The letterer has a lot of power in their hands. This person is the one who is responsible for dialog, sound effects, word balloon placement, titles, and other word related features. A good letterer will help the read to flow through the comic book, helping the pace to be consistent and natural. What follows is a list of quality resources to help the letterer on that path. Be sure to also check out the
general comic book resources guide that has links to sites covering the whole spectrum of comic creation.
See something we've missed? Drop us a line at comicbooks.guide@about.com.
Todd Klein is a master letterer. He has worked on countless books and has won an enormous amount of
Eisner Awards. He has worked on "Sandman" with Neil Gaiman, "Supreme" with Alan Moore, and lately has worked on "Fables" with Bill Willingham. His website has a lot to offer the new letterer, with how to's, history, looks at his work through the years, and much more. It is a treasure trove of information that every letterer should read.
Comicraft is probably the largest lettering and comic font studio out there, doing a huge number of books a month. Founder Richard Starkings is one of the pioneers of computer lettering and has a huge amount of lettering know how. He even wrote a
book on the topic and this is what he suggests you read when you ask him about how a person starts lettering.
Blambot is a lettering and comic font studio that works for just about every comic book publisher out there. They have some great resources for the do-it yourself creator with comic fonts that you can install and use for your own comics. There are also articles that will help you on the way. They will also do the work for you! For a price. Check out one of the largest lettering studios to see how the pros do it.
This is a combo book that has information on coloring and lettering, if you didn't get that from the title. The great part is that the lettering half is written by master letterer Todd Klein, so what are you doing? Go get that book!
This is a great site with tons of great resources for the letterer. I felt that it was a little clunky, so the title will link to the links page that has a lot of great fonts and books about lettering. There is also a
links page just for
tutorials. In addition to this the site also has a
blog and other information about steel nib pens. Some of the site is in Swedish, so be warned.
Mark Evanier has had a long time in the comic book world. He was an assistant to
Jack Kirby and is the "co-conspirator" on "Groo The Wanderer." This guy knows comics rather well and has some interesting words that young newbies should heed. He has two articles on lettering.
Article 1
Article 2
This is an article that pulls together a lot of different thoughts about the art of lettering. There are a lot of different creators here and it is great to get insight into what they think about this part of the comic book process.
This article takes you through the process of lettering step by step, from the original script to the final product. It really takes you into the process that the creator uses when they letter a comic book. There are also a couple of tidbits about sound effects and copy heavy work.
