Obituary for Archie Letterer Ben Yoshida

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Selling Paintings of Four-Eyed Cats On the Street?

I'd rather be working for you! I have time in my schedule for new assignments - lettering, coloring, inks on paper, commissions, formatting, cover illustrations, design - hit me up for whatever you need.

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Do You Need a Comics Letterer?

Are you a comics publisher who needs a letterer? I letter digitally, based on my own fonts and by hand on request. My rates are reasonable. I have over 25 years experience lettering for comics. My clients have included Dark Horse Comics, James Moore, Ken Eppstein's Nix Comics, Paul Pope's Horse Press, Jacques Nyemb's Not So Super Comics, Headshrinker's Press, Cracked Magazine, Drew Ford's Cosmic Waves, Caliber Comics and many other titles and companies, as well as my own line of comics, coloring books and web comics.

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Dinosaur Arsonist

A sample from Dinosaur Arsonist, written by James Moore, drawn by Talcott Starr, lettered by me. You can support the project on Kickstarter! https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/120594390/dinosaur-arsonist

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Looking For Lettering Work

I'm currently looking for lettering work! I have a long resume of both digital and hand lettering for companies like Dark Horse Comics, Nix Comics, Cracked Magazine, Not So Super Comics, Paul Pope's Horse Press and many more. You can check out some of my recent work on Domi Nichi's Landslide: http://headshrinkerspress.com/comics/landslideroots/

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The Witches of Dunforge Now Available!

The Witches of Dunforge has been published and is available for shipping! It's a graphic novel of evil against good, written by Donald Tucker and drawn by the great Verl Holt Bond. I lettered the book and colored the wraparound cover. Highly recommended!

Just send $15, plus $2.50 shipping to: Verl Holt Bond, 1475 Tabor Avenue, Kettering, Ohio 45420. The publisher asks that an adult signature be included for purchasers under the age of 13.

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Curse the Owl-Man!

A page I lettered for Verl Holt Bond's upcoming graphic novel, The Witches of Dunforge.

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Lettered for Verl Bond's New Graphic Novel, The Witches of Dunforge

I'm about a fourth of the way done lettering it.

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Landslide Lettering

A sample of lettering I'm producing for Nichi the Scribbler's Landslide comic. I'm available for more digital (or hand-drawn) lettering now. Contact me for rates.

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"Allow Me to Draw For You!"

I am currently available for art projects and commissions. I have extensive experience penciling, lettering, inking and coloring comic books, painting and illustrating books, creating graphics for websites and poster design.

My commission rates for drawings are very reasonable. Just DM me on the FB or contact me here!

My version of Doc Doom above.

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Lettering for a Central Vineyard Sign

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Comic Book Hand Lettering Vs. Computer Lettering

All will be revealed in the e-Book I'm writing this week on how to draw comic books old school style. Methods, tips and tricks to learn by beginners and pros alike!

I'll post more info about it here ASAP.

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Neno Now Taking Your Commissions

Allow me to draw a commission for you! Or ink, letter, color or bounce a ball on my head. I can do lots of things! Contact me here or on NenoWorld: www.NenoWorld.com

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Paul Pope's "The One Trick Rip-Off"

Pope's The One Trick Rip-Off, originally circa 1995/96 for Dark Horse Presents, will be reprinted soon by Legendary, in color for the first time.

This work, a powerful mashup of sci-fi, pulp/noir heists and romance, contained some of my first professional lettering. The reprint will also contain almost 200 pages of additional rare and never-before-published Paul Pope stories!

More details soon.

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Hand Lettering: Why I Do It and How

Nearly all of the comics I draw are hand lettered, sometimes with a brush, usually with a Rapidograph pen (or a mixture of the two). Computer fonts are, of course, how it's usually done these days. Some of these fonts look mighty stylish, but they all suffer from one major fault: they look like computer fonts. Hand lettering has an subtle organic life you just can't duplicate or approximate with software.

The first pro lettering I did was for a story drawn by Jeff Smith and Paul Pope. Based on my first page, Paul recommended I give the words more room to "breathe", allowing more white space between the words and the balloon. That advice has served me well over the years.

I use a standard size for most dialogue in my pro comics: 1/8 an inch high, with 1/16 inch between the lines. I don't use some fancy schmancy lettering guide for this, but a metal ruler I bought in my first year of college in 1980.

The lettering is then penciled in. If the lettering needs to be placed symmetrically in order to fit an approximate size for a word balloon (which is most often the case), I jot down the words separated in lines somewhere else on the page, count the number of letters in the longest line and pencil that line of lettering first. I then use the ruler to figure out the middle of that longest line, draw a vertical line through the balloon with the middle of the longest line as the anchor and pencil in the other lines, making sure each line has an equal number of letters or spaces on each side of the anchor line (see above).

The lettering is then inked with the Rapidograph pen. What you see above is the lettering in a rough state. After the ink is dried, the pencils can be erased and the letters and balloon fixed up/repaired/perfected with a fine small brush and white and black paint. The end result doesn't have to be perfect, but it does need to be consistent, smooth and professional.

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