shop. I would be in the back room drawing pictures on paper bags. That’s the beginning of my success story. My grandfather would hang them up over the cash register. He was the first one to give me any kind of encouragement.

John graduated from Dover High School in 1961. He was soon in the Air Force, stationed in Berlin during the Berlin Crisis. In 1963 he married Mary Lee Calenti and they eventually had three sons: Neil, Brian, and Kevin. In a 1999 interview with Jim Amash in Comic Book Artist Collection Volume 2 (2002, TwoMorrows), John said:

The only art training I had, aside from my high school art classes, was a correspondence course that I took right after I got discharged from the military. It was Norman Rockwell’s Famous Artist course. I was married and had one son at the time and that was all I could afford. I was a jet engine mechanic in the Air Force. I would draw all the time — caricatures of other G.I.s and cartoons of pilots ejecting out of aircraft. I even got to do some safety posters for my base when I was reassigned to New Mexico. I always knew I wanted to draw for a living, and I knew I wanted to draw humor. But I had no idea how to get into the business.

From Tales of the Green Berets Daily, Oct 17 1967, image © Chicago Tribune Syndicate, image courtesy of Heritage Auctions

Then the opportunity of a lifetime came along. My wife had a friend who had a beauty salon and had a customer whose husband was a comic book artist. He was looking for an assistant to help him on a comic strip called [Tales of] The Green Berets. That man was Joe Kubert. I made an appointment to meet with Joe at his house, and I remember being nervous as hell, but we got along fine. One of my jobs was going to be to letter the strip — so he was the one who taught me how to letter. He was a great teacher and a lot of fun to be around.

From G.I. COMBAT #139, Dec 1969-Jan 1970, DC Comics

When Joe left the strip to return to DC as an editor/artist for the war titles in 1968, he took John with him. In the 1999 interview, John said:

[Joe] offered to introduce me to Carmine Infantino, who was head of the comics group at the time. Carmine and the production department were looking for a letterer who could come in and work in-house every day. They offered me the job after meeting with me, and I accepted, and I quit my regular job. My first editor was Joe Kubert, naturally, and I worked on most of his books — he was and still is a great guy. Some other great guys were Joe Orlando — being a MAD reader, I recognized Joe Orlando’s name and was blown away at the opportunity to meet him — there was Julie Schwartz, Murray Boltinoff and Mort Weisinger. I went into the office every day. I worked in the production department but I worked as a freelancer — I just occupied a drawing table there.

That position of staff letterer had been filled by Ira Schnapp for about 20 years, but he had recently been retired. Gaspar Saladino would have been the next likely one for the job, but he was already very busy freelancing and working at home for DC, which is why they hired Costanza. I think he was the last one to take that position, before and after that there were always letterers in the production department, but they did other production work during their staff hours and lettered at home most of the time. In addition to lettering for DC, John did short humor pieces for Joe Kubert like the one at the top of this article, and he was soon also doing funny animal art elsewhere.

From TOM AND JERRY #285, Aug 1974, Western Publishing

In the 1999 interview, John said:

Someone gave me a name of an editor up at Western Publishing who was looking for someone to pencil a small comic book, one of those giveaway books. I believe it was for Kinney Shoes. I called and met with Paul Kuhn who gave me my first penciling job drawing Smokey Bear. I’ve done a lot of work for them over the years.

I wasn’t able to find any of John’s Smokey Bear work, but above is another Western comic he drew and lettered.

From GREEN LANTERN #76, April 1970

Costanza lettered all kinds of comics for DC, including the ground-breaking run of Green Lantern/Green Arrow stories written by Denny O’Neil with art by Neal Adams. DC was not yet crediting letterers, so readers didn’t know his name, but his work is excellent.

From BATMAN #226, Nov 1970

John’s was a fast letterer, and his work was soon appearing in many DC titles like this one. The loss of Ira Schnapp meant there was room for someone new, and Costanza filled that role well, though he shared it with another letterer, Ben Oda.

From NEW GODS #1, Feb-March 1971

When Jack Kirby arrived at DC in 1971, John was assigned to Kirby’s Fourth World titles, at least for a while until Kirby hired his own letterers in California, where Kirby was then living. Notice that reversed page number 13 at lower right? John did that to secretly mark longer stories he lettered. In the 1999 interview he said:

I don’t remember exactly what made me start inverting the page #13. I guess it’s probably because Marvel used to give the talent credits in their books — and to make things even worse, they gave each one a special little Marvel name like “Jazzy” John Romita. I wanted one of those names, and when I went to work for Marvel later on, Stan Lee gave me one: “Gentle” John Costanza! I got to use it once before they discontinued that practice.

From THE ADVENTURES OF JERRY LEWIS #123, March-April 1971

I think John’s lettering is particularly good on humor titles like this one, which he had a natural affinity for. The note written by sidekick child Renfrew is nicely done, and I love the story title.

From MISTER MIRACLE #1, March-April 1971

Out the same month was this Jack Kirby classic with fine lettering by John. The story title is typical of John’s work at the time, casual yet appealing. 

From SICK #82, March 1971, Hewfred Publications

Here’s a side of John Costanza’s art few know, in the style of Jack Davis for MAD imitator SICK. In the 1999 interview, John said, “I just called them up and made an appointment to see a gentleman named Paul Lakin who gave me jobs he would write.” In the 1983 interview, John reported: “Jack Davis was a big influence on me. So was Mort Drucker. But I would just stare at Davis’ stuff and put myself into his situation. That is more or less how I trained myself.”

From NEW GODS #4, Aug-Sept 1971, image courtesy of Heritage Auctions

A closer look at some of Costanza’s early lettering for DC. He used a pen nib with a slight wedge, and the letters are angular, but also with a little bounce and beginning to show the curves he would use more later. The sound effects are a little looser and well-drawn. The balloon shapes, which I remember seeing John draw easily freehand, are almost perfect curves.

From DAREDEVIL #81, Nov 1971, this and all Marvel images © MarvelFrom SUB-MARINER #43, Nov 1971, Marvel

As if he wasn’t busy enough, John began lettering for Marvel Comics in 1971, at first using the pen name Jon Costa. The titles on both these stories are well done. I think he was no longer working in the DC production department by that time and therefore able to letter more easily for companies other than DC, following in the footsteps of Gaspar Saladino in that regard. It wasn’t something DC liked, but if you were good enough and kept turning in assignments on time, there wasn’t any reason for them to complain. John was certainly fast enough to make it work. In the 1983 interview, John said:

An average page can take twenty to thirty minutes, but you can get into a page that can take you up to an hour. In order to get out the amount of lettering that I do, I am working constantly. My days are pretty long. I’ll work at night and I’ll work on weekends on the children’s stuff — but, to me, that isn’t work, when I go into my artwork. I enjoy that and it keeps me going.

From THE INCREDIBLE HULK #156 and JUNGLE ACTION #1, Oct 1972, Marvel

While Gaspar Saladino was lettering most of the covers at DC, at Marvel Costanza did some in the early 1970s before Gaspar and Danny Crespi began to dominate that specialty at Marvel. I think John’s cover lettering is excellent, with strong balloons and effective captions, but he told me he was never comfortable with that kind of high-profile work. In the 1999 interview, Costanza said:

Gaspar Saladino did all the cover copy and logos [at DC] at the time. He would come in a couple times a week and sit at his table next to mine and do his thing. We became good friends then and I admired his work — very inspiring.

In the 1983 interview he said: “I’m really not into Gaspar Saladino-type logo lettering. He is terrific. I wouldn’t think of doing that type of lettering.”

From 1ST ISSUE SPECIAL #6, Sept 1975, DC Comics

This is the only cover logo I’ve found which I believe was designed by Costanza, perhaps from a layout by Jack Kirby.

From YOUNG ROMANCE #197, Jan-Feb 1974, DC Comics

No lettering, but that’s John’s picture on this text page. In the 1983 interview, John reported: “They used a photograph of my face for the romance books. They used to call it Marc – On the Man’s Side. It was sort of a male ‘Dear Abby.’ But I had nothing to do with it outside of their using my photograph.”

From GRIMM’S GHOST STORIES #26, Sept 1975, Western Publishing

Costanza did all kinds of lettering work, including Hostess Twinkies ads like this for several publishers. Here you can see he’s arrived at the rounder letters he would use for the rest of his pen lettering career. John also reported in the interviews that in addition to lots of art and lettering for Western, including a favorite series called CRACKY, he did art for Marvel, Peter Pan Industries, National Lampoon and others.

From CAPTAIN AMERICA #200, Aug 1976, Marvel

On this title, John worked with Jack Kirby again, and finally was able to letter in his own credit, which must have been gratifying. Costanza was lettering more for Marvel than for DC in the 1970s.

From SECRETS OF HAUNTED HOUSE #41, Oct 1981, DC Comics

But in the 1980s, John returned to do more for DC again. In the 1983 interview he said:

I’ve just signed a three-year contract to letter exclusively for them. They are very good about keeping me busy. DC has really changed — right from the unsung heroes of the production department all the way up to the real Wonder Woman, Jenette Kahn. They are all terrific — to me, anyway. [Regular assignments are] AMETHYST, LEGION OF SUPER-HEROES, RONIN, OMEGA MEN. I do a lot of Len Wein’s books like SWAMP THING. They are pretty good books.

John Costanza, from the 1983 interview in Comics Interview #5, photo by Ron FontesFrom CAMELOT 3000 #1, Dec 1982, DC Comics

John was there for the resurgence of DC into the new direct market with titles like this, one of the first on better paper that allowed his lettering to be seen more clearly.

From THE SAGA OF THE SWAMP THING #21, Feb 1984, DC Comics

John was also tapped to letter most of Alan Moore’s stories in THE SAGA OF THE SWAMP THING, marking the rise of Alan’s star in America. The title and credits in the body parts here were designed by penciller Stephen Bissette, but beautifully lettered by Costanza.

From THE SAGA OF THE SWAMP THING #36, May 1985, DC Comics, image courtesy of Heritage Auctions

Moore was always interesting in pushing boundaries, and he probably asked for these character-specific ragged captions, which Costanza realized perfectly.

From BATMAN: THE DARK KNIGHT RETURNS #3, Aug 1986, DC Comics, image courtesy of Heritage Auctions

John’s sound effects had a chance to shine in this high-profile project with writer/penciler Frank Miller, and again he came through with fine work.

From ANIMAL MAN #2, Oct 1988, DC Comics

John’s lettering was popular at DC, and a favorite of editor Karen Berger on the books for older readers that would soon become the basis for her Vertigo imprint. This story title is typical of his work at the time, done freehand with lots of interesting shapes and bounce.

From CONAN THE BARBARIAN #273, Oct 1993, Marvel

In the early 1990s, digital lettering had begun to make inroads at Marvel Comics, and John decided he needed to keep up with that trend. He created fonts from his own lettering around 1992 and used them at Marvel through the rest of the decade, though at DC he was still doing pen lettering. John’s font is pretty similar to his pen lettering, but notice he doesn’t have a serif I to use for the personal pronoun I. The lettering is a little stiff, and the balloon shapes are too perfectly oval, but most readers wouldn’t notice those things, and it works well enough. I think at the time this was done, Costanza would have been printing out the lettering and pasting it on the art, but I’m not sure. Marvel began moving to an all-digital workflow by the mid 1990s. DC Comics did not follow that trend until 2002.

From DISNEY ADVENTURES Vol 6 #7, May 1996, image © Disney

John used his font for lettering at Disney Comics, where I believe he also did some art.

From LOONEY TUNES #55, Aug 1999, DC Comics

At DC, John was able to keep doing pen lettering for a few more years, on humor titles like this as well as many others.

John Costanza, 1999, from Comic Book Artist Collection Volume 2,

In the 1999 interview, when asked by Jim Amash what makes a good letterer, John said:

Discipline, hard work — I don’t know. Some might say a computer and a load of fonts — it seems like anybody can letter these days. I don’t want to sound as if I’m down on computers, because I’m not; I use computers myself. All the work I do for Marvel is completely done on a computer. But there’s nothing like doing it directly on the boards — and when it’s done you have an original piece of comic art with all the empty spaces for balloons and captions filled in. It’s just my opinion. By the way, all my lettering for DC is hand-lettered with the exception of an occasional special project. Thanks, DC.

From SIMPSONS COMICS #196, Nov 2012, Bongo

Costanza’s talent for humor art found a home at Bongo in the 2000s, where he was adept at working in the Matt Groening style of the popular Simpsons cartoons. This is the latest example of that I could find. Some time after this, John dropped out of comics. Perhaps he decided to retire, I haven’t been able to contact him to ask. After more than forty years with his nose to the grindstone, John is certainly entitled to a rest, and I hope he’s enjoying it. Fans of his lettering and art, including myself, have admired his work for decades, and will long continue to do so.

The post JOHN COSTANZA – Letterer and Artist appeared first on Todd's Blog.

JOHN COSTANZA – Letter and Artist

Written, drawn, and lettered by Costanza, from G.I. COMBAT #133, Jan 1969. This and all DC art © DC Comics

In the late 1960s, a new letterer was brought into the field by Joe Kubert, and he began a prolific career at DC, Marvel, Western, and other publishers as both a letterer and an artist of humorous and funny animal stories and cartoons. He was one of the busiest guys in comics from the 1970s through the 1990s.

John Costanza, Dover High School Yearbook, 1961

John Costanza was born Aug 14, 1943 in Dover, New Jersey to an Italian father and a Puerto Rican mother, John and Teresa. In a 1983 interview with David Anthony Kraft in Comics Interview #5 (June 1983, Fictioneer Books), John remembered:

I have been drawing children’s stuff ever since I was a young boy and worked in my grandfather’s barber shop. I would be in the back room drawing pictures on paper bags. That’s the beginning of my success story. My grandfather would hang them up over the cash register. He was the first one to give me any kind of encouragement.

John graduated from Dover High School in 1961. He was soon in the Air Force, stationed in Berlin during the Berlin Crisis. In 1963 he married Mary Lee Calenti and they eventually had three sons: Neil, Brian, and Kevin. In a 1999 interview with Jim Amash in Comic Book Artist Collection Volume 2 (2002, TwoMorrows), John said:

The only art training I had, aside from my high school art classes, was a correspondence course that I took right after I got discharged from the military. It was Norman Rockwell’s Famous Artist course. I was married and had one son at the time and that was all I could afford. I was a jet engine mechanic in the Air Force. I would draw all the time — caricatures of other G.I.s and cartoons of pilots ejecting out of aircraft. I even got to do some safety posters for my base when I was reassigned to New Mexico. I always knew I wanted to draw for a living, and I knew I wanted to draw humor. But I had no idea how to get into the business.

From Tales of the Green Berets Daily, Oct 17 1967, image © Chicago Tribune Syndicate, image courtesy of Heritage Auctions

Then the opportunity of a lifetime came along. My wife had a friend who had a beauty salon and had a customer whose husband was a comic book artist. He was looking for an assistant to help him on a comic strip called [Tales of] The Green Berets. That man was Joe Kubert. I made an appointment to meet with Joe at his house, and I remember being nervous as hell, but we got along fine. One of my jobs was going to be to letter the strip — so he was the one who taught me how to letter. He was a great teacher and a lot of fun to be around.

From G.I. COMBAT #139, Dec 1969-Jan 1970, DC Comics

When Joe left the strip to return to DC as an editor/artist for the war titles in 1968, he took John with him. In the 1999 interview, John said:

[Joe] offered to introduce me to Carmine Infantino, who was head of the comics group at the time. Carmine and the production department were looking for a letterer who could come in and work in-house every day. They offered me the job after meeting with me, and I accepted, and I quit my regular job. My first editor was Joe Kubert, naturally, and I worked on most of his books — he was and still is a great guy. Some other great guys were Joe Orlando — being a MAD reader, I recognized Joe Orlando’s name and was blown away at the opportunity to meet him — there was Julie Schwartz, Murray Boltinoff and Mort Weisinger. I went into the office every day. I worked in the production department but I worked as a freelancer — I just occupied a drawing table there.

That position of staff letterer had been filled by Ira Schnapp for about 20 years, but he had recently been retired. Gaspar Saladino would have been the next likely one for the job, but he was already very busy freelancing and working at home for DC, which is why they hired Costanza. I think he was the last one to take that position, before and after that there were always letterers in the production department, but they did other production work during their staff hours and lettered at home most of the time. In addition to lettering for DC, John did short humor pieces for Joe Kubert like the one at the top of this article, and he was soon also doing funny animal art elsewhere.

From TOM AND JERRY #285, Aug 1974, Western Publishing

In the 1999 interview, John said:

Someone gave me a name of an editor up at Western Publishing who was looking for someone to pencil a small comic book, one of those giveaway books. I believe it was for Kinney Shoes. I called and met with Paul Kuhn who gave me my first penciling job drawing Smokey Bear. I’ve done a lot of work for them over the years.

I wasn’t able to find any of John’s Smokey Bear work, but above is another Western comic he drew and lettered.

From GREEN LANTERN #76, April 1970

Costanza lettered all kinds of comics for DC, including the ground-breaking run of Green Lantern/Green Arrow stories written by Denny O’Neil with art by Neal Adams. DC was not yet crediting letterers, so readers didn’t know his name, but his work is excellent.

From BATMAN #226, Nov 1970

John’s was a fast letterer, and his work was soon appearing in many DC titles like this one. The loss of Ira Schnapp meant there was room for someone new, and Costanza filled that role well, though he shared it with another letterer, Ben Oda.

From NEW GODS #1, Feb-March 1971

When Jack Kirby arrived at DC in 1971, John was assigned to Kirby’s Fourth World titles, at least for a while until Kirby hired his own letterers in California, where Kirby was then living. Notice that reversed page number 13 at lower right? John did that to secretly mark longer stories he lettered. In the 1999 interview he said:

I don’t remember exactly what made me start inverting the page #13. I guess it’s probably because Marvel used to give the talent credits in their books — and to make things even worse, they gave each one a special little Marvel name like “Jazzy” John Romita. I wanted one of those names, and when I went to work for Marvel later on, Stan Lee gave me one: “Gentle” John Costanza! I got to use it once before they discontinued that practice.

From THE ADVENTURES OF JERRY LEWIS #123, March-April 1971

I think John’s lettering is particularly good on humor titles like this one, which he had a natural affinity for. The note written by sidekick child Renfrew is nicely done, and I love the story title.

From MISTER MIRACLE #1, March-April 1971

Out the same month was this Jack Kirby classic with fine lettering by John. The story title is typical of John’s work at the time, casual yet appealing. 

From SICK #82, March 1971, Hewfred Publications

Here’s a side of John Costanza’s art few know, in the style of Jack Davis for MAD imitator SICK. In the 1999 interview, John said, “I just called them up and made an appointment to see a gentleman named Paul Lakin who gave me jobs he would write.” In the 1983 interview, John reported: “Jack Davis was a big influence on me. So was Mort Drucker. But I would just stare at Davis’ stuff and put myself into his situation. That is more or less how I trained myself.”

From NEW GODS #4, Aug-Sept 1971, image courtesy of Heritage Auctions

A closer look at some of Costanza’s early lettering for DC. He used a pen nib with a slight wedge, and the letters are angular, but also with a little bounce and beginning to show the curves he would use more later. The sound effects are a little looser and well-drawn. The balloon shapes, which I remember seeing John draw easily freehand, are almost perfect curves.

From DAREDEVIL #81, Nov 1971, this and all Marvel images © MarvelFrom SUB-MARINER #43, Nov 1971, Marvel

As if he wasn’t busy enough, John began lettering for Marvel Comics in 1971, at first using the pen name Jon Costa. The titles on both these stories are well done. I think he was no longer working in the DC production department by that time and therefore able to letter more easily for companies other than DC, following in the footsteps of Gaspar Saladino in that regard. It wasn’t something DC liked, but if you were good enough and kept turning in assignments on time, there wasn’t any reason for them to complain. John was certainly fast enough to make it work. In the 1983 interview, John said:

An average page can take twenty to thirty minutes, but you can get into a page that can take you up to an hour. In order to get out the amount of lettering that I do, I am working constantly. My days are pretty long. I’ll work at night and I’ll work on weekends on the children’s stuff — but, to me, that isn’t work, when I go into my artwork. I enjoy that and it keeps me going.

From THE INCREDIBLE HULK #156 and JUNGLE ACTION #1, Oct 1972, Marvel

While Gaspar Saladino was lettering most of the covers at DC, at Marvel Costanza did some in the early 1970s before Gaspar and Danny Crespi began to dominate that specialty at Marvel. I think John’s cover lettering is excellent, with strong balloons and effective captions, but he told me he was never comfortable with that kind of high-profile work. In the 1999 interview, Costanza said:

Gaspar Saladino did all the cover copy and logos [at DC] at the time. He would come in a couple times a week and sit at his table next to mine and do his thing. We became good friends then and I admired his work — very inspiring.

In the 1983 interview he said: “I’m really not into Gaspar Saladino-type logo lettering. He is terrific. I wouldn’t think of doing that type of lettering.”

From 1ST ISSUE SPECIAL #6, Sept 1975, DC Comics

This is the only cover logo I’ve found which I believe was designed by Costanza, perhaps from a layout by Jack Kirby.

From YOUNG ROMANCE #197, Jan-Feb 1974, DC Comics

No lettering, but that’s John’s picture on this text page. In the 1983 interview, John reported: “They used a photograph of my face for the romance books. They used to call it Marc – On the Man’s Side. It was sort of a male ‘Dear Abby.’ But I had nothing to do with it outside of their using my photograph.”

From GRIMM’S GHOST STORIES #26, Sept 1975, Western Publishing

Costanza did all kinds of lettering work, including Hostess Twinkies ads like this for several publishers. Here you can see he’s arrived at the rounder letters he would use for the rest of his pen lettering career. John also reported in the interviews that in addition to lots of art and lettering for Western, including a favorite series called CRACKY, he did art for Marvel, Peter Pan Industries, National Lampoon and others.

From CAPTAIN AMERICA #200, Aug 1976, Marvel

On this title, John worked with Jack Kirby again, and finally was able to letter in his own credit, which must have been gratifying. Costanza was lettering more for Marvel than for DC in the 1970s.

From SECRETS OF HAUNTED HOUSE #41, Oct 1981, DC Comics

But in the 1980s, John returned to do more for DC again. In the 1983 interview he said:

I’ve just signed a three-year contract to letter exclusively for them. They are very good about keeping me busy. DC has really changed — right from the unsung heroes of the production department all the way up to the real Wonder Woman, Jenette Kahn. They are all terrific — to me, anyway. [Regular assignments are] AMETHYST, LEGION OF SUPER-HEROES, RONIN, OMEGA MEN. I do a lot of Len Wein’s books like SWAMP THING. They are pretty good books.

John Costanza, from the 1983 interview in Comics Interview #5, photo by Ron FontesFrom CAMELOT 3000 #1, Dec 1982, DC Comics

John was there for the resurgence of DC into the new direct market with titles like this, one of the first on better paper that allowed his lettering to be seen more clearly.

From THE SAGA OF THE SWAMP THING #21, Feb 1984, DC Comics

John was also tapped to letter most of Alan Moore’s stories in THE SAGA OF THE SWAMP THING, marking the rise of Alan’s star in America. The title and credits in the body parts here were designed by penciller Stephen Bissette, but beautifully lettered by Costanza.

From THE SAGA OF THE SWAMP THING #36, May 1985, DC Comics, image courtesy of Heritage Auctions

Moore was always interesting in pushing boundaries, and he probably asked for these character-specific ragged captions, which Costanza realized perfectly.

From BATMAN: THE DARK KNIGHT RETURNS #3, Aug 1986, DC Comics, image courtesy of Heritage Auctions

John’s sound effects had a chance to shine in this high-profile project with writer/penciler Frank Miller, and again he came through with fine work.

From ANIMAL MAN #2, Oct 1988, DC Comics

John’s lettering was popular at DC, and a favorite of editor Karen Berger on the books for older readers that would soon become the basis for her Vertigo imprint. This story title is typical of his work at the time, done freehand with lots of interesting shapes and bounce.

From CONAN THE BARBARIAN #273, Oct 1993, Marvel

In the early 1990s, digital lettering had begun to make inroads at Marvel Comics, and John decided he needed to keep up with that trend. He created fonts from his own lettering around 1992 and used them at Marvel through the rest of the decade, though at DC he was still doing pen lettering. John’s font is pretty similar to his pen lettering, but notice he doesn’t have a serif I to use for the personal pronoun I. The lettering is a little stiff, and the balloon shapes are too perfectly oval, but most readers wouldn’t notice those things, and it works well enough. I think at the time this was done, Costanza would have been printing out the lettering and pasting it on the art, but I’m not sure. Marvel began moving to an all-digital workflow by the mid 1990s. DC Comics did not follow that trend until 2002.

From DISNEY ADVENTURES Vol 6 #7, May 1996, image © Disney

John used his font for lettering at Disney Comics, where I believe he also did some art.

From LOONEY TUNES #55, Aug 1999, DC Comics

At DC, John was able to keep doing pen lettering for a few more years, on humor titles like this as well as many others.

John Costanza, 1999, from Comic Book Artist Collection Volume 2,

In the 1999 interview, when asked by Jim Amash what makes a good letterer, John said:

Discipline, hard work — I don’t know. Some might say a computer and a load of fonts — it seems like anybody can letter these days. I don’t want to sound as if I’m down on computers, because I’m not; I use computers myself. All the work I do for Marvel is completely done on a computer. But there’s nothing like doing it directly on the boards — and when it’s done you have an original piece of comic art with all the empty spaces for balloons and captions filled in. It’s just my opinion. By the way, all my lettering for DC is hand-lettered with the exception of an occasional special project. Thanks, DC.

From SIMPSONS COMICS #196, Nov 2012, Bongo

Costanza’s talent for humor art found a home at Bongo in the 2000s, where he was adept at working in the Matt Groening style of the popular Simpsons cartoons. This is the latest example of that I could find. Some time after this, John dropped out of comics. Perhaps he decided to retire, I haven’t been able to contact him to ask. After more than forty years with his nose to the grindstone, John is certainly entitled to a rest, and I hope he’s enjoying it. Fans of his lettering and art, including myself, have admired his work for decades, and will long continue to do so.

The post JOHN COSTANZA – Letter and Artist appeared first on Todd's Blog.

PEN LETTERING FOR COMICS

My drawing board. This and all photos © Todd Klein 2023 except as noted

I wrote at length on this subject in the book The DC Comics Guide to Coloring and Lettering (Watson-Guptill 2004, co-authored with Mark Chiarello), but that’s been out of print for about ten years now, so here’s a shorter article mostly written in 2020, the last time I picked up my pens and ink to letter.

From the earliest days of creating comics until the advent of all-digital art, the basic tools for artists and letterers remained essentially the same. You need a drawing board with a comfortable chair and an adjustable desk lamp, usually attached to the drawing board with screws or a clamp. You need a T-square to keep things aligned, large and small triangles, masking tape or pins to hold drawing paper, India ink, pens, brushes, pencils, erasers, something to hold clean rinsing water, a rag or paper towels and a wastebasket. There are other useful tools, but those are the basics.

Above is my drawing board and setup, essentially unchanged since I entered the comics business in 1977. (The board dates to the 1950s, the iron legs to the late 1800s, both were gifts.) I think it would look familiar to artists and letterers from any time in the twentieth century, aside from the TV for entertainment! I’m left-handed, so natural light and lamp light is usually wanted from the right side, the opposite is true for right-handed people. Note that I’ve covered the central work area of the drawing board with a large piece of thick cardboard taped at the upper corners. Not necessary, but I like the texture better than the bare wood of my drawing board, and it can be changed periodically. To the right is a small table with drawers, also called a taboret, to store tools and supplies that won’t fit on the drawing board. A paper towel is taped to the lower right corner of the board and used for wiping pens and brushes (the one shown here was used mainly on coloring brushes). Replacements are in a roll on the wall.

Some of my frequently used tools.

A closer look at things I use often and keep on or near the drawing board. In the front are the oval and circle templates I use the most: a Pickett 4-in-1 Ellipse Inking Template #12621 and a Koh-i-noor Large Circle Template. The former is still available, the latter seems not to be, but any circle template would work. The end of my T-square is to the left of those. It has plastic edges so you can see what you’re doing better, and they’re slightly thinner than the central wood part so ink is less likely to bleed under the edge. Above that on the left is my large triangle, and the small triangle is right of it. I’ve added areas of doubled masking tape to create raised edges for the same reason as on the T-square. Just above the small triangle is a small French curve which has a similar masking tape addition. To the right of the small triangle is my favorite pencil, actually a lead holder, and my X-acto knife with number 11 blade. A favorite nib pen for lettering is behind the small triangle. To the right of that are a few markers and a ball-point pen which are not used for lettering in most cases, but there for sketching or writing. Just above the small triangle is my Ames Lettering Guide. On top of the large triangle is a brush for removing eraser crumbs, dust and dirt. Above that are my favorite technical drawing pens. To the right is an 18-inch wooden ruler with a raised metal edge for ruling ink lines and measuring. Above the technical pens, right of the lamp base in a red plastic cover is a compass with technical pen adapter for very large circles. There are several old soup cans full of extra pens, pencils, markers and other tools as well as a scissors. In front of them is a box of extra X-acto blades and a bottle of pen cleaner, then a small stapler. Right of that is a bottle of India ink. Next is a bottle of white correction paint, an eraser, a cup tray, a box of leads for the lead holder and a small calculator. Behind the ink and white paint is a regular tape dispenser, behind that is a lead pointer for sharpening the lead in the lead holder. Right of that is a paper clip holder, and behind that is a masking tape dispenser attached to the side of the drawing board. My large-base water mug is behind that on the taboret. Other small tools on the taboret are an eyedropper, a sharpening stone for pen nibs, and a staple remover. In a vertical bin are larger French curves and other templates and rulers. This is an accumulation of many years, and includes things I seldom use, but I thought it might be helpful as an example. I rarely letter things by hand now, but when I do, all the tools are ready, except that I have to clean the technical pens, often a difficult job.

Gillott’s Pens advertisement, 1897

In ancient times, writing with ink was done with a reed or quill (a flight feather from a large bird like a goose) cut to a point and generally split at the end to make ink flow easier. These pens were dipped into a pot of ink repeatedly, with each dip holding enough ink for a few words. Metal pen nibs have been traced to Roman times, but became common in the 1820s when steel nibs began to be mass produced in Birmingham, England by several companies including Joseph Gillott & Sons, whose nibs are still sold today. The steel nibs were held in a handle or holder made of wood, metal or other materials. Part of the nib design was an open area in the center which served as a small ink reservoir with a split from it descending to the point where ink was applied to paper, encouraging ink flow. Such pens were often called dip pens because of the frequent need to dip them in ink, or simply nib pens, and there was a wide variety of nib types, sizes and styles to suit every kind of writing, drawing, and lettering need. Before the invention of the typewriter, nib pens were used frequently in every home and business to write letters and keep accounts, as well as by artists, though the invention of mass market fountain pens with larger ink reservoirs starting in the 1850s replaced dip pens for writing letters for those who could afford them. Fountain pens did not work well with thicker drawing inks, though, so dip pens continued to be used by artists.

Full page and detail from Daniel T. Ames penmanship specimen book, 1883

While some artists were creating political cartoons and other drawings for magazines and newspapers, the precision of steel pen nibs gave birth to a new art form: penmanship. Practitioners like Daniel T. Ames created amazingly ornate official presentation documents and drawings, and artistic penmanship was taught in schools. A good penman could find work doing everything from wedding invitations to diplomas to stock certificates. A simpler version of penmanship survives today as calligraphy. Another common use for pen work was creating hand-lettered advertising for magazines, shop windows, store shelves, and businesses of all kinds. This was called “show-card” lettering, and it flourished for decades until it was gradually edged out by inexpensive phototype printing and photocopying starting in the 1950s. Instructional books on show-card lettering with many sample alphabets and how to draw them became available starting in the 1880s. Large show-card lettering and other big signs were painted with brushes, but the skill set was similar.

Speedball pen nibs in styles B, C, D, and A

In 1914, penman Ross F. George and show-card master William Hugh Gordon patented a new type of steel pen nib with a second piece of lighter metal attached to the top of the nib, creating a larger ink reservoir that allowed the user to produce more lettering before redipping the pen. This reservoir could also be filled with an ink bottle dropper for a more precise and less messy fill. Though it was soon imitated by other companies, The Gordon and Ross pens, marketed first under the “Speed-ball” name and produced by the C. Howard Hunt Manufacturing Company of Camden, New Jersey, soon became the leading seller of lettering pens for show-card and calligraphy work. By the early 1920s, Hunt was making Speedball pens in five basic styles: A – square tip, B – round tip, C – wedge tip, D – oval tip and E – larger brush pens with wide wedge tips. All came in a variety of sizes.

Speed-ball Textbook by Gordon & George, first edition, 1915

To promote their products, Gordon and George began selling a book showing how the pens worked, and offering instruction and alphabets. It was wildly popular and went through many editions and revisions, the most recent one I’ve seen being the 24th edition released in 2015. Gordon died in 1920 after selling his share of the copyrights to his partner Ross F. George, who was listed as the sole author after that, and the book was eventually taken over by the Hunt Pen Company and other authors. It remains a fine way to learn the basic techniques of hand-lettering, with each edition having unique alphabets and samples reflecting the time it was printed. Hunt also made smaller pen nibs (without the reservoir cover) fitting in smaller pen holders on the model of the Joseph Gillott “Crow Quill,” and marketed under the Hunt name. Most comics letterers used either Speedball or Hunt lettering pens to letter comics until the advent of digital lettering. 

Faber-Castell TG1-S technical drawing pens. Top row is the entire pen disassembled. From left to right: cap, point housing, point wire and weight, point cap, point holder, ink reservoir, pen body. Second row is a similar pen with the point assembled and the reservoir on the point holder. Bottom row is the point removal tool, a pen cap and the fully assembled pen.

The other lettering instruments I’ve used even more than nib pens are technical drawing pens. They came into wide use in the 1960s, first for architectural drawings and drafting. They work through capillary action and gravity: ink is pulled from the reservoir through the point and down a narrow tube to the tip, helped by a thin wire with a weight on the end. Shaking the pen up and down gently moves the wire through the tube, helping ink flow. At least, that’s the theory. Comics artists and letterers soon began using them too. They have pros and cons compared to nib pens. On the pro side, a reservoir filled with ink will last through several days of constant use, and it’s a cleaner tool than a dip pen, only the writing tip has any exposed ink. It makes an even, unvaried line the size of the tip, and points in many sizes are available from  0.13 millimeters to 2 millimeters. On the con side, if you don’t use it constantly the pen will get clogged with dried ink and is then difficult to clean. The point must be taken apart, and the thin wire inside is easy to damage, making the pen unusable. Technical pens also cost more than nib pens, and when lettering they have to be held more vertically to the paper, something not everyone likes.

That said, I always preferred them for lettering, and used them often throughout my pen-lettering years. The most common brand in the U.S. is Rapidograph, now made by Rotring. They work pretty well, but I’ve always preferred Faber Castell TG1-S. They used to be easy to find in America, but starting in the 1990s became scarce, so I had to buy them online from Europe. I do see them for sale again here at some U.S. art supply sites.

You’re probably wondering why I didn’t use markers for lettering, as they’re much easier to handle than either nib pens or tech pens. There were good reasons in the past: markers were often not waterproof, tended to bleed into art paper more than ink, and faded much more quickly. They were also harder to make corrections over, the ink usually bled through white correction paint. Marker lettering was banned at DC Comics when I worked there, but advances in markers have made them a more friendly option today. Recently I’ve started using Pigma Micron markers for sketches and convention lettering, and the ink seems nearly as good as India ink on all counts. You can’t quite get the same crisp detail as with technical pens, but otherwise they’re a viable option especially if you’re doing every part of making comics yourself. Other markers for artists are also spoken well of, though I haven’t tried them.

My most-used lettering tools. Top left, a battered Ames Lettering Guide, below that Pro White correction paint and Calli Jet Black India Ink number 010. Right of that are Faber Castell TG1-S technical drawing pens sizes 2 and 2.5 (0.5 and 0.7 mm), a Speedball C-6 nib and pen holder, a Winsor & Newton Series 7 Sable brush size 3 for ink, and a Winsor & Newton University Series 233 size 4 brush for white paint. (Not shown, I also frequently used tech pen sizes 0, 1, 3 and 4.) Below, my lead holder and extra leads.

The next most important lettering tool after pens is ink. It must be dense black and waterproof. India ink made from soot or lampblack, water and other liquids is best. It must hold up well to erasing because hand-lettering is often done over penciled comics art or at least penciled guidelines. It must also be able to flow through pens without frequent clogging. In 1977, when I started lettering, the favorite ink was Higgins Black Magic, and most letterers used it exclusively, but around the end of the 1980s Higgins changed the formula, making the ink too gray. Once all the old stock was depleted, letterers needed to find a replacement. I bought lots of ink brands and types and did testing in the early 1990s, and the one I liked best was Daler-Rowney’s Calli #010. I bought a large supply of it and have used it since. More recently I’ve tried another Higgins ink, Super-Black, and liked that nearly as well, and for all I know their Black Magic ink may be improved and working fine again. I haven’t tried it in many years.

For painting over mistakes, I use Daler-Rowney Pro White correction paint. It’s not particularly easy to letter over, but it does cover well and is durable when dry. I like to let the entire jar dry out and then mix a little water in on top when I use it. Other brands no longer available were better, that’s the best one I know of now. Winsor & Newton brushes are my choice for black ink to fill large areas or occasionally to make large letters, and for white paint. They’re expensive, but last a long time if cleaned well with soap and water, and are worth the price in my opinion. You also need an eraser. I like Prismacolor Magic Rub, but others work fine too.

Any pencil can be used for lettering layouts and guidelines, but I prefer a Berol Turquoise lead holder, shown with extra leads. To sharpen it you need their lead pointer. A clamp at the drawing end holds the lead securely and is released by the red button to let more lead out when needed. It sharpens to a finer point than most pencils, and holds that point longer. Leads come in many hardness levels. I like 2H, about mid-range.

Comic Book Lettering, first printed in Comics Scene #3, May 1982, © Todd Klein

The one remaining important tool is the Ames Lettering Guide, which is featured in my how-to art above. I should point out that there are other ways to use it, I’ve illustrated the way I use it. In case it’s not clear, the central disk rotates to give shorter and taller spacing to the guidelines, a brilliant idea.

Oscar Anton Olson, from from the 1938 Iowa State College yearbook, The Bomb, courtesy of Alex Jay

Oscar Anton Olson, the Ames Guide inventor, was born December 12, 1883 in Tonsburg, Norway and arrived in America soon after. He graduated from Iowa State College in 1908 and earned a Mechanical Engineering degree in 1914. Olson was living in Ames, Iowa with his wife Goldie by 1915, and teaching Engineering Drawing at Iowa State College by 1920. He continued to teach there for many years. He created his device for making lettering guidelines and founded the O. A. Olson Manufacturing Company in 1919 to produce them, which he did in the basement of his home, employing several generations of college students and their wives for assembly, packing and shipping. The Ames Guide sold well around the world. The first version had a U-shaped metal bar holding the rotating plastic wheel, the all-plastic version shown above was a later design. Olson died in 1971, the device continued to be made by his family for decades. New versions are available with several brand names, but the design is unchanged. It’s hard to top perfection. (Thanks to Alex Jay for research help, see his blog article HERE.)

When I was lettering comics for DC and other companies, it was usually over penciled art, so I had no say in the paper used, and paper type is important to letterers and inkers. Paper for printing is generally made from wood fiber with the cheapest kind being newsprint, used for newspapers and once for all comic books. It’s high in acid and turns brown and brittle over time. Better quality papers are now used for most comics, but it still is mainly wood fiber. Drawing paper was once 100% cotton fiber or rag content, which is durable and acid free, but over time the rag content declined as it became scarce and expensive. Today a mix of cotton fiber and cotton linters are used to make the best drawing paper, such as the 500 series from Strathmore. Lesser quality papers may have wood or other less durable fiber in them and are more prone to decay from acid and browning. PH neutral or acid-free paper is always best if you want your work to last a long time. Another factor is sizing, a layer of starch put on the paper surface in manufacturing. This keeps ink from bleeding and spreading randomly into the paper fibers making a mess for letterers and inkers. High quality drawing paper should not have this problem. Drawing paper comes with different surfaces and in different thicknesses. I prefer the smoothest 2-ply or 3-ply Bristol for lettering, called plate finish. Many artists like more texture. For lettering over painted or already inked art, I often used vellum, which is a thick translucent tracing paper. I taped a sheet over the art, or a photocopy of the art and the lettering and art was combined later in various ways. Today the best way would be to scan the art and lettering separately and combine them digitally. If you are making comics yourself, invest in good paper!

Original art photographed at the same size: Prince Valiant by Hal Foster, Jan 16 1949, © King Features Syndicate; Jimmy Olsen #30 page by Dick Sprang & Ray Burnley, Aug 1958; and The Sandman #49 page by Jill Thompson, May 1993, © DC Comics.

The sizes of original art have varied and changed over time since comics began. Some newspaper strips, like Prince Valiant, had huge art. The large panel in the example, only two-thirds of the entire Sunday comic strip page, is 24.6 inches wide. Early comic book art was often drawn at twice the printed size, or “twice up.” The live area or art size in the JIMMY OLSEN page in the example is 13 inches wide. A few years later, artist Murphy Anderson convinced DC to let artists work “one and a half up,” or 150% of printed size, and other companies soon followed. It saved paper, and the pages were easier to photograph for reproduction. The art paper for The Sandman #49 page is 11 inches wide, but the trim area (the size of the printed comic page) on that art is 10 inches wide. The width of a modern printed comic is 6.625 inches, so the art is very close to 150% of printed size. Letterers working on the old, larger size art were lettering bigger than what I was doing for much of my career, though I did occasional jobs with larger art. I’ve heard that some artists and letterers had a hard time adjusting to working smaller. In general comics art is — and should be — reduced from original size for printing. It makes everything look better and cleaner, hiding tiny imperfections in each ink line, whether by the artist or the letterer.

So, do you want to try this? Gather your tools and supplies, tape a fresh page of art paper to your drawing board, draw some guide lines with the Ames Guide, and jump in. Lettering is a craft that can be learned. It takes lots of practice and patience. You have to stick with it, and if you find you don’t enjoy it, pen lettering may not be for you. Give it time, though, and see if you improve with practice. Some people have a natural talent for lettering and love doing it, and some don’t. In my experience, many comics artists don’t like to letter, and that’s one reason why I have a career, but even if you don’t plan to do it regularly, try it out. The experience will help you be a better comics creator, and if you’re working with a letterer, it will help you understand what they need from you, even if they’re lettering digitally.

Lettering samples. Top section and left balloon made with tech pens, middle section and right balloon made with nib pens.

These samples were done in 2020. My pen lettering was already seldom used, and my skills somewhat rusty, but I think they turned out okay. Note that I’ve done two versions of the letter “I,” one with serifs or “crossbars,” one without. The serif “I” is used only for the personal pronoun and contractions such as I’m and I’ll. The plain or sans-serif “I” is used everywhere else in comics lettering as I do it. I’ve added a few punctuation marks that are common in comics. Those pairs of three lines pointing toward a central spot are used around words that are meant to be mostly air like GASP, OOF and SIGH. They have many amusing names such as “roach legs,” but I call them “breath marks.” I believe they started as parentheses in comic strips, then became dashed or broken parentheses, and finally the form shown here. They’re symbols unique to comics. A double dash is often used to indicate an interruption in speech, and came from typewritten scripts where the double dash is used in place of a long or em-dash. An ellipsis or three dots is used in comics to show a pause or delay in speech or thought. Both these marks often come at the end of one balloon or caption and the beginning of the next one when the same person is talking. Below are more details on how I created these samples.

Tech pens need to be held more vertically than nib pens to get even ink flow, as seen in A. The heel of the hand rests on the drawing board or paper for stability. Since I’m left-handed I used to often begin at the lower right and work to the upper left of a comics page to avoid smearing the ink.

B has samples made with sizes 2 and 2.5 TG1-S tech pens. I probably should have gone to size 3 for more contrast on the bold italic samples, what you would use for emphasized words.

C shows letters made with a Speedball C-6 wedge nib, giving the letters an appealing variety of thick and thin strokes depending on the direction. Nib pens are held at more of an angle for good ink flow. I could have filed the tip a bit on my sharpening stone to get a wider wedge that would give more contrast between thick and thin strokes, but I generally like it as seen here.

D has has samples made with a Speedball FB-5 nib that has been sanded down on a sharpening stone to get the line size I wanted. FB or Flicker nibs were added by Hunt in 1946. It’s kind of a cheat to even show one, as they were discontinued by the early 1980s…

…but I still have some and use them. E shows what made the FB nibs different: the reservoir has two parts, on the top and bottom of the basic nib, and they open with a hinged action for easier cleaning. This was a great idea, but the mechanism was fragile and didn’t hold up as well as regular Speedball nibs.

F shows the C-6 and FB-5 pens used next to a Hunt #107, a much smaller nib in a smaller holder favored by many letterers. It also has a slight wedge tip that could be modified to the user’s liking with a sharpening stone. I tried it at times but didn’t like all that dipping! The Hunt 107 point was the favorite of many Marvel letterers, here’s a description of how Rick Parker prepared them, he began working in the Marvel Bullpen and lettering there in January 1977 (thanks, Rick!):

I used a Hunt 107 point for the thick and thin lettering. I clipped the tip with scissors, just a tiny bit and at a slight angle, and smoothed it down on wet/dry Emory paper by writing the word JOHNSON and SPORTS over and over again (those two words had all the movements of the alphabet) and then on a piece of glass wet with my own spit (gross, huh?). For the bold lettering I used an A-5 Speedball point straight out of the box and later a B-6 and sometimes an FB-6 Flicker point. For extra bold I used a B-5½ and a B-5. For borders I used a Rapidograph tech pen. My Ames Guide was usually set to 3.25 or 3.5 and for the Spider-Man and Hulk newspaper strips which I did for a time, I set it at 4. One’s goal should be to do everything the same every time, including the amount of ink in the ink jar, so that when you are working the only variable is you.

When lettering a word balloon (the generic term for all balloon types including speech balloons), center the words in several lines with the longest lines in the center to roughly fill an oval shape. Note that perfect centering is difficult, and not necessary. 

Draw the balloon shape in pencil as a guide. Again, it doesn’t need to be perfect. Plan on about an average letter’s space between the balloon and the lettering on all sides.

Some letterers were able to make handsome oval shapes freehand, but I was never good at it, so a few years into my career I started using oval and circle templates. The trick to making them look right was often to use different ovals for the sides than I did for the top and bottom parts of the balloon. I’m doing the balloon sides here with an oval that’s close to round, and using a tech pen for an even line.

The sides are done, now the rest.

Now a much less round oval is used for the top and bottom. The joins to the sides aren’t perfect, but close enough, and that improves with practice. For very wide or large balloons, a French curve was used on the longer sides.

On the bottom I left a gap for the tail, and drew that in freehand. The older style of word balloons with large scallops were easier to ink freehand with a wedge-tipped nib, and thought balloons were easier still. It’s possible but difficult to ink balloon borders with a nib pen using templates. I rarely did. This border was done with a number 2 tech pen.

These letters are made with dip pens, and the contrast between the regular letters and the bold italic ones for emphasis is greater. Just the way it turned out with the pen nibs I used.

Again, I roughly penciled in the balloon shape. 

I might have used my small triangle to ink the straight edges of the burst points, but opted to do it freehand with my no. 2 tech pen. That was faster, and in this case worked fine.

Outline finished. I curved the tail more to make it different from the points of the burst.

To add emphasis and energy, I added more ink outside the borders to thicken them with a rough edge. Note that in any open shape such as balloons, sound effects or titles, the inner white space is the most important to get right. If that looks good, anything added to the outside will too.

The finished burst. I used the tech pen to add sharpness to the points, and straightened a few inside lines that were too curved. You can easily spend too much time on this kind of thing, always remember it will be reduced for printing, and the finest details will disappear anyway.

Other kinds of word balloons you might need include thought, whisper, telepathic, radio, alien, robot, wobbly, and rough as well as different styles of captions. Alternate alphabets and styles may be useful for specific characters or situations, but use them sparingly, always striving for clarity and readability. Study the work of letterers you like to see how they handle things. Quality scans of original comics art is much more available online for study today than it was when I began, though I had plenty of real examples to look at in the DC offices, where I worked for ten years.

Another thing to study is balloon placement. Until the 1960s, most comics artists worked from full scripts with all the balloon and caption dialogue included. Artists were expected to pencil in all those words on their art for the letterer to follow, and everyone could see about how much space it would take. At Marvel Comics, Stan Lee started a new system where artists worked from a simple plot outline or basic story idea, and dialogue was added after the art was penciled. As this style grew in popularity, artists began to lose awareness of where and how much space to leave for lettering, creating a new set of problems for letterers. This continues today. Two or more characters speaking in a single panel is a prime candidate for placement problems. In English, normal reading is from left to right, then down in each panel and on each page. When two or more characters are talking in a panel, the first speaker should always be on the left, and the last speaker on the right. Artists should leave extra space if they need to go against that natural flow., and if possible, try to avoid too much back and forth between characters in a single panel.

Reading order across an entire page will follow the same plan of left to right, then down. This is easiest with rows of rectangular panels, stacks of wide rectangles or rows of very tall ones filling each page. Any other layout may create confusion for the reader. As an artist and letterer, your job is to make a clear reading path through the layout.

If necessary, overlap a balloon across panel borders to force the correct reading order. If space is tight in a particular panel, consider moving some dialogue or captions to the panel before or after to make it work. 

Compare these placements to the examples above, and see how the reader might get lost or read things in the wrong order. If all else fails, ask for script or art revisions. There’s only so much a letterer can do!

I hope this brief look at tools and techniques will get you started if you want to try pen lettering, and I recommend it to anyone who wants to be a comics creator. Even if digital lettering is what you want, experimenting with pen lettering can help you understand that process. Remember to be your own toughest critic, and strive to improve your work. If you do, you’ll be rewarded with improved lettering and better comics.

The post PEN LETTERING FOR COMICS appeared first on Todd's Blog.

Rereading: HIGH ROAD HOME by William Corbin

Nico La Flamme grew up on the streets of Paris during World War Two, on his own, living by his wits and stealing to stay alive along with many others like him. Now the boy has come to America, sponsored by a charity group, who has found foster parents for him in California. But Nico has other ideas, he wants to search for his real father, who may be a teacher in this huge country, but he has only a flimsy newspaper clipping and a journalist’s name to go on. Nico skips out of the hands of his minder in Chicago and begins his search. Soon he meets an American boy in a coffee shop who seems like a kindred spirit, Dud Hamilton, working dull jobs while he tries to get hired as a newspaper reporter. The two join forces for a while, helping each other, but Nico later decides he must continue on his own. Together and separately the boys cross the continent on freight trains and hitchhiking, facing danger and evading police, until at last they’re caught and Nico must face his arranged family. How can he explain his real hopes?

This is Corbin’s first book, and one of his best. The characters spring to life, America in the early 1950s is vivid and real, and the plot is both clever and heart-wrenching at times. Recommended if you can find it.

High Road Home by William Corbin

The post Rereading: HIGH ROAD HOME by William Corbin appeared first on Todd's Blog.

Rereading: THE PHANTOM OF WALKAWAY HILL by Edward Fenton

Illustrated by Jo Ann Stover

James lives with his dad in New York City. His best friends, his cousins Obie and Amanda, have recently moved with their parents to a house in the country a few hours north. James misses them, so when his aunt and uncle invite him to come and stay for the weekend, he’s thrilled. The three children like solving mysteries, and James is even more excited when Amanda writes that “something ominous is afoot!”

When James arrives, the household is in an uproar. A collie that belonged to the former owner, now deceased, is still on the property and has been impossible to catch. A dog catcher is there, and he also can’t get the dog, Maggie, and says the only way to remove her is to shoot her. The children won’t have that, so Maggie is left to roam free while James and his cousins explore the large old house and grounds, including outbuildings and a barn. Something odd does seem to be going on, things that should be there are missing, and Amanda swears she saw a mysterious “phantom” looking in the window one night. The barn is spooky and Maggie barks furiously when they go in, but nothing is seen.

Then a huge snowstorm hits, and the family and James are soon stuck in the house with no power or phone. Even Maggie is persuaded to come inside, and the youngest child, DeeDee, begins to make friends with her. Unused to the country, everyone works on figuring out how to survive the storm. What happens when its over is even more frightening.

I enjoyed rereading this, some of the plot turns were predictable, but the characters and setting are appealing. Recommended if you can find it.

The Phantom of Walkaway Hill by Edward Fenton

The post Rereading: THE PHANTOM OF WALKAWAY HILL by Edward Fenton appeared first on Todd's Blog.

IRA SCHNAPP – LETTERER

Superman House Ad, 1960, this and all comics images © DC Comics

Millions of comics fans knew and loved his work. For almost three decades he toiled anonymously for his employer, DC Comics, designing dozens of cover logos, lettering hundreds of covers and house ads as well as thousands of story pages, yet readers didn’t know his name or anything about him. Ira Schnapp received only two lettering credits for story pages in his lifetime, and none for any of his other work.

I’ve written many articles about Ira Schnapp on my blog, he’s one of my favorite letterers from the past. From 1940 to 1968 he essentially set the style for National/DC Comics. I loved his work as a child, but didn’t learn his name until I started working for DC myself in 1977. Beginning in 2014, fellow comics historian Alex Jay and myself have researched Ira’s life and work, and the results are in dozens of my blog articles, but what I didn’t have was a one-article summary of his story in brief. That’s what I’m presenting here, with links to other articles if you want more details.

Ira Schnapp, High School yearbook, 1913

Israel (Ira) Schnapp was born in the small town of Sassow, Austria, now known as Sasiv in the Ukraine, on October 10, 1894. A Jewish community began to grow in Sassow during the 1700s, but during the 1800s new laws restricting the kinds of jobs Jews could hold made Jewish life there more difficult and pushed many into poverty. Jews from the area began emigrating to the United States, and in 1895, Ira’s father Max was one of them. Max’s wife was Sadie, and they had five sons by then: Jacob, Samuel, Joseph, Ira and Moses. Three daughters: Lena, Sara and Minnie were born in New York. They first lived at 86 Ludlow Street in Manhattan’s Lower East Side, at the time home to a large Jewish immigrant community. Max Schnapp and his oldest son, Jacob, worked as grocers, and Max became a U.S. citizen in 1911, automatically granting citizenship to his wife and minor children, including Ira. The children went to New York’s Public School #188 near home, and Ira attended Stuyvesant High School on 15th Street west of First Avenue, Manhattan, about a 25-minute walk from home. 

Senior Class title by Ira from The Indicator Volume Nine, 1913

Nothing certain is known about Ira’s art training, but there’s evidence of it in The Indicator Volume Nine of 1913, his graduation yearbook, where he did a number of pen and ink titles that include lettering and art. Ira’s senior class entry calls him “He with the artistic temperament,” and shows he was in the Sketch Club from 1909 to 1912 as well as the Architectural Society in 1913.

Partial inscription on the Farley Post Office building, New York City, 2015, © Todd Klein

In his later years, Ira liked to talk about his involvement with the giant carved inscriptions on the Farley Post Office building on Manhattan’s 8th Avenue from 31st to 33rd Streets. Comics artist Neal Adams, who knew him then, told me Ira showed him some much-folded tissue or vellum paper that he unfolded and unfolded to reveal drawings of huge letters. They were some of the letters from the famous inscription that runs across the front of the building, “Neither snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of night stays these couriers from the swift completion of their appointed rounds.” The Farley Post Office was built from 1908 to 1912 and opened for business in 1914. The inscriptions were designed by the architects, McKim, Mead and White, and appear in their drawings. I believe that Ira was probably part of a team given the job of enlarging those drawings, using a grid pattern, onto the paper Ira showed Neal, and they were then transferred to the stones to be carved by stone masons. Ira was not a carver, but he had a hand in the process. It’s not known how he became involved in such an important project, but my best guess is through a teacher at his high school. The inscriptions on the building are in the style of Trajan’s Column in Rome, completed in 113 A.D., and the letters on it have long been used as a model for Roman capitals. You can see their influence in Ira’s high school title. I think working on that project set young Ira on a career path toward lettering and design.

Not much is known about Ira Schnapp’s work life from high school to 1940, but research by Alex Jay and myself has turned up some clues. On his World War One draft card in 1917, Ira gives his employer as the W.T. Slide Company at 115 East 23rd Street, Manhattan. That building at the time was home to several companies involved with making and distributing silent films, and I believe Ira was lettering title cards and intertitle cards for those films. In the 1920 census, Ira’s occupation is given as “Artist — Moving Pictures.” By the 1930 census, his job description is “Artist — Commercial Art.” That suggests Ira had become a freelance graphic artist and letterer, and I think he was doing show-card lettering, signs, and posters for businesses. Ira told Neal Adams he created lots of lettering for movie theaters in Manhattan, including huge lobby displays for films like King Kong, which premiered at New York’s Radio City Music Hall in March, 1933. Murphy Anderson, another comics artist who befriended Ira in his later years, said, “There were periods in the thirties when practically every movie house in Times Square had Ira Schnapp lettering on display somewhere!”

Super-Detective Stories, July 1935, Super MagazinesSpicy Adventure Stories, Dec 1938, Culture Publications

I believe Ira was also designing logos and doing cover lettering for pulp magazines, a popular form of mass entertainment at the time. One of the pulp magazine empires was owned by Harry Donenfeld and Jack Liebowitz before they started publishing comic books, under imprints like Spicy, Speed and Super, examples above. Ira knew Liebowitz, they were related by marriage, so it seems likely he might have asked Ira to work for him. I have no hard evidence, but some of the logos and lettering on the Donenfeld-Liebowitz pulp magazines, beginning around 1934, look like the work of Ira Schnapp to me. Much of this work combines elements of classic fonts like Trajan, Caslon and Old English with then-current Art Deco styles that Ira continued to reference throughout his career.

The Art of the Ages, The Blue Boy by Ira Schnapp, The Toledo Blade, February 27, 1940

Ira married his childhood sweetheart, Beatrice Schwadron in 1918, and they lived in several apartments in The Bronx. Their daughter Theresa was born in 1922, and their son Martin in 1930. In the 1930s, Ira and his family moved to West 110th Street in upper Manhattan, near many of his other relatives. Some time in the mid 1930s Ira undertook a personal project he probably hoped would help support him and his family, a series of newspaper articles called The Art of the Ages, where he made line and texture versions of famous paintings and their artists, with hand-lettered titles, and included informative typeset text. His signature is small at the bottom of the example. The feature was syndicated by Curtis Newspaper Features, Inc. starting in 1936, but has only been found in Ohio’s Toledo Blade, where it ran for 24 weeks from January to July, 1940. There the feature has no syndication information, and it’s not known how it got to the paper, The project was not a success. It’s the only time Schnapp received a byline.

Superman logos from issues 1, 2, and 4, 1939-40

In 1940, Harry Donenfeld’s comic book publishing company National Comics (now known as DC Comics) had a logo problem. Their wildly successful property, Superman, had spread to a new self-titled comic featuring all Superman stories, and the covers were being drawn by the co-creator, Joe Shuster. Joe had designed the Superman logo, but instead of doing it once and making copies to put on each cover, he was redrawing the logo on each cover with wildly differing results. This was not something the company wanted for their trademarked character, and they brought in Ira Schnapp to do a new version of the logo based on Shuster’s ideas.

From SUPERMAN #6, Sept-Oct 1940

Ira took elements from all the prior Shuster covers, standardized the width and shape of the letters, and made the telescoping (the extension into three dimensions) consistent, using accurate three-point perspective that Shuster had only guessed at. His redesign first appeared on the cover of SUPERMAN #6 in 1940, and it was exactly what the book, the character, and the company needed. It remained the standard logo for Superman until another revision in 1983, an amazing run of 43 years. It’s one of the most recognizable and well-known logos of the twentieth century. This was the beginning of Ira Schnapp’s long association with DC Comics. Some think that Ira also designed other earlier logos for the company like Action Comics and Detective Comics, but in the late 1960s Ira met a young fan, Michael Uslan, now the producer of Batman films, who recalled, “Ira loved that I was interested in the history of the industry and DC. He showed me many of his logos and was proudest of his classic trademarked Superman logo. I then assumed he designed every DC logo, but Ira said he did not do the ones before Superman.” As the 1940s rolled on, Ira did more and more work for DC, and by the late 1940s, Ira was the company’s main logo designer. If he had done nothing more than Superman, his reputation would have been assured, but Ira’s creativity continued to be called on for all kinds of logos.

Superboy and World’s Finest original logos by Schnapp from the DC files, 1949 and 1958

These original logos lettered in pen and ink on Bristol art paper reveal elements of Ira’s working process. Some areas are revised with white correction paint and reinked. They’re larger than the printed comics, but not a lot larger, about 11 and 8 inches wide respectively. Superboy is an all-new design, World’s Finest is a revision of an existing logo. If you look closely you can see some of Ira’s blue-pencil layout lines on the Superboy logo that he changed while inking, particularly in the letter Y. Below are some of my favorite Schnapp cover logos from 1949 to 1965.

While they show versatility and mastery of a wide range of styles for the different genres of comics published at the time, all these logos also share similarities of approach that connect them, the style and preferences of their designer, Ira Schnapp. I could easily do another group or two like this. All the cover lettering shown is by Ira too. As with others of my generation who were children in the 1950s and 1960s, Ira’s designs enticed us and we begged our parents to buy us those comics!

Ira Schnapp at DC Comics, 1955, photo by Martin Schnapp

Ira continued to live on West 110th Street in upper Manhattan. He had a studio address on West 42nd Street in the early 1940s, but much of the growing amount of work he was doing for National/DC Comics was done in his home, or in the DC offices at 480 Lexington Avenue between 46th and 47th Streets.

Some time in the late 1940s, with his children grown and off to college, Ira took a staff position at DC Comics, going in every day to work there. It’s not known if he was paid a salary, or paid by the job as a freelancer, but the amount of work he did for DC increased around that time. The rare photo above shows him working at his desk with lettering pens in ink bottles behind him. Ira was 61 in 1955, when the picture was taken by his son Marty, who I was able to locate and contact in 2015. Marty said this about his father: 

“He was a very caring, gentle, nice person. Nobody had a bad word to say about him. Growing up, my mother was the dominant person. My father would go along with it, and he took care of my mother very well. He was extremely modest. I remember him sitting at a desk, working at home. I remember him bringing me back comic books. Ira was very quiet at home. Very soft-spoken. He did painting and things like that. He didn’t talk about his work or school. I liked sports, my father really didn’t. I have no artistic ability. I never felt unhappy growing up. I never worried that we wouldn’t have money. Ira took care of the family. He was always there if I needed to ask him something, but that was it. I loved him as a son.” 

From MORE FUN COMICS #125, Aug 1947From DETECTIVE COMICS #161, July 1950

Ira’s lettering on story pages for DC began appearing in 1943, as best I can identify it, it’s possible he started earlier. Often it was a hard slog with far too much lettering on the page, as shown in the Batman and Robin story, but sometimes on humor, funny animal or the occasional fantasy tale like Jimminy, Ira was able to better use his creative talents. Ira lettered many thousands of pages and worked on practically every DC title and character at some point. A year by year overview is HERE. Ira was also assigned to letter the Superman newspaper strip in 1943, taking over from co-creator Joe Shuster’s brother Frank. He worked on the Batman newspaper strip starting in 1944.

From STAR SPANGLED WAR STORIES #131, Aug 1952From ACTION COMICS #252, May 1959From THE FLASH #123, Sept 1961

Ira’s cover lettering also began to appear in 1943 and increased year by year until, by 1949, he was lettering nearly all DC covers, many of which also featured his logos. That would be the case until Gaspar Saladino started getting some of that work in 1963, and there was a gradual passing of the baton by the time Ira left the company in 1968. Ira’s work for covers was done larger and more carefully, and used a variety of fonts mostly pulled from Ira’s classic and Art Deco favorites. Murphy Anderson told me that Ira would work out each balloon and caption on a separate piece of tracing paper first before lettering it on art paper to be pasted onto the cover art. Ira’s distinctive balloons and captions, though rather sedate, were loved by readers like myself, and it created a DC house style that was instantly recognizable on newsstands, which I think increased sales of new titles.

From STRANGE ADVENTURES #159, Dec 1963

Here’s a close look at Ira’s lettering from a STRANGE ADVENTURES cover that I used to own. Even at this large size it’s remarkably clean, even and regular, and the open title has an Art Deco flavor. Note Ira’s distinctive lower case “E” in that title, a style he used often. Perhaps Ira’s most creative work for DC was his many house ads, below are some of my favorites.

Once you opened 1950s and 1960s comics from DC and paged through them, it was impossible to miss the exciting house ads designed by Ira. I’ve found hundreds of these full-page ads designed to encourage readers to buy other titles from the company, as well as many half-page and third-page ones. Especially on the full-page ads, Ira was able to utilize his show-card lettering skills to make nearly any title and topic exciting. The copy or text of the ads was probably written by the editors, then it was up to Ira to sell it to readers, and he did a superb job. His house ads were so appealing they created frustration for comics fans who couldn’t find those comics! Note how masterful the layouts are, and the use of black. Ira’s talent was never so visible as here. It was his chance to shine.

DC House Ad from 1962 by Schnapp

In 1949, Ira revised the circular company logo known as the DC Bullet, as seen in the house ad above, with the previous version inset. 

Comics Code Seal courtesy of the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund

And in 1954, Ira designed the Comics Code Authority seal of approval that began appearing on the comics of many publishers that year and the next. It was the result of criticism being aimed at comics for content unsuitable for children, and was meant to assure parents the books overseen by the CCA would be child-appropriate. Ira’s DC Bullet appeared on every cover until 1970, and the code seal remained in use until the CCA was disbanded in 2011. The latter may be Ira’s best-known work after the Superman logo.

From THE INFERIOR FIVE #2, May-June 1967, with credits enlarged in insert, image courtesy of Mark Evanier

By 1965 Ira Schnapp had turned 71, an age when many have retired if they live so long, but Ira loved going to the DC offices, it provided him a social life, and as Neal Adams remembered, Ira loved telling stories about his career there. He was also infused with a strong work ethic and he enjoyed what he did, but his artistic abilities were in decline and his style was considered old-fashioned by some staffers. In 1967, DC’s Executive Vice President Irwin Donenfeld, son of Harry the company, appointed THE FLASH artist Carmine Infantino as Art Director, giving him say over all DC’s covers. Carmine soon became Editorial Director and then Publisher. One of the changes Carmine enacted was to gradually shift logo design, cover lettering and house ad work from Ira to a younger letterer, Gaspar Saladino, to give the company’s image a fresh look. Carmine kept Ira on for a while doing less important tasks and lettering story pages. In 1967, probably at the request of writer/editor E. Nelson Bridwell, Ira received his first lettering credit on issue #2 of THE INFERIOR FIVE, as seen above. Lettering his own name must have seemed very strange to Ira. He received one more such credit on a later issue.

In 1968 Ira was let go. As Neal Adams put it, that meant Ira was being sent home to die. Gaspar Saladino, who has described Ira as “Mr. DC,” said it was sad when he left. “It was as though he’d never been there at all.” Ira’s son Marty remembers his father dying suddenly of a heart attack on July 24, 1969 at Saint Luke’s Hospital in Manhattan, not far from the family home. He was 74. A brief obituary appeared in the New York Times on July 27, but did not mention Ira’s work. His death went unmarked by DC Comics. 

Ira remained mostly unknown to comics fans and readers until articles on the website Dial B for Blog by “Robby Reed” appeared in the early 2000s, and more from Alex Jay and myself in the 2010s brought his story to wider attention. In 2015, designer Arlen Schumer put on an exhibit of Ira’s work at the Type Director’s Club in New York City that brought publicity and legitimacy to Ira’s life work. Ira’s son Marty Schnapp, Alex Jay and myself were able to join Arlen there to celebrate the life of a man who had worked and died in obscurity, but one that comics fans will long remember for his talent.

More articles about Ira Schnapp on my blog:

IRA SCHNAPP, His Life, Work and Family Part 1  Part 2  Part 3  Part 4  Part 5  Part 6

Ira Schnapp and Pep Cereal

Ira Schnapp and the DC-Columbia Movie Serials

Ira Schnapp work in specific titles at DC:  ACTION COMICS Part 1  Part 2   A DATE WITH JUDY  ADVENTURE COMICS Part 1  Part 2   ALAN LADD   ALL-AMERICAN MEN OF WAR   ALL-AMERICAN COMICS ALL-AMERICAN WESTERN  ALL FUNNY COMICS     ALL-STAR COMICS   ALL-STAR WESTERN   ANIMAL ANTICS    AQUAMAN  THE ATOM  BATMAN Part 1   Part 2    Part 3   BIG TOWN  BLACKHAWK   BOB HOPE   BOMBA   BOY COMMANDOS  BRAVE AND BOLD   BUZZY   CAPT. STORM CHALLENGERS OF THE UNKNOWN  CHARLIE CHAN  COMIC CAVALCADE  CONGO BILL   DALE EVANS COMICS   DANGER TRAIL  DANIEL BOONE  DC ANNUALS   DEAN MARTIN & JERRY LEWIS   DETECTIVE COMICS Part 1  Part 2  DOBIE GILLIS  DODO & THE FROG   DOOM PATROL FALLING IN LOVE  FEATURE FILMS  THE FLASH  FLIPPITY & FLOP  FOX AND CROW  FRONTIER FIGHTERS  FUNNY FOLKS   FUNNY STUFF    GANG BUSTERS   G.I. COMBAT   GIRLS’ LOVE STORIES  GIRLS’ ROMANCES  GREEN LANTERN   HARVEY  HAWKMAN  HEART THROBS   HOPALONG CASSIDY  HOUSE OF MYSTERY   HOUSE OF SECRETS   HOWIE   INFERIOR FIVE  JACKIE GLEASON  JIMMY OLSEN  JIMMY WAKELY   JUSTICE LEAGUE  LEADING COMICS    LEAVE IT TO BINKY   LOIS LANE   METAL MEN   METAMORPHO  MISS BEVERLY HILLS   MISS MELODY LANE   MR. DISTRICT ATTORNEY   MORE FUN COMICS   MUTT & JEFF  MY GREATEST ADVENTURE  MYSTERY IN SPACE  NUTSY SQUIRREL   OUR ARMY AT WAR  OUR FIGHTING FORCES OZZIE & HARRIET  PAT BOONE  PETER PANDA  PETER PORKCHOPS  PHANTOM STRANGER PLASTIC MAN  PVT. DOBERMAN  RACCOON KIDS  REAL FACT COMICS   REAL SCREEN COMICS  REX THE WONDER DOG  RIP HUNTER TIME MASTER  ROBIN HOOD   ROMANCE TRAIL  RUDOLPH   SCRIBBLY   SEA DEVILS  SECRET HEARTS   SENSATION COMICS   SGT BILKO SHOWCASE  THE SPECTRE  STAR-SPANGLED COMICS   STAR-SPANGLED WAR STORIES STRANGE ADVENTURES   SUGAR AND SPIKE  SUPERBOY  SUPERMAN Part 1   Part 2   SWING WITH SCOOTER   TALES OF THE UNEXPECTED TEEN TITANS  THREE MOUSEKETEERS  TOMAHAWK   WESTERN COMICS   WONDER WOMAN  WORLD’S FINEST COMICS Part 1  Part 2 YOUNG LOVE  YOUNG ROMANCE

Ira Schnapp’s DC Ads: 1943-44  1945  1946  1947  1948  1949  1950  1951  1952  1953  1954  19551956  1957  1958  1959 Part 1  Part 2  1960 Part 1  Part 2  1961 Part 1  Part 2  1962 Part 1 Part 2 1963 Part 1 Part 2  1964 Part 1  Part 2  1965 Part 1  Part 2  1966 Part 1 Part 2 Part 3  1967 Part 1  Part 2  1968

Ira Schnapp’s Comics Logos: 1940-1945   1946-1947   1948   1949   1950-1951   1952-1953   1954-1955   1956-1957   1958-1959   1960-1961   1962-1963   1964   1965   1966   1967-1968

Ira Schnapp’s Newspaper Strips Part 1  Part 2  Part 3

Ira Schnapp’s Comics Career by the Numbers

Paintings by Ira Schnapp

The post IRA SCHNAPP – LETTERER appeared first on Todd's Blog.

And Then I Read: THE BROKEN KINGDOMS by N. K. Jemisin

This is the second book of Jemisin’s Inheritance Trilogy, I previously reviewed the first book, The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms. Jemisin’s world of powerful gods and less powerful people has changed greatly in the ten years since the end of the first book. A massive World Tree is now growing under and through the royal city of Sky, where the Arameri family continue to live and rule, though that rule has become fragmented by the return of many lesser gods to the city. Things have not changed much for the very poor, some of whom live among the roots of the tree in its shadows, doing their best to eke out a living. Oree Shoth is one, an artist of magical paintings in her own home, but at her stand under the tree she sells trinkets and cheap souvenirs to pilgrims visiting the city. Oree had been the lover of a minor god, Madding, who is still her friend. Now she’s taken in another silent man she calls Shiny who seems to care little about his own life, but whenever he dies, he’s quickly reborn. Shiny’s power is profound, and his secret is important, but it takes time for Oree to learn about it. Meanwhile, she witnesses the death of another minor god, bringing her to the attention of religious authorities from the Order of the New Light, who take her prisoner and try to convert her to their faith. Oree begins to discover she has power of her own, but it’s power with a terrible cost if used the wrong way. Can she and Shiny escape from their captivity?

Another fine read from Jemisin, and I liked this different viewpoint from the first book, looking up from the ground rather than down from the sky. Recommended.

The Broken Kingdoms by N K Jemisin

The post And Then I Read: THE BROKEN KINGDOMS by N. K. Jemisin appeared first on Todd's Blog.

CHARLES SCHULZ – LETTERER

Peanuts Daily strip, Aug 25 1958, this and all images © Peanuts Worldwide LLC

Perhaps the greatest achievement in newspaper strips in my lifetime is Peanuts by Charles Schulz, at least it’s the one that made me laugh the most. The strip was simple and cartoony, relying on the juxtaposition of cute young kids and animals with sophisticated adult-like dialogue and reactions from characters like Charlie Brown and Lucy, and the surreal activities of Charlie’s dog Snoopy. From 1950 to 1999, Schulz always wrote, drew, and lettered the strip himself, he never used assistants. The strip started in seven papers, and at the end was in about 2,300. Much of the lettering was what I’d call standard, unremarkable work: easy to read, a perfect match for the art, but nothing special. There were many times, though, when the lettering went beyond that to be as clever and creative as the rest of the strip. I thought I’d look at some examples. Above, a long-running gag starting in 1958 made fun of incompetent pen lettering by Charlie Brown as he tried to write to his pen-pal (an idea now lost to history), but Charlie’s ineptitude forced him to use a pencil instead. Maybe it was born out of Schulz’s own struggles in learning to write and letter, or it was just a funny idea.

Charles Schulz, 1958

Charles Monroe “Sparky” Schulz was born November 26, 1922 in Minneapolis, Minnesota. He was an only child who always enjoyed drawing and reading comic strips. An uncle gave him the nickname “Sparky” after the horse Spark Plug in Billy DeBeck’s comic strip Barney Google, which Schulz was a fan of. From 1943 to 1945, Schulz served in the Army, only seeing action at the very end of the war. After returning home in 1945, he took an art course through a correspondence school, and then worked for the school while developing his cartooning career.

Li’l Folks panel, date unknown, image courtesy of Heritage Auctions

Sparky’s first success was a weekly series of one-panel jokes called Li’l Folks, published from June 1947 to January 1950 in the St. Paul Pioneer Press, with Schulz usually doing four one-panel drawings per issue. It was in Li’l Folks that Schulz first used the name Charlie Brown for a character, and above you can also see an early version of Snoopy. In the sample, Schulz has already arrived at the basic lettering style he would use throughout his life. For both art and lettering, he used Esterbrook 914 pen nibs. In 1950, Schulz sold a daily four-panel version of the strip to the United Feature Syndicate, but they changed the name to Peanuts. It began appearing in Oct 1950, with a Sunday page added in 1952.

Peanuts Daily, Nov 7 1950

Charles’ lettering style was informed by the comic strips he enjoyed. His Esterbrook pen nib had a slight wedge tip, giving variation to the lettering strokes depending on the direction. I would guess he liked the lettering of Frank Engli on Terry and the Pirates, there are some similarities, though Schulz’s letters are softer and rounder. He uses serifs or crossbars on the personal pronoun I, but in the first panel I’M doesn’t have them. The burst balloon in the third panel is a typical comics one, but Schulz rarely used them.

Peanuts Daily, Jan 6 1953

Charles made frequent use of sound effects, which tended to have the same kind of standard rounded letters as his balloon lettering, but there were often other variations. I like the alternating of solid and outlined ones here, and the outlines are skillfully drawn to keep the inner shapes consistent. Schulz also made good use of the comics idea of a question mark or other punctuation alone in a balloon to convey wordless mood.

Peanuts Daily, April 16 1955

While Sparky stuck to standard block lettering most of the time, his upper and lower case work was just as good. In the second panel, he’s copied out a dictionary definition using mixed case serif letters with a large X height (the height of the lower case letters like “n”) to make it easy to read. Note that Snoopy has begun “talking” in thought balloons, which the children can’t hear but other animals can. Only the balloon tail of bubbles expresses that.

Peanuts Daily, Sept 6 1958

I can’t resist showing another pen-pal gag, where Schulz was clearly having fun with the “bad” lettering, which isn’t really that bad.

Peanuts Daily, March 10 1960

Schroeder, the Beethoven fan at his toy piano. Schulz often used printed Beethoven music for these gags, pasted in, but there were plenty of times when he drew in other variations, as here, that were inventive and funny.

Peanuts Daily, Sept 9 1964

The sixties were turbulent and full of protesters carrying signs, an idea Schulz had fun with here using only punctuation on the signs. Lots of other Peanuts strips used protest signs.

Peanuts Daily, Nov 10 1965

Sparky’s lettering style worked well at any size, and he used large shouty examples well. The big letters make his personal alphabet more obvious, like the Y with curved arms, and the narrow, curvy W. Over time the letters got looser and less regular, but they were always easy to read and a fine match for the art. The balloon tails also got looser and sometimes looked unfinished.

Peanuts Daily, July 11 1970

Snoopy was never a typical dog, but when he got a typewriter, that opened up new ways for lettering to tell the story. Schulz’s typewriter style is very condensed serif mixed case, and gets the idea across. In the third panel, Snoopy is adding to his typewriting with a pen or pencil. How he managed to do either is never questioned as long as it’s funny. Compare this to Snoopy’s piano playing in the 1960 strip.

Peanuts Daily, Dec 10 1974

Snoopy’s bird friend Woodstock was introduced in 1967, but didn’t get his name until 1970. More clever pen lettering for his wordless balloons to represent chirping, and then mood. Note that while Snoopy’s balloons always had thought bubble tails, Woodstock’s had regular ones.

From Peanuts Sunday, Sept 17 1978

Woodstock and Snoopy often took over the strip at times, here with a clever lettering gag that slices through what readers think lettering can be, and makes the snoring balloon a physical object. The use of one or more Z’s to indicate snoring has a long tradition in comic strips.

From Peanuts Sunday, Oct 19 1985

While many of Schulz’s sound effects were consistent in shape over time, the second panel here adds speed lines and lots of texture to emphasize the impact, mirrored by the doubled lines of the figure.

Peanuts Daily, Dec 27 1991

By the 1990s, in the strip’s fifth decade, Sparky’s lines were beginning to have a shaky quality probably due to age and perhaps a physical tremor, but it all still works fine. Even the regular balloon lettering shows a little shaking, the script in the first panel shows it more, perhaps because Schulz did it less often. Handwritten notes and letters were a frequent theme in the strip.

Peanuts Daily, Dec 31 1998

Near the end, the shaky lines were more obvious in the art, but the lettering is still mostly free of them, though the balloon shapes are not. I can only imagine that so many years of drawing those letters meant Charles could do them quickly, and thereby cut back on the tremor. The strip remained funny and appealing right to the end, and it’s one of the few I could read again from the beginning. A fine legacy and an impressive body of work for a singular cartoonist.

The post CHARLES SCHULZ – LETTERER appeared first on Todd's Blog.