The 'Joie de Vivre' of Comics: Lettering

Lettering a comic book sucks!

There. I’ve said it. Comic book lettering is akin to playing the bass in a cool rock band. Nobody cares! I have to wonder if Adam Clayton of U2 looks at his other bandmates and tells himself, “I didn’t join this band to make those doofi look good!”

Think about it this way: nobody thinks about the bass line Paul McCartney played when John Lennon sang Strawberry Fields Forever. However, Lennon’s bass playing on McCartney’s The Long And Winding Road was so atrocious that the Beatles hid the bass by adding strings! Nobody thinks about the bass line when it’s good. They only care if it sucks!

It’s the same way with comics. The incredible 1977-1981 X-men run of Chris Claremont and John Byrne had wonderful stories and art. Anybody remember the letterer? Tom Orzechowski. How many people know that Dave Gibbons drew and lettered the classic Watchmen? Not too many. Now imagine how these great stories would look if they were lettered by an eight year old and a crayon!

So what does this have to do with me? I was asked by my friend Robert Zailo to letter a story he illustrated, titled Speed Trap! I don’t really think of myself as a comics letterer, but he told me that he really liked the lettering I did on my previous books. I only letter my books because I’ve been disappointed with lettering in my past stories! But I agreed to do it anyway.

Comic lettering is a balance between the writer’s story and the artist’s drawings. I’ve never gotten any chicks by lettering a comic, but it’s an important job -- one that hardly ever gets noticed. I worked hard to letter Robert’s pages. I lettered the writer’s words without blocking Robert’s storytelling. I turned them in on time. Robert said thanks, made photocopies, and promptly forgot them! Perhaps I should too…