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Richard Starkings on the Writer/Letterer Relationship |
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Written by Caleb Monroe
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Tuesday, 13 February 2007 |
Richard Starkings has worked in comics for twenty years, and is the President and Chief Tiger of the Comicraft lettering and design studio. He's also a writer in his own right, being the creator behind Hip Flask and Elephantmen. Who better to talk to about the ever-crucial relationship between a writer and his or her letterer?
How did you first get into lettering comics?
As a young teenager I was impressed by the Daily Mirror newspaper strip The Perishers. The comic timing in the strip was almost totally dependent on the integration of pictures and words by artist Dennis Collins. I was, and still am, a big fan of the British TV show Doctor Who and I created four panel strips featuring the Doctor and his companions and sought to emulate the harmony that I saw in Collins’ work in my own. I also admired the work of Tom Orzechowski in Uncanny X-Men. His involvement somehow heightened the drama in the series and if another letterer filled in for Tom, the book as a whole clearly suffered.
Has the way for a letterer to break in changed since then? How would someone go about it now?
No one told me "how" to break in to comics as a letterer, although I was inspired by an article I read in, I think, Warrior magazine. I wasn't especially interested in lettering comics, I wanted to MAKE comics, and Dez Skinn, the editor of Warrior, suggested that lettering was an easy way to get started. Ironically two or three of my first professional jobs appeared in the latter issues of Warrior.
Can you describe your lettering process, from receipt of a script to final pages?
Not really, no. These days the bare bones of lettering involves choosing a font style and cutting and pasting from a script, usually formatted in Word, and pasting into text blocks in Adobe's Illustrator program. You can read more about the fine tuning of the process on our Balloon Tales website or in our book Comic Book Lettering, the Comicraft Way. Otherwise I find that talking too much about process blocks process. The way I letter is very intuitive and the same rules don't always apply.
How can “young” writers communicate best with their letterer? What are some pitfalls to avoid?
I think it's essential that writers create a strong working relationship with a letterer and develop an understanding over a number of years or a series of projects. Orzechowski understands Claremont very well, Todd Klein complements Neil Gaiman very well, I work well with Tim Sale, Jeph Loeb and J. Scott Campbell. Writers that show no concern in how their work is lettered are akin to pencillers who don't care how their work is inked. Lettering is part of the "performance" of a script and, when done well, is the equivalent of good sound engineering on a movie -- screw it up and the script, and the artist's performance, can be ruined.
These days I'm always wary of writers and artists who want "a unique look" for the lettering in their book. Lettering isn't a crutch, but there are many creators out there who lean on lettering effects a little too heavily. A good letterer can be trusted to elaborate when necessary and refrain from doing so when it's unnecessary. Uncanny X-Men wasn't a good book because Tom's lettering made it so; it was a good book that drew great performances out of all the creators involved; consequently it became a GREAT book. I've been approached by creators who ask me to make their book "Look like Danger Girl" or to set up a lettering style that will make their readers "think of the X-Men." When I'm then presented with an amateur script, ugly pencils and garish coloring, my heart sinks and I'm faced with taking the money or running away. These days, I run.
Is there a type of script you prefer to work from?
Yes. A Very Good One.
I understand some writers make a separate letterer’s proof, or letterer’s script for their letterer or lettering team. How does this differ from a regular script?
It's usually easier to navigate as it contains less text -- the descriptive passages are eliminated and the verbiage is boiled down to captions, dialogue and sfx. Coupled with placements, sent by fax or email, the lettering script is the map presented to the letterer for a speedy turnaround.
What are the preferred ways in a script to denote something should be bold? Italics? Sound effects? Thought balloons? Dialogue from off-panel? Captions? All-caps? “Fireflies/roach legs?” Whispers? Sotto voce? Are there any other special cases I’m missing here?
Kurt Busiek prefaces all his scripts with a guide indicating the various lettering effects he might indicate therein. Other writers bold or italicize or increase the point size of text for emphasis in the Word document. The only useful note I look for is an underline for bold. Otherwise I prefer to rely on my own intuition.
Otherwise:
Bold? Italics?
Usually underlined text.
Sound effects?
SFX
Thought balloons?
THOT
Dialogue from off-panel?
OFF
Captions?
CAP or PNL or BOX
All-caps?
Kind of obvious!
“Fireflies/roach legs?”
> Fireflies <
Whispers?
WH
Sotto voce?
small
What are the pros and cons of hand- versus computer-lettering? Do you think there¹s still a place in the industry for the former?
As I've said elsewhere, that's a strange question, I still use my hands to do my work. No one I know uses their hands to letter; they use a tool called a pen. I use a tool called a computer. It's just a different skill. Pens are filled with ink, my computer is filled with fonts. Many of the fonts we've created at Comicraft were originally designed using pen and ink. Computers don't letter comics. People do. Electronic Lettering guarantees a finesse and polish which pen and ink cannot, and consequently moves the responsibilities of the letterer away from the precise and studious role of calligrapher, to the more flexible and far-reaching role of graphic designer. The question I've been asking myself is not "Is Hand Lettering Dead?" but "How can Comic Book Lettering serve its purpose in imaginative and inventive new ways?" In more recent years we have created a series of fonts based on the handwriting of the artists who create the books on which we work. Naturally enough, only the rhythm of THEIR penwork, the pressure THEY place on each stroke and each period, can truly complement the mood and rhythm of THEIR artwork.
I like to think that Comicraft made an impression not because we pioneered computer lettering, but because we raised the bar for lettering in general and provided rather more variety than comic book readers had come to expect. David Cody Weiss and Willie Schubert were working with computer fonts long before I came along; whether or not a letterer is working electronically is beside the point. What has become more prevalent is the demands placed on letterers by artists and writers. No one ever used to ask me to change my lettering style for a particular project when I worked as a "hand letterer"; they were just happy to have found someone whose work was crisp, legible and delivered in good time. Now that editors, writers and artists understand that books CAN be lettered in different styles, there's a demand that never existed before.
Do you have an opinion on using sentence case versus the traditional all-caps found in most comic lettering?
Comics should be ALL CAPS all the time. The only exceptions being young children's voices or some kind of alien voice effect. There's a whole round table discussion about this on our site: "The Case for Upper Case."
Do you have “office hours,” so to speak: specific set times during the day or week when you work, or is it a more fluid situation? Have your years in comics taught you any secrets to budgeting time for work?
Although I work most weekdays from 9 to 5, I don't have a typical workday and often work some evenings and weekends. I'm fairly unique in the industry in that I don't do one thing all the time -- I write, letter, publish, sell books, promote my books, research articles for Elephantmen, interview creators and my company also builds websites and publishes fonts. I MAKE comics. A typical day doesn't exist for me. That's what keeps it interesting.
What is your own writing process like, from idea to script to lettered page?
My stories are all scene-driven. A specific situation involving a particular character or characters will present itself to me and the story builds from there. "See the Elephant" in Elephantmen #1 started when I walked past Hooters in Santa Monica one day. The idea of an Elephantman standing outside smoking a cigarette struck me as both discordant and funny, and throwing my seven year old daughter and her head full of questions into that situation seemed very natural. The benefit of working on your own titles is that you can allow a story to grow very organically from brief sketches like this -- I didn't have to submit a plot or story arc outline to an editor, I just sat down and let the story unfold as I wrote it. I have a general idea of which characters are in conflict with one another, but I'm happy to follow scenes that lead to stories that build up the bigger picture. As the creator of Hip Flask and Elephantmen, I'm already emotionally invested in the characters, so it's important to me that my readers are equally invested.
When I letter stories I've also written, I allow myself to respond intuitively to the artwork. In the past I've worked with writers who've rewritten dialogue in their scripts after the pages have been drawn. Often times you'll look at the artwork and wonder why a characters mouth is hanging open in dismay but their dialogue doesn't seem to reflect their emotion. I've heard many artists complain that the writer has added (or subtracted) dialogue that wasn't indicated in the original draft. Now although I'll confess that I do the same thing, I like to think that I'm responding to the artist's work, as an actor modifies his performance to that of another actor during the course of a play. I work the same way when I'm lettering someone else's work -- I consider the artist's "performance" very carefully when it comes to where I place balloons, sound effects and title lettering, and with certain writers, such as Jeph Loeb, I'll often make certain suggestions regarding placement, or slight modifications or even deletions. However, I don't recommend this to letterers until you've developed a strong bond of trust with a particular writer.
The hardest thing about lettering your own work is to set challenges for yourself! It would be easy to get lazy, but bland lettering is not what inspired me to take up the art twenty years ago. I really want Elephantmen to be as inspiring and captivating graphically as the comics I read in my youth, and have to remember that when I write splash pages or sfx each issue.
What would you say is the #1 mistake you see aspiring writers making? Not necessarily related to lettering, but in general?
Too much talk, not enough action or graphics. It's a VISUAL medium.
What’s the best advice you could give someone looking to break into comics, in any capacity?
Be original. If you're looking to reinvent Spider-Man or think you can tell the best Batman story ever, go directly to jail, do not pass GO, do not collect $200.
What advice would you share with other aspiring writers or letterers about balancing comics with other aspects of their life, like family or friends?
Work hard, play hard. If comics becomes your hobby, get another hobby. The best comics are fueled by an interest in the world, not an interest in the world of comics.
Any final advice to writers out there on making the relationship with their letterer work as well as possible?
Call your letterer twice a week, as you would a friend, give credit where credit is due and give him or her a cut of the royalties. Treat ALL your collaborators like human beings.
Do you have any current or upcoming projects you want to plug?
I'm very proud of Elephantmen and Hip Flask. We have two hardcover collections of both titles in stores in the next couple of months. They're true labors of love and the culmination of everything I've learned in twenty years in comics.
Thank you, Richard!
Caleb Monroe bought Peter Parker, The Spectacular Spider-Man #16 when he was 11 years old and it was all over after that. You can learn some more about him here.
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