Lettering is an artform that is often the last for a comic reader to truly appreciate, which is ironic, because without lettering, so much of their reading would be impossible. The art is subtle, and is often easier to spot when it doesn’t work well than when it does. Long story short, we take lettering for granted until, one day, its magic opens up for us.
One person we don’t take for granted is Aditya Bidikar, who was voted last year’s Best Letterer by our staff. We had the opportunity to chat with Aditya late last year about his comics origin story, his process, and what he was most proud of in 2021.
How did you first find comics? And then how did you become a letterer?
Aditya Bidikar: So I read comics as a kid; mainly “Tintin” and “Asterix.” And I think I probably read like four issues total of American comics. I think there was like a couple of Spider-Man comics and a couple of Superman comics, I was pretty obsessed with both of them. When I was a kid, I was very intrigued by the idea of the Cyborg Superman, that Superman was dead, and there was somebody else kind of taking their place and stuff like that. So I always found American comics very intriguing. But, you know, living in India, you don’t really have access to those comics. So I kind of forgot about comics till around the age of 19. And I was reading Sight and Sound, the British film magazine, and they were talking about how comics had ‘grown up.’ And they mentioned comics like “Watchmen and “Sin City” and those were kind of what got me really into comics because before that, I kind of shifted to prose entirely. And I was even writing prose at the time.
The moment I read comics, I figured that it would be a very interesting medium for me to write in. So I tried to kind of make a career writing comics here in India, and nobody hired me to do that. I wrote a comic at some point of time, and had it drawn. And then I showed it to a British comic book writer who had come to India. And he walked me through everything I had done wrong in the lettering, rather than the writing and the artwork. So he basically walked me through everything that I could have been doing with the lettering, and that was the first time I got interested in lettering as an art. So I started practicing lettering. A couple of years later, I applied to a comic book company in India as a writer. And they said, “we don’t have any writing positions available, but do you do anything else?” And I said, “I do lettering for fun.” And they were like, “Sure, we’ll hire you for that.” So that was my first lettering job. And after that, I quickly realized that it was kind of more fun for me than writing. And just in terms of like, you know, how much time are spending writing versus lettering, it actually paid me better by the hour as well. So that’s how I got into lettering. And I just discovered that I liked it more.
I once heard someone talk about film editing, and they said that you only notice film editing, when it’s really bad, or really good, so most editing just kind of goes along unnoticed, and you don’t even think about it. And I think the same can be true of lettering. What was the first bit of lettering that you remember seeing that made you say “Oh, wow, this is really good. This is not just getting the words across, but it’s doing something creative?”
AB: Hmm, that’s that’s actually a good question. I’ve never thought of this. I think weirdly enough, it would have to be somebody like from somebody who’s not actually a letter. I think I was reading the first few issues of “Invincible,” and those were written and lettered by Robert Kirkman. And I really liked these airy balloons that he had, and the sound effects that looked very kind of mechanistic. And then I came across a Walter Simonson issue of “Thor.” And I suddenly realized that wait, this is what that guy is doing. You know, like, so who’s this guy? That was John Workman, obviously. So what I realized was that there was a continuity between what John Workman was doing on “Thor” and what Robert Kirkman was doing on “Invincible,” and I realized there is a stylistic thing here like, so different letters can have different styles. And I think after that, probably it was the boring answer, which is like, Todd Klein on “Sandman.” So those are the two, I say, I would say, first instances where I noticed lettering and like, kind of the different things they were doing.
Continued belowSo when you started lettering, what was the thing that you did then that you would never do now?
AB: This actually goes back to your previous question a little bit. When I started out lettering, I was really intent on making my lettering inventory invisible. So I would really try and kind of not do anything too outrageous; I was basically focused on executing it and just kind of putting the words down on the page. And I think I did that for the first three or four books I did. And in the fifth or sixth book, the writer was like,”what you’re doing is fine, but it’s not really adding anything to the story.” And that was the first time I kind of thought, “I could actually do something that can push something here, I can actually convey something artistic through the lettering.” And I don’t think I would ever kind of try and do an unobstrusive style anymore. Like, I don’t think I would like like if if somebody is hiring me to letter, the comment, that means they want my presence to be felt. And I would never try to be unobtrusive that way. And
I think that makes a lot of sense. So we did, our website turned 10 years old in 2019. And we asked everyone on staff for a video we made to highlight a creator that they trust on comics. And one of our writers had named you as the creator they trust most and said that when they see your name on a book, they know that there’s a certain quality to that title that goes beyond just the lettering, that you just have a good sense of picking books. So what goes into you picking a book? Do you need to feel a connection to the book to take the gig? Or are you happy to letter pretty much anything?
AB: Once in a while, I’m asked about what I feel about my own work. And I’m kind of up and down on it. Like sometimes I like it, sometimes I don’t. But what I always feel is that I have good taste in comics. So I do think I have good taste in the comics that I work on, and that’s not just what the comic is because for me, lettering is not just about a particular book, it’s about my overall career and my overall relationships in the industry. So for me, whether I do a comic or not is a lot more down to the collaborator, because I work with people that I trust will do good comics. Because you can’t always predict if a particular comic is going to be good or not. I mean, everybody tries their best, but sometimes these things just don’t work out. But what you can depend on is whether a particular creator is always going to do something interesting. And so basically, I just letter books by people whose books I like to read. And that’s my primary criterion. And after that, I’ve made friends with certain people, and I will probably say yes to them on any project that they do. But that’s also a matter of trusting that they are gonna do good work.
Is there a book that you have lettered in 2021 that you feel is the best example of what you do? Like if someone said to you, “I don’t understand what lettering is, show me what you do,” what’s a book from this past year that you would show them?
AB: So I think the “Dept of Truth” is a good showcase of how far I’m like willing to go in terms of pushing what I do. It’s kind of like an unfriendly style, almost like I’m willing to like antagonize the reader a little bit. Plus, we do these guest issues, which I take the opportunity to do something completely different each time. So like, thankfully, James [Tynion] and Martin [Simmonds] are willing to let me start from scratch for every guest issue. So I think that’s one.
And the other book I would say is the “Future State: Dark Detective” miniseries that we did right before [my run on] “Detective Comics” started. Think that’s a good exemplar of the cleaner, sleeker style of side of my lettering. I’m going to try to elevate the overall book with my decision making. I feel like that’s a good showcase on like of my work on a mainstream book.
And other than that, I would say the couple of shorts in Razorblades, the horror magazine. And I feel like those are just like me kind of having fun and like kind of going wild. I think shorts are a great way to kind of do styles that are more work intensive, but are like kind of more fun. And you kind of do want to do those once in a while. So I think those three books would kind of be a good showcase of the things that I feel have done best this year.
My last question for you is, if there’s one thing that you would like our readers to know about lettering, and one thing to pay attention to, and to make them a more informed reader of comics, what would you want to tell them? What what is the one kernel of knowledge that you want to leave them with?
AB: I would say that people should keep in mind that there is creativity in every aspect of art, and art is about communicating some kind of emotion. Lettering is that as well. If every other part of the comic is doing its job conveying emotion, and the lettering is not, that’s going to be a problem for the reader. I actually, like, sit and make a lot of sounds while I’m lettering. I’ll actually react to the script, I will actually start making the sounds that the script is making, just to kind of see how they feel before I put them on the page. Do many people think of it as a very mechanistic job? I don’t think it is. It is definitely not.
