Noe’s Comics Nook: The Essential Guide to Comic Book Lettering

Review

With The Essential Guide to Comic Book Lettering, award-winning letter Nate Piekos has written what is sure to be a staple of the lettering trade for years to come. That’s the tweet-length version of my review right there isn’t it? But there is, as always, more to it than that!

While letters have, I think (I hope), have gained more recognition in recent years, the unfortunate truth is that many readers still fail to give them their due. As Piekos showcases throughout this comic, the letter is doing much more than just transcribing dialogue and sound effects. They’re aiding in, or developing outright, the reading flow of the comic, the emotion in what’s said, the feel of the environment, and are embedded in every aspect of the reading experience. In a way, lettering is like the way we interact physical infrastructure. When it is done well, serving its purpose, it becomes nearly invisible as a separate entity. But the moment something goes wrong, suddenly that is all you can think about and it colors every feeling you have about an experience (think, blown tire due to a pothole on vacation).

If lettering, whether you think of it as infrastructure like I do or not, sounds like something you’d love to explore, The Essential Guide walks you through how it is done by modern, U.S. comics publishers today. From tools of the trade, to where lettering fits in the publishing process, to what working life is like, it is all covered in strong detail – though Piekos says they probably could’ve written even more! One thing that I do wish had been given far more attention is hand-lettering. While I do understand that the serialized comics market is largely focused on digital processes now, there is still a big emphasis on hand-lettering in other areas of comics. If you ever want to hear a sermon about the value of lettering by hand, go ask Lynda Barry about it.

The Essential Guide is going to be a hit with readers who want insight into the industry, into the nuts-and-bolts of lettering, and has crossover appeal to typography enthusiasts.

Lesson Plan Idea Using Common Core Standards (CCS) CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.W.6.10 – Write routinely over extended time frames (time for research, reflection, and revision) and shorter time frames (a single sitting or a day or two) for a range of discipline-specific tasks, purposes, and audiences.

Directions: Seldom are students asked to do much handwriting in today’s classrooms – The Essential Guide to Comic Book Lettering offers an excuse to focus on just that. While Piekos spends nearly all of the book exploring how to letter digitally, he does acknowledge the value of practicing and experimenting by hand.

For this project, students will be tasked with creating their own, basic lettering templates based on their own handwriting. Information on some helpful tools and supplies can be found throughout the book, notably in chapter 4, but truly students can approach this with nothing more than sturdy paper and a fine-point pen. Following comics convention of all-caps dialogue, students should develop an alphabet, key punctuation, and examples of how they would write in bold, italics, superscript, and subscript.

To help students develop muscle memory and strength and time to experiment, this project should be conducted over a series of weeks, with students given time in class at least twice a week for the duration. The final template should be presented on a clean sheet without notes, experimentation, etc. – in other words, it should stand clearly on its own. This template can then the foundation for future assignments, such as creating their own mini-comics or zines.