There are few letterers whose work is popular enough to be well known, but industry veteran Clem Robins is one such letterer. He was kind enough to answer some questions about how he works and how lettering has changed over time.
Let’s start with some background. Where did you grow up, what kind of education did you get?
Clem Robins: I grew up in NYC and southwestern Massachusetts. I did four years at the Art Students League, studying painting, drawing and human anatomy, and three years at the Way College of Biblical Research, from which i got a degree in Theology.
You’ve worked with many publishers since starting as a letterer in 1977. What are some of the differences between them with respect to how they approach letterers and lettering?
CR: There are differences not only among different publishers, but also different editors. It’s one of the things which makes the business fun. Some editors are very involved in the process, and insist on things being done in certain ways. Others hire people they believe in, and let them figure things out on their own.
Really, both kinds are fun to work for, including the micromanagers, if they know what they’re doing. I’ve been very fortunate over the years in that regard. One of the best is Scott Allie at Dark Horse. He and Mike Mignola are very opinionated about how things are to be done, and have rebuilt me in their image over the past ten years. I don’t know if that sounds demeaning, but it isn’t. It’s taken my work in directions that it never would have gone otherwise.
Other people are very laissez faire. Will Dennis and Shelly Bond at Vertigo, Mark Chiarello at DC, Sierra Hahn at Dark Horse. I don’t want to leave anybody out. All of ’em are fun to work for, but in different ways.
Your question about publishers, however, had a more profound answer back in the days of hand lettering.
DC books, in general, were done from a full script, including art direction. It was the penciller’s job not only to draw the pictures, but to place the lettering and actually pencil in titles and sound effects. Some of these guys were very careful and specific; others less so. But this is the reason why you can look at the work of, say, Gaspar Saladino on a book drawn by Gil Kane, or Carmine Infantino, or Bruno Premiani, or Joe Kubert, and the lettering, balloon shapes and sound effects looked very different for each artist. A lot of these guys were first rate designers, and the letterer’s job was to take their ideas and make them look as good as possible.
It’s hard to argue with the notion that Marvel was making better comics in the 1960s and 70s. But DC’s books always looked better, and a lot of this was a result of the artist’s input into how a page would be lettered.
I don’t miss doing hand lettering, but I do miss that kind of work method which permitted talented artists to show me how they wanted things done.
At Marvel, as most people are aware, artists worked from a plot synopsis. The writer would then write dialogue around their work. This so-called Marvel Method gave the writer a lot of clout, but it also deprived Marvel’s letterers of the chance to design balloons, titles and sound effects.
In fact, it wasn’t all that common for pencilled artwork to be monkeyed around with, so as to enable the writer to do his thing. The order of panels on a page might be changed, or an image might be flopped, so as to permit characters to speak in the correct order. I spent some time in the 70s working in the Bullpen, and did some of this sort of correction work.
How has the attitude toward letterers changed over the years?
CR: Within the industry, good letterers were always appreciated and respected, at least within my own experience. I think they still are, within the industry, if not necessarily among the reading public.
Continued belowBut with digital lettering, page rates plummeted. We all saw it coming. It’s hard to shake down a publisher for thirty or forty dollars a page when there are a gazillion people with computers who can do the job for a fourth that.
Were you an early adopter of digital lettering techniques, or did you hold out for a while? When did you really commit to the switch?
CR: I held out. It’s hard to believe that when DC made the conversion to an all-digital environment, they kept me around. There were people who’d been lettering digitally for ten years; I’d only been playing around with it for a couple of years.
I committed to the switch when I was informed that DC and Marvel would no longer be buying hand lettering, and the writing was on the wall for Image and Dark Horse as well.
The year was 2003, I think.
You once said it takes 5-15 years for someone to become a good letterer. Do you think that’s still true with new technologies, or was it less about technique and more about mental skills?
CR:That’s a superb question. I hadn’t really thought about it until just now.
Those five to fifteen years are a time to develop a range of different skills, including things as prosaic as how to sharpen a pen point or how to hold a pen or how to draw balloons. In a digital world, you can certainly produce readable and consistent lettering almost immediately. I’ve had assistants who would do fairly good lettering from day one, with a computer.
Personally, I love digital lettering. I put a great deal of time into designing type, and cooking up ways to make the stuff look handmade.
What elements of a book’s writing, art, and subject matter do you consider most important when deciding how you want to letter it?
CR: With hand lettering, it was pretty much impossible not to fall in to the mood of a story. It just happened. Compare a couple of comics from about the same time. “Plastic Man” #1, from October 1966, was written by Arnold Drake, drawn by Gil Kane, and lettered by Gaspar. It’s one of the most perfectly lettered comics ever. Drake’s script was funny, and Gaspar just went with it. Even the balloon shapes are funny.
Gaspar lettered an issue of “Doom Patrol” — cover date May 1967, I think — shortly afterward. Written, again, by Drake, drawn by Bruno Premiani. The story’s actually quite dark, although nobody could write flip dialogue quite like Drake. Gaspar did it fairly straight, but the mood’s hugely different. He was responding to a different kind of script, and a hugely different kind of artist.
Today, with computers, one would do that sort of thing consciously. People might choose different fonts. Although I practically never use type that I did not design, and my body copy fonts are pretty standard with me.
I read an interview with another letterer who said the worst part of the job was the odd requests from writers, like “pensive balloons.” What’s the strangest request you received in a script?
CR: I seldom get stuff like that. I think that happens mostly in the indie press. The writers I work with pretty much know what they’re doing, and allow their dialogue and the artist’s pictures to supply the mood. I don’t get much in the way of strange requests.
I have gotten, however, really challenging and stimulating requests. When I did “Unknown Soldier” for Joshua Dysart and Pornsak Pichetshote, the story involved a great deal of dialogue in a language called Acholi, which has no written alphabet. I was asked to design a font that would indicate that Acholi was being spoken. I think what I came up with worked. I was sorry the book was cancelled; I wanted to do a major revision of the font.
There’s been a slow move over the last decade toward using mixed case instead of all capitals in comics. Do you have a preference for one or the other?
CR: I like using lower case for special effects. I think upper case looks better. About the best thing about lower case is that you can fit a lot more dialogue in small spaces when you use it.
Continued belowThere are technical issues with ULC and the means I use to enable letters to never repeat themselves. It’s easier for me to standardize on all upper case. I think it’s also inherently more dramatic.
Do you think we’ll ever see a day when letterers will receive regular cover credit for their work? Do you think they should?
CR: Cover credits serve two purposes: either they help sell more comics, or they prompt talented people to work on a comic.
I doubt if anybody’s going to buy a comic based on who lettered it.
What is the most important advice you ever received on lettering?
CR: Gaspar did tell me, many years ago, that SFX and display lettering is just a variation of one’s body copy lettering.
I used that advice in hand lettering, and I continue to use it in type design. My body copy type family has fourteen variant fonts. I use a few dozen SFX and display fonts as well. All of them are based on the basic body copy alphabet.
Do you try to disguise the fact that your work is done digitally?
CR: Now there’s a question I was hoping you’d ask me. Thanks for asking that. Brilliant question.
Yeah, I’ve taken elaborate measures to disguise its being digital, and a couple of times critics have complimented my editors for continuing to buy what they think is my hand lettering.
It’s an aesthetic thing with me, for the purpose of better storytelling. If lettering appears handmade, I believe it will be in better harmony with the drawings, which are handmade. The computer’s mechanical perfection is something which has to be defeated.
I’ve gone to ridiculous lengths in pursuit of this. My body copy type has thousands of variant characters. Ny balloons and pointers are imperfectly drawn. My sound effects fonts have outlines which increase and decrease in weight.
I’m not saying that this is the only way, or the best way, to letter digitally. John Roshell and Richard Starkings decided at the outset that they would not try to make their work look handmade. and a well executed Comicraft page is quite lovely.
If there is one advantage hand lettering has over digital lettering is a kind of organic unity. Since one person does everything — body copy, sfx, titles, balloons — all of it has a familial resemblance. the next best thing, in my view, is to use nothing but one’s own type, all of which is based on my own body copy.
