1. What drew you to work in comics?
I have always been interested in the comics medium. I grew up as a fan of animation like most kids (in my day it was Warner Bros. shorts and Jay Ward [Bullwinkle, etc.]). My older sister and her friends introduced me to Mad Magazine when I was around 10 or so. I was immediately drawn to the work of Don Martin's hilarious strips and the variety of art styles such as Jack Davis, Mort Drucker and of course Sergio Aragones' little margin art. Oh, and let's not forget Al Jaffe's wonderful fold-ins! My gateway into traditional comics was newspaper strips and some issues of Marvels and DCs my brother-in-law had left at the house.
I was a graphic designer and illustrator by trade. I'm also a bit of a font geek. I decided to make the leap into comics lettering as a side gig in the early to mid-80s. I got my start through an indie publisher who handed the reins over to the late, great David Anthony Kraft. He gave me valuable critiques and tips which improved my skills. I also studied (and still greatly admire) John Workman. He's perhaps one of the best, if not THE best letters out there. There are other letterers I have studied over the years (Tom Orzechowski for one), but John is my go-to.
2. What is the role of lettering/typography in comics? What did comics allow you to do creatively?
With lettering, it's not just putting words on a page. Balloon placement and even sound effects are an integral part of the page layout and flow. Sometimes artists will indicate placement, but there are a lot of times where there is none indicated or dialogue is more "wordy" than the space allows. A letterer needs to know in these cases what will flow nicely or how to split dialogue into connected balloons for better readability. It must not hide the art and also flow with the page design overall.
For Sonic the Hedgehog, I deliberately tried to mimic John Workman as much as I could since he did the lead stories. I didn't want to jar the reader too much visually. Sonic Universe was technically "my" book in the beginning, so I took a tad bit more license there in the way I lettered things like sound effects or special balloons like electronic devices or robots.
I loved doing display lettering (titles, sound effects, etc.). Especially sound effects. I would consciously try to make them look like they would "sound". I had my most fun with Disney's books, Animaniacs and Looney Tunes for DC.
3. Any place we can go online to learn more about your work?
You can find a comprehensive list of my comics work here:
If you want to see some of the other kind of stuff I've been up to, check out my website at:
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