The art and history of lettering comics

For an example of comic lettering &#x27;in extremis&#x27;, look at Charles Crumb (who was the big brother of the famous underground comic artist Robert Crumb). He obsessively drew the story of Treasure Island with a particular emphasis on long conversations between how Long John Silver and Jim Hawkins. Charles Crumb clearly had some kind of psychosis, whereby the text boxes in his comics became larger and larger eventually pushing out the images altogether. The text itself became nothing more than an impression of text (Graphomania?).<p>Hard to find good examples... a single example at the near bottom of the page here: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.lambiek.net&#x2F;artists&#x2F;c&#x2F;crumb_charles.htm" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.lambiek.net&#x2F;artists&#x2F;c&#x2F;crumb_charles.htm</a><p>A much later example here: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;blog.mumblelard.com&#x2F;post&#x2F;88300090&#x2F;graphomania-or-cipher-gradually-charles-crumbs" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;blog.mumblelard.com&#x2F;post&#x2F;88300090&#x2F;graphomania-or-cip...</a><p>Also check out the documentary on the three Crumb brothers.

Todd Klein&#x27;s entire blog is amazing.<p>Elsewhere he has an entire six-part retrospective on working for DC in the &#x27;80s (aside from being a letterer, he was Assistant Production Manager for years) with tons of pictures of their offices and people.<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;kleinletters.com&#x2F;Blog&#x2F;the-dc-comics-offices-1982-1991-part-1&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;kleinletters.com&#x2F;Blog&#x2F;the-dc-comics-offices-1982-199...</a><p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;kleinletters.com&#x2F;Blog&#x2F;the-dc-comics-offices-1982-1991-part-2&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;kleinletters.com&#x2F;Blog&#x2F;the-dc-comics-offices-1982-199...</a><p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;kleinletters.com&#x2F;Blog&#x2F;the-dc-comics-offices-1982-1991-part-3&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;kleinletters.com&#x2F;Blog&#x2F;the-dc-comics-offices-1982-199...</a><p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;kleinletters.com&#x2F;Blog&#x2F;the-dc-comics-offices-1982-1991-part-4&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;kleinletters.com&#x2F;Blog&#x2F;the-dc-comics-offices-1982-199...</a><p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;kleinletters.com&#x2F;Blog&#x2F;the-dc-comics-offices-1982-1991-part-5&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;kleinletters.com&#x2F;Blog&#x2F;the-dc-comics-offices-1982-199...</a><p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;kleinletters.com&#x2F;Blog&#x2F;the-dc-comics-offices-1982-1991-part-6&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;kleinletters.com&#x2F;Blog&#x2F;the-dc-comics-offices-1982-199...</a><p>I&#x27;ve been a huge fan of comics since I was a kid, and the &quot;inside baseball&quot; side of the industry has always deeply fascinated me, so reading these articles was pure joy.

Nothing about herge but his speech bubble font was lovely

About (<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;kleinletters.com&#x2F;Blog&#x2F;about-my-book&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;kleinletters.com&#x2F;Blog&#x2F;about-my-book&#x2F;</a>)<p>FYI &#x2F; tl;dr<p>After about 5 years of back and forth and then not hearing from a prospective publisher about completing his book project Todd Klein decided to take all the work and publish it on his blog here as a series of articles (some previously posted that were part of the content he was building for the book).

hey - Todd Klein designed the logo for a Dr Strange from Marvel, it says in tiny print.

Fascinating. I happen to own exactly that first issue of Shatter.