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| Copyright REBELLION |
Surprising as it may seem, some people don't know - or appreciate - the difference between typeset lettering and hand-lettered dialogue balloons (or captions) in a comic. "What difference does it make?" they ask in a puzzled manner. Of course, these people are as thick as the proverbial brick and I'm sure all you 'Crivvies' could tell them the answer just as well as I could, if not better.
However, there's no need to tell them when I can show them. Back in the 1970s, there was a period when IPC MAGAZINES resorted to typeset lettering for all their publications, the result of a dispute (so legend has it) with the letterers they usually employed. DCT had used typeset lettering for years of course, and more or less did it pretty adequately. IPC's attempts were disastrous on the other hand, and the appearance of many a strip was ruined in my humble opinion. (For which I'm justly famous, I might add.)
Years later, when these strips came up for reprinting, they had to be relettered by hand to bring them up to an acceptable standard and allow them to fit in with the new material they sat alongside. One such story is the one featured in this post, 'THE GRUDGE', which first appeared in BATTLE #196, cover-dated December 2nd, 1978, and resurfaced twelve years later in BATTLE ACTION FORCE (un-numbered), cover-dated December 14th, 1985.
This is one I lettered myself, and more was required that just placing new lettering over old. There's a fair amount of 'blotting out' and 'drawing up' to be done, so that old balloon tails or odd edges don't protrude out from under the new and improved speech bubbles and captions. Anyway, I'll let you judge for yourselves just how good a job I did - right after you've read the story. Ready? Off you go then. The original pages are on the left, the relettered versions on the right.
Click on image to enlarge, then click again for optimum size.
2 comments:
Splendid job but I think you should have left the "ain't" as ain't, in the vernacular, but what do I know?
Ah, I just noticed it was scored out in the original, but that was the editor's decision. His direction to change it to 'I'm not' is written in the margin (which you can't see 'cos I've cropped it).
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