Table Of Content"This book is a must-read for anyone who wants to make comic books." —Skottie Young
THE ESSEN TIA L GUIDE TO
COMIC BOOK
LETTERIN G
By NATE PIEKOS
Foreword by
DM ORZECHOWSKI
THE ESSENTIAL GUIDE TO COMIC BOOK LETTERING. October 2021. Published by Image Comics, Inc. Office of
publication: PO BOX 14457, Portland, OR 97295. Copyright © 2021 Nathan Piekos. All rights reserved. "The Essential
Guide to Comic Book lettering," its logos, and the likenesses of all characters herein are trademarks of Nathan
Piekos, unless otherwise noted. "Image" and the Image Comics logos are registered trademarks of Image Comics,
Inc. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted, in any form or by any means (except for short
excerpts for journalistic or review purposes), without the express written permission of Nathan Piekos or Image
Comics, Inc. All names, characters, events, and locales in this publication are entirely fictional. Any resemblance
to actual persons (living or dead), events, or places, without satirical intent, is coincidental. Digital Edition. For
international rights, contact: [email protected].
Design and Production by Nate Piekos and Deanna Phelps. Copy Editing by Melissa Gifford.
IMAGE COMICS, INC. • Todd McFarlane: President • Jim Valentino: Vice President • Marc Silvestri: Chief
Executive Officer • Erik Larsen: Chief Financial Officer • Robert Kirkman: Chief Operating Officer • Eric
Stephenson: Publisher / Chief Creative Officer • Nicole Lapalme: Controller • Leanna Gaunter: Accounting
Analyst • Sue Korpela: Accounting & HR Manager • Marla Eizik: Talent Liaison • Jeff Boison: Director of
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• Deanna Phelps: Production Artist • IMAGECOMICS.COM
Adobe product screenshot(s) reprinted with permission from Adobe Inc.
Adobe, Acrobat, Illustrator, InDesign, and Photoshop are either registered trademarks or trademarks of Adobe in the United States
and/or other countries.
Beasts of Burden © Evan Dorkin & Jill Thompson. Beasts of Burden, its logos, characters, situations, and their distinctive likenesses
are trademarks of Evan Dorkin and Jill Thompson. All Rights Reserved.
The Berserker's Daughter logo is a trademark of Nate Piekos in the United States and/or other countries.
The Blambot logo is a registered trademark of Nate Piekos in the United States and/or other countries.
Colder © Paul Tobin & Juan Ferreyra. Colder its logos, characters, situations, and their distinctive likenesses are trademarks of Paul
Tobin & Juan Ferreyra. All Rights Reserved.
Comic Book Lettering is an Art graphic © Nate Piekos.
DC Comics is a registered trademark of DC Comics in the United States and/or other countries.
Elfquest © Warp Graphics, Inc. Elfquest, its logos, characters, situations, and their distinctive likenesses are trademarks of Warp
Graphics, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
Fantastic Four, X-Force, and X-Statix are registered trademarks of Marvel Characters, Inc. in the United States and/or
other countries.
Fontlab is a registered trademark of Fontlab Ltd, Inc. in the United States and/or other countries.
Foreword © 2021 Tom Orzechowski. All Rights Reserved. Used with permission.
Glyphs is a regsitered trademark of schriftgestaltung.de in the United States and/or other countries.
Green Arrow and Justice League are registered trademarks of DC Comics in the United States and/or other countries.
I Hate Fairyland © Skottie Young. I Hate Fairyland, its logos, characters, situations, and their distinctive likenesses are
trademarks of Skottie Young. All Rights Reserved.
Macintosh, Mac, and iMac, are registered trademarks of Apple Inc. in the United States and/or other countries.
Madman is a trademark of Mike Allred in the United States and/or other countries.
Marvel Comics is a registered trademark of Marvel Entertainment in the United States and/or other countries.
Microsoft, Microsoft Office, Microsoft Word, and Windows are either registered trademarks or trademarks of Microsoft
Corporation in the United States and/or other countries.
Middlewest © Skottie Young & Jorge Corona. Middlewest, its logos, characters, situations, and their distinctive
likenesses are trademarks of Skottie Young & Jorge Corona. All Rights Reserved.
The Peanuts logo is a trademark of Peanuts Worldwide, LLC in the United States and/or other countries.
The Pfifer & Friends logo is a trademark of Nate Piekos in the United States and/or other countries.
The Rivenshield logo is a trademark of Nate Piekos in the United States and/or other countries.
Speedball and Hunt are registered trademarks of Speedball Art Products Co., LLC in the United States and/or
other countries.
Star Trek is a trademark of CBS Studios Inc. in the United States and/or other countries.
Stout Club and the Stout Club logo is a trademark of Rafael Albuquerque in the United States and/or
other countries.
The Me You Love in the Dark © Skottie Young & Jorge Corona. The Me You Love in the Dark, its logos, characters,
situations, and their distinctive likenesses are trademarks of Skottie Young & Jorge Corona. All Rights Reserved.
The Umbrella Academy © Gerard Way & Gabriel Ba. The Umbrella Academy, its logos, characters, situations,
and their distinctive likenesses are trademarks of Gerard Way & Gabriel Ba. All Rights Reserved.
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CONCETTA,
WHO AL WAV'S
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T A B L E OF CONTENTS
9 FOREWORD BY TOM ORZECHOWSKI 6 8 Properly Stacking Lines of Dialogue
69 Sizing and Shaping Your Area Type Objects
11 PREFACE 7 0 Use of Font Styles in Dialogue
74 Quickly Changing Fonts by Using
CHAPTER ONE: THE LETTERER Character Styles
13
13 What is a Letterer? 76 Typefaces Beyond Normal Dialogue
13 The Life of a Letterer 77 Creating a Type Morgue
15 My Typical Workday 78 OpenType Auto-ligatures and
15 Your Career in Comics Contextual Alternates
17 Before and After Lettering 79 A Little Care Now Goes a Long Way Later
CHAPTER TWO: TOOLS OF THE TRADE 81 CHAPTER FIVE: BALLOONS
19
19 Your Lettering Workspace 81 Crafting Dialogue Balloons
19 The Essentials 84 Free-Floating Balloons
21 The Non-Essentials 87 Joining Balloon to Balloon
23 Materials Provided by a Publisher 8 8 A Brief Reminder About Creating Actions
23 Properly Sized Art 8 9 Intro to Balloon Tails
Comic Book Scripts 9 0 Crafting a Straight Tail
25
28 Placements 92 Crafting a Curved Tail
31 Illustrator Actions: The Letterer's Best Friend 93 Consistent Balloon Tails
33 Illustrator Keyboard Shortcuts 95 Balloon Corner Joins
9 6 Balloon Connectors
35 CHAPTER THREE: LETTERING TEMPLATES 9 8 Off-Panel Tails
35 What are Lettering Templates? 100 Squinks
36 The Two Schools of Digital Lettering 101 Butted Balloons
37 A Note About Creating an 104 Radio Balloons
Illustrator Workspace 104 Classic Radio Balloons
37 Building a Lettering Template 106 Radio Balloon Tails
44 Your Title Block 107 Modern Radio Balloons
45 But How Does This New Template 109 Shout Balloons
Actually Work? 109 Scalloped Burst Balloons
47 A Double-Page Spread Template 111 Classic Burst Balloons
54 Alternate Template Setup 112 Double-Outline Balloons
113 Dialogue that Erupts from a Balloon
57 CHAPTER FOUR: DIALOGUE 114 Wavy Balloons
57 About Hand Lettering 116 Thought Balloons
Digital Lettering Using Area Type 116 Standard Thought Balloons
59
6 0 Creating Three Basic Area Type Objects, Part 1 118 Improved Thought Balloons
63 Dialogue Typeface Point Size 121 Telepathy Balloons
64 Dialogue Typeface Leading Size 121 Classic Telepathy Balloons
65 Creating Three Basic Area Type Objects, Part 2 124 Wavy Telepathy Balloons
Overprinting KTOO Black 125 Whisper Balloons
65
67 Using Your Area Type Objects with 125 Dashed Whisper Balloons
Your Template 126 Small Text / Big Balloon
6 •
The Essential Guide to Comic Book Lettering
126 Robotic Balloons 186 Creating Clipping Masks for Sound Effects
127 Rounded Rectangle Robotic Balloons 191 Inspirational Gallery of Sound Effects
128 Double-Dashed Robotic Balloons
129 Monster Balloons 195 CHAPTER EIGHT: T IT LE S , LOGOS & MORE
129 Standard Monster Balloons 195 Typographic Terminology
130 Improved Monster Balloons 196 Designing with Type
131 Monster Balloon Tails 196 Titles
133 Alternative Balloon Practices 2 0 0 Inspirational Gallery of Titles
133 Organic Balloons 201 Stingers
134 Calligraphic Stroke 202 Inspirational Gallery of Stingers
135 Overlapping Balloon Join 203 Cover Copy
136 Balloons that Break Panel Borders 205 Inspirational Gallery of Cover Copy
139 Custom Illustrator Brushes for Balloons 2 0 6 Logos
145 Inspirational Gallery of Balloons 2 0 6 Guideposts to Successful Logo Design
2 0 8 Clients and Project Agreements
149 CHAPTER SIX: CAPTIONS 2 0 9 My Logo Process
149 Simple Yet Complex 212 Inspirational Gallery of Logos
149 Rectangular Area Type Objects and
Caption Boxes 215 CHAPTER NINE: FROM PROOFS TO FIN ALS
150 Spoken Captions 215 When the Lettering is Finished
152 Internal Monologue Captions 215 Live vs. Outlined Typefaces
153 Journal Captions 216 Proofs
155 Text Messages 216 Proofing with Illustrator and Acrobat
158 Location/Time Captions 218 Proofing with InDesign
158 The Appearance Window 223 Corrections
163 Omniscient Narrator Captions 223 Final Files
163 Designing Banner Captions 223 Delivering Lettering as EPS Files
165 Editorial Captions 226 Performing Pre-Press Services
165 Organic Caption Boxes 227 Pre-Press with InDesign
167 Inspirational Gallery of Captions 232 Pre-Press as TIFF Files
234 Keeping Track of Your Projects
169 CHAPTER SEVEH: SO U N D EFFECTS 235 Invoicing for Completed Projects
169 The Path to Effective Sound Effects
170 Typefaces are Just a Starting Point 237 CHAPTER TEN: PUTTING IT A LL TOGETHER
171 Manipulating Sound Effects Letters 237 Step-by-Step
173 Adding Offset Paths to Sound Effects
175 Multiple Offset Paths 251 CONCLUSION
176 Thin/Thick Offset Paths
177 Undulating Sound Effects 252 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
178 "Hollow" Sound Effects
180 Calligraphic Strokes on Sound Effects 253 ABOUT THE AUTHOR
181 Adding Perspective with the Free Distort Tool
182 Using Warp Effects 254 INDEX
184 Digitally Hand Lettering Sound Effects
The Essential Guide to Comic Book Lettering • 1
ASIDES
Informational asides are separated from the main text in light blue fields throughout the book.
14 Not Rules, but Conventions 119 Question Mark/Exclamation
16 A Note About Notation Point Combinations
21 A Note About Typeface Licenses 120 Thought and Telepathy Balloons in Action
22 Nate's Workspace 123 Staggering Balloons
24 Standard American Comic Book Page 132 Balloons that Overlap Panel Borders
Dimensions at Print Size 144 Murmuring
27 Prepping a Script for Lettering 155 Lettering, the "Invisible Art"
32 Numbers in Dialogue: Words or Numerals? 156 Lettering Style Guides
46 The Two Versions of the Letter I in Comics 164 Ellipses and Double Dashes in Comics Dialogue
5 0 Multi-Artboard Templates 177 Roach Chew
55 Page Rates 183 Checking Your Overprints
6 6 Why is Comic Book Dialogue in All-Caps? 185 A Sound Effects Clipping Mask in Action
69 The Grawlix 189 Punctuating Sound Effects
72 Hyphenation 190 Thinking Dynamically
73 Design Decisions About Emphasis 2 0 4 Is it a Typeface or a Font?
75 Breath Marks 2 0 8 Lettering Webcomics
84 Balloons or Bubbles? 211 A Note About Designing Type
8 8 Reflections Don't Speak 222 Name-Checking
91 Orphans and Widows 226 Cover Credit for Letterers
94 The 94% Line Width Cheat 231 Crosstraining
9 9 Non-English Dialogue 238 Attending Conventions
103 Don't Cross Balloon Tails 249 Overlapping and Underlapping Balloons
115 Tangents
8 •
The Essential Guide to Comic Book Lettering
FOREWORD
By Tom Orzechowski
When you letter a comic, your name is on it. But, before Marvel's second year, this would not have been the
case. It was only with Fantastic Four #9 (September - 1962) that I saw the name Art Simek. This credit, for me, was a
revelation: not only was this work done by a person, but—the boss felt that this person deserved a mention. For the
first time in my comics-reading life—which then totaled four years, beginning when I was five—the books had a deeper
context. People had thought them up! It was suddenly a thing for me to look at them critically, including—and I promise
this is true—the story title designs. The designs at DC seemed like minor addenda to every splash page's introductory
paragraph. Marvel's story titles, by contrast, stood alone. They seemed to fill a quarter of the page, just by themselves.
They were bold, emotive, and silly. Irresistible. Inspirational.
I began working at the Marvel office a bit over a decade later. It was the spring of 1973, and I was nineteen. I'd
graduated from touching up book reprints to lettering the books which, a few months earlier, I would have bought. A
lot of the scripts and pencils that came my way were by people whose comics I'd consumed—inhaled!—in my recent
memory. It was terrifying! I didn't want to diminish the look of those incredible penciled pages. The trick, of course,
was to get better, and fast. I looked with newly informed eyes at the lettering that'd inspired me to pick up my pens in
the first place. Artie Simek showed an almost draftsman-like approach: a regular look to his body copy, a no-nonsense
feel to his titles and logos. Sam Rosen's letterforms were bouncier, likely influenced by the brush-drawn movie posters
and lobby cards of the 1940s, the days of his youth. DC's Justice League-related books, lettered by Gaspar Saladino,
showed his design school background. His titles flipped confidently and appropriately between Art Deco, and moody
penwork. My own early 1970s titles showed the quirky angularity of Star Trek, the freeform funk of underground comix,
and the Art Nouveau homage in hippie music posters. So it was that I became part of the tradition of doing my own
versions of things for which I had personal context. The roots of that context, eventually ranging much further, have
been an ongoing pursuit for nearly five decades. I think it's a safe bet that anyone in this field today whose work shows
any flair is likewise playing off something that caught their eye.
It was more exciting than I can say to have lettered story titles and dialogue, in ink, on the penciled artwork.
Every setup suggested a different treatment. My reference shelves groan under type design and poster sample books
spanning a century. Also, these days, my Pinterest collections grow with each new logo job. Recently, it has been images
of graffiti on freeway underpasses.
Ours is an odd and rarified little field, building with pixels on the penwork of the past. Skilled pen-and-ink pros
had the eye to make real-time modifications—narrower here, wider there—when faced with an awkward space in the
standard page grid. Wiggle room was where you found it. Preposterous hyphenations (unforgivable now) would preserve
an outstretched finger or horse's snout. Around 1967, though, Neal Adams and Jim Steranko, two of very few new
artists hired in a decade, made themselves noteworthy for taking liberties with that infernal grid. They chose instead
to treat each page as a cohesive unit, thereby amplifying the exaggerated reality of the scripts. The placement of the
captions, dialogue, and sound effects was suddenly much more in concert with the flow of the figure-work, capes and
exploding spaceships.
Through the 1980s, the pages gained a dynamism not seen since the anything-goes days of the early 1940s. The
letterer's job, increasingly, became one of flattering the script and artwork equally. That is to say, we had become
contributors to the visual appeal of the page, rather than script copyists, relegated to the tops of the panels. We had
become designers.
The shift from pen-and-ink to typography eased the deadline problems brought on by the work of designing
these complicated pages. At the same time, unfortunately, the software learning curve, combined with the inflexibility
of type, threatened the reasoned, informed look of our craft. The newer letterers could not count on guidance from
the inexperienced newer editors. New publishers, operating on a shoestring while selling to niche markets, were
9
The Essential Guide to Comic Book Lettering •
popping up rapidly. This continues to be the case.
Poor budgets call for quick results. If we can save the boss some trouble by approaching the job with confidence,
we're one up on the game. A solid understanding of technique means that the possibilities for lettering treatments are
wide open.
While we're working on a book, we've been trusted to own those pages, to meld the elements appropriately and
attractively. Dialogue fonts number in the hundreds. Once a choice is made, there are ways to work with it that will
add some personality. Variations on dialogue balloons are not all that difficult. The pen could do it. So can vectors and
brush effects. An important bit of eye candy is the bold sound effect. Edgy fonts, applied flatly, regardless of their
stylistic touches, aren't sufficient to convey that energy. Sound effects fonts can express a lot more power with a bit
of effort, and a willingness to work with the rhythm of the page. Likewise, when using them for logos, some distinctive
touches will help a book jump off of the shelves.
Nate Piekos has been bridging the skill of penmanship with the craft of font design for two decades. He'd
have been welcome around the inkwell when that was the way of things. Given the weight of his shelf of professional
awards, and the impressive range of his client list, he's the person you'll learn a lot from today. I know I will.
10 •
The Essential Guide to Comic Book Lettering
