I'VE GOT LETTERS AFTER MY NAME...



Unpublished logo.  All lettering on this page by me 

The following piece started life as a comment in response to a post on someone's blog.  Then I realized it would make an interesting entry here on Crivens.  So, with a little editing, here it is for your consideration.

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I used to earn my main source of income as a letterer on various U.K. comics.  One such comic was (and still is) a cult comic in Britain.  I was known for doing good display lettering, like sound effects and logos, etc.  That's why I worked for them.

Unpublished logo



One day, a 'new' editor (who'd been transferred from a discontinued comic) asked me to stop doing my sound-effects (Wham!, Smash!, Pow!, etc.) in the manner I was doing them.  "It makes the strips you work on look like a Marvel Comic!", he said.  You see, the traditional British way had been just to do basic, black lettering to signify a sound - serviceable, but uninspired - often looking like it had been stuck over the artwork rather than being a part of it.

Unpublished logo

My approach was to integrate the effects into the artwork, and gave them the kind of outline and detail that suggested the sounds they were trying to convey.  ART SIMEK and SAM ROSEN had their own styles, sure - but they didn't so much letter comics the "MARVEL Way" as letter them the best and most effective way they could be done.

That's what I tried to do.  The previous and subsequent editors all appreciated and encouraged the extra effort I put into my work, but this editor just didn't get it.  He'd rather I lettered in a bland, nondescript and unspectacular way as opposed to the best and most dynamic way to do it, simply because he didn't want the mag to look like a Marvel comic - even though Marvel comics looked better.  Simply put - "Don't do it as good as the company that does it best because we don't want people thinking we're them."  Crazy or what?

Hand-lettered flyer

The point of my reminiscence?  If you've ever wondered why a comic sometimes doesn't look as good as it could do, it's not always the fault of the actual contributors.

TIME TRAVEL A REALITY!

Copyright MARVEL COMICS

Caught your attention with that title, eh?  However, it's not entirely untrue; you may not physically be able to travel through time, but you can mentally.  Case in point: when I gaze on the above cover from 44 years ago, or - even better, thumb through the actual comic - I find my mind transported back to the month of April, in the year of our Lord, 1967.

To such an extent in fact, that it's almost as if I'm back in the house I lived in at that time; that shops which are no longer around today still exist; that friends who have since died are merely a telephone call away.  So immersed in halcyon days of yesteryear do I become that, when I look up from the comic's pages and find myself in the house I live in today, I'm almost momentarily surprised by the fact.  Anyone else ever feel the same, or am I just bonkers?

Okay, so I'm just bonkers.  Would it have hurt you to lie just this once?

"BIG JOHN, BIG JOHN - BIG BAD JOHN..."

Artwork by Big John Buscema

Well, that's a big fat lie for a start.  There was absolutely nothing bad about JOHN BUSCEMA - or his art.  He was one of the very few artists to adapt the principles of JACK KIRBY's power-packed storytelling into his own and perhaps even eclipse Kirby to some extent with the result.

Of course, by the time Buscema was coming into his own, Jack was somewhat in decline, due in part to an enforced reduction in the size at which he drew (which affected the look of his finished pages) and also dissatisfaction at what he saw as not being accorded his due at MARVEL COMICS, both in terms of credit and financial remuneration.  Can anybody really blame him if his heart wasn't really in it to the same degree as had once been the case?

Nobody has ever really topped Kirby when he was at the height of his powers, but that was hardly the case when he was about to jump ship to DC COMICS, or when he returned to Marvel a few years later.  Buscema was Jack's natural heir, so enjoy the above illustration by Big John from around the mid-to-late '70s.