Todd’s Blog

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I haven’t had much time for blogging this week, it’s been a very busy work time. I know I’ve used that excuse before, and have seen it on other blogs, so I thought I’d go into some detail of exactly what I did this week for a change, allowing you to understand better.

Monday morning I lettered the second half of SIMON DARK #13. I had lettered the first half on Sunday. This issue, written by Steve Niles, art by Scott Hampton, is a bit of a breather after the conclusion of the previous story arc in issue 12, and was fairly light on dialogue, which made it a faster job for me, always a good thing.

Monday afternoon and Tuesday morning I worked on corrections and rewrites for TOP 10 SEASON 2 #3. The working method for this series is unusual: writer/layout artist Zander Cannon provides a script and art-size layouts, which I letter over. Once approved, I delete Zander’s layouts and send just the lettering (with panel borders) to artist Gene Ha, who prints it out on art paper and draws the actual finished art, based on Zander’s layout. (Or, at least, I think that’s how he does it.) Above is a sample panel showing Zander’s layout with my lettering over it. I originally lettered this issue, as well as issues 1 and 2, in 2006. The project waited quite a while for Gene to find time in his schedule to work on it, but he’s now on it full time, and drawing issue 3. I had to reletter several pages of this because, it turned out,  I wasn’t working from the final version of the script back in 2006.

Tuesday afternoon and most of Wednesday I lettered FABLES 77, written by Bill Willingham, art by Mark Buckingham and Andrew Pepoy on the main story, Peter Gross on the backup. Can’t say much about the stories except that they’re great, as always. The sample panel above shows two new characters that may seem rather familiar to some long-time fantasy fans, that’s all I’ll say. Bill’s script was copy-heavy on some pages, light on others, evening out to a good average, allowing me to letter it in a day and a half.

Thursday I lettered SANDMAN: THE DREAM HUNTERS #2, script adaptation and art by the legendary P. Craig Russell, from the story by Neil Gaiman. Craig’s art is easy and fun to letter, as he writes in all the lettering on his pencils, and inks all the caption and balloon borders as part of his finished art. Above is a sample panel of his pencils…

…and here’s the same panel of finished art with my lettering added. Vertigo/DC originally published this story as text with illustrations by Yoshitaki Amano. This time it’s completely in graphic story form, and as always with Russell’s art, a great delight. And the expanded page count (four issues, 31 story pages each), is giving Craig lots of room to tell the story visually. The text on each page is pretty light, and I was able to letter the entire issue in one day, after preparing the titles for the first page the evening before.

And just as I was finishing up and preparing to send lettering proofs to DC, I got an email from Marvel with urgently-needed corrections and rewrites for this book:

AVENGERS/INVADERS #5, which had been last week’s rush project. I’d finished the lettering and sent in proofs last week, but it took until Thursday afternoon for them to get me corrections. The mini-series involves lots of major Marvel characters, and is being produced in conjunction with another company, Dynamite Entertainment, so there are lots of spoons in the broth. Thankfully editor Steve Wacker rides herd on the process and tries to give me all the changes at once, which is helpful. But, I had plans for Friday morning, so I spent Thursday evening doing the changes and sent them in to Marvel late Thursday. A sample panel is above. On this book I letter over scans of pencilled art by Steve Sadowski, which is also what the colorist gets, there’s no inker. I’ve only seen the first issue printed, and it looks pretty good.

Friday morning I finally escaped down to Cape May for some birdwatching and volunteer time at the Cape May Bird Observatory. I’ll write about that tomorrow. This afternoon I’m back on the computer, but so far have received no frantic emails or phone calls, so hopefully I’m caught up with everything for the moment. I have another complete book waiting for me, but will probably not start it until tomorrow or Sunday. (Unless I’m away from home I usually do some lettering work every day, if I have it.)

A considerably busier than usual week! Can’t complain about the work, though, it’s all fun stuff, and when the checks come in I’ll be very happy.