Image © DC Comics, Inc.

I spoke to Gaspar Saladino today and he told me he enjoyed the articles about his first DC lettering. He confirmed that this story, the first one in ROMANCE TRAIL #5 was his earliest DC job, it seemed familiar to him, and he thought my research was correct and well done. Needless to say, I’m pleased and relieved. Now, if anyone out there could get Gaspar’s earliest credits updated on the Grand Comics Database and his Wikipedia entry, that would be swell.

ADDED: Thanks to Ralf Haring for updating the GCD to include the information in my blog posts. Much appreciated!

All images © DC Comics, Inc.

When we spoke in mid December, Gaspar had put some doubt in my mind about JIMMY WAKELY being the first DC comic he worked on, so I did more research. I found a site that shows covers of all the comics published by the company in each month of each year. Looking through 1950 I came to this title, which I’d never seen or heard of before. It ran six issues from cover dates July-August 1949 through this one, May-June 1950. It’s DC’s first romance title, though just by two months, GIRLS’ LOVE STORIES came along shortly after. It was edited by Julie Schwartz, and is certainly a western romance comic, exactly what Gaspar had described. Issue 6 was published the same month as issue 5 of JIMMY WAKELY, where we’ve already seen Gaspar’s work. It looked like I’d hit the jackpot!

Perhaps because it covers two genres, inexpensive reading copies are scarce, but I was able to once again get scans from Michael T. Gilbert of splash pages and then full stories for issue 6, and I thank him for his help.

This splash page for the first story certainly has balloon and caption lettering that look like the work of Gaspar to me. Better yet, the art is by Carmine Infantino and Frank Giacoia (as per the Grand Comics Database). Gaspar remembered his first story being drawn by Carmine, so perhaps this was it.

I’m not sure what’s going on with that triangle representing A as the first letter of the caption, I can’t see what it’s meant to be, but the remaining letter forms certainly look like Gaspar’s work, though perhaps just a little less even that what we’ve seen so far. The story title is rather bland, and looks more like something Ira Schnapp might do than Gaspar, but notice the way the R is designed, like a P with the right leg added. This is a characteristic element of Gaspar’s title lettering throughout his career.

A detail from page 5 has a typical Gaspar burst balloon with all straight lines. The one slightly odd thing is the squared letter A’s in the word AVALANCHE, a variation which appears in this issue but not later work, and only on emphasized words.

On page 7 we find the first of several initial capitals with black shapes behind them, a little more rounded than what we’ve seen before, but quite similar.

And on page 10 we have some very Gaspar-ish sound effects. In all, I’m sure this story was lettered by Gaspar. And it wasn’t the only one in the issue!

The second story also looks like it has Gaspar’s lettering.  The art is again attributed to Infantino/Giacoia on the GCD, but with a question mark. Doesn’t look as much like their work to me, and I think it’s unlikely Julie would have run two stories by the same art team in the same issue and one after the other. Notice the R’s in the title with the same style as story one, and the black shape behind the initial capital.

This detail from page 3 has a very Gaspar sound effect and another of those initial capitals. It’s subtle, but I again see some slight unevenness in the letter forms perhaps suggesting that Gaspar was still learning to doing this.

Page 6 has this very typical Gaspar thought balloon and squared, bold I.

The next panel features one of those caption borders with zigzags, clearly tying the lettering style to examples we’ve looked at in earlier parts of this article. I don’t recall seeing anyone else but Gaspar do that, and it’s representative of the kind of energy he always adds to his work.

There was plenty of hard slogging for the letterer in those days, as Gaspar remembers. I believe the lettering on this page covers nearly 50% of the entire surface!

Here’s the third long story in the issue, once again I believe with Gaspar lettering. This title also looks like he was using the work of Ira Schnapp as a guide, but it’s not as well crafted as Ira’s work.

One more example of the zigzag caption line, and here I think the slightly uneven letter forms are more obvious. Don’t get me wrong, this is still great lettering, but I have to admit I feel a little better about my own early work after seeing that Gaspar didn’t lay pen to paper on his earliest stories with a fully developed professional lettering style. From this example, I think we can see him still working that out.

So, ROMANCE TRAIL 6 has three stories lettered by Gaspar, but are they the earliest? Michael T. Gilbert had sent me splash pages for all six issues, and while I didn’t see any sign of Saladino lettering in issues 1-4, there were two stories in issue 5 I thought might be by him. Michael was kind enough to send his largest scans of those stories, but unfortunately they aren’t as clear as the ones for issue 6.

I looked again on eBay, and this time found a low-grade copy of issue 5 with the logo stripped off, something done by newsstands to get credit for unsold copies. (They sent the stripped logos to the distributor for credit, and then sometimes still sold the defaced comics at lower prices, which must have happened here). As you can see, I bought it, and it arrived yesterday, just in time for me to make new scans for this article.

The first story in the book has art by Carmine Infantino and Joe Giella according to the GCD. It certainly looks like Infantino pencils to me. The story title is well done, if rather conservative. I think “A Molly Adams Story” is set in type.

A closer look at the caption shows a decorative T that is not as well done as later ones by Gaspar, but still has a creative approach, a black circle behind it. Again, the letterforms are a little uneven, perhaps a bit more so than the ones in issue 6. The handling of the emphasized DID is not typical of his later work, but many of the style points that indicate Gaspar’s letter forms to me are here.

We can certainly say the story had tons of “copy” or things needing lettering, as you can see on this page. There are some details to notice here. The first speech balloon has three quoted words underlined. No doubt they were underlined in the script, but in those pre-computer days that usually meant it should be lettered italic or slanted. I made a similar novice mistake once on an early job for Julie Schwartz, and he came to the production room at DC, where I was working on staff, to tell me “NEVER underline!” I’m not sure why these weren’t fixed before the pages went to the printer, either Julie missed it, or he wasn’t yet set on that rule. The words that are emphasized are uneven in size, look how big ACTUALLY is at lower left. The thought balloon border in that panel uses smaller ovals than usual for Gaspar, and they aren’t as well shaped as later ones, more evidence he was still learning.

Here’s what I’d call the “smoking gun” of my research: a zigzag caption line found on page 6, one of several in the story. If there was any doubt in my mind that Gaspar lettered it, this dispelled it. I’m convinced I’ve found the very first story lettered by Gaspar for DC! Because it’s not typical of his later work in some ways, I might have missed it if I hadn’t worked my way back like this, so my research has paid off!

The other piece in the issue I think Gaspar lettered is this one-page filler of illustrated verse with art by Alex Toth. There’s a very nice western title at the top, and then four sections of verse in all caps. then lower case.

The upper case letter forms are very much in Gaspar’s style, and the lower case, while less practiced, shows lots of promise, and puts him on the road to the signature upper and lower case handwriting style that Gaspar used throughout his career.

I called Gaspar again a few days ago to tell him about my new research. “See if this rings a bell,” I told him, “a comic called ROMANCE TRAIL, combining romance and western themes.”

With only a moment’s hesitation he replied, “Yes! That sounds like it. I think you’re right! And the art was by Carmine?” I told him it was on the earliest story. Gaspar agreed it all sounded correct. I said I’d be presenting my evidence in these blog articles, and he could see it there soon. “Okay, I’ll be interested to read that,” he said, and added, “and don’t be afraid to tear me apart, tell it like it is.” While I’ve tried to be honest in my comments here, even starting out I feel Gaspar was way ahead of all the letterers I’ve known. No tearing apart required!

One interesting thing to consider is the timing of this work. Issue 5 of ROMANCE TRAIL was cover-dated March-April 1950. Comics regularly hit the newsstands two months ahead of their cover date for two reasons. First, it would make them seem fresh and new longer, and second it told the sellers when it was time to take unsold copies off the stands. So, this issue would have appeared in January, 1950, and be pulled off in March or April, in time for the next bimonthly issue. I don’t know what the lead time was for separations, printing and distribution, but I’d guess the finished art had to be sent to the color separators at least one month before the on-sale time. That puts the date of actual work being done on the book back into November of 1949 or earlier.

So, if this evidence is accurate, Gaspar’s memory of starting work at DC in 1951 is off by about two years. It also means that the lettering legend, revered by so many of us who came after him, has now produced work in EIGHT decades, from the 1940s to the 2010s! And he’s not done yet. Gaspar told me he recently lettered a story for Dark Horse Comics. I’ll be looking forward to that, and will probably blog about it.

Hope you’ve enjoyed this trip back into comics and lettering history, similar articles can be found on the COMICS CREATION page of my blog.

 

 

 

All images © DC Comics, Inc.

The more I looked at the lettering in JIMMY WAKELY #7, the more I felt convinced that Gaspar had lettered three of the stories in it, even though the man himself didn’t think so. What could I use for evidence to bolster my case? I’d already written about the story above from STRANGE ADVENTURES #13, cover dated Oct. 1951 in THIS article. The art is by Alex Toth (who also did many stories for JIMMY WAKELY), and I knew it had to be lettered by Gaspar. Why? Artist Steve Leialoha owns an unused version of this first page with a note to Gaspar on it! Here’s the page:

And here’s the note to Gaspar larger:

As it turned out, the revised first page didn’t include this sign Alex was writing to Gaspar about, but he clearly knew who would be lettering the story. So I decided I should look for style clues in the pages of “Artist of Other Worlds.” Writer/artist and comics historian Michael T. Gilbert was kind enough to send me scans of the entire story (he’d provided the one I already had of the first page), and lots of style clues emerged. But first, let me point out the story title above as lettered. Once again it doesn’t look at all like Gaspar’s work. Still quite puzzling, but at least consistent with the JIMMY WAKELY stories!

Here’s a detail from the second story page. While the scan is a little wonky, the similarities to the JIMMY WAKELY work are clear. Same initial cap style, same wide lettering with all the characteristic Saladino style points. Same wide balloon tails.

On this detail from a later page, we see the same kind of radio balloon used in the JW stories.

This full story page has more radio balloons, the same initial cap style in the first caption, which also ends in the same kind of scrollwork. I felt I had my case. I made large printouts of both the “Desert Justice” story from JW and this one from SA on my 11 by 17-inch printer and marked them up with notes pointing out all the similarities, and mailed them to Gaspar.

It took him a while to get to them, but when he’d gone over the pages he called to tell me he thought I was absolutely correct. It WAS his work in both, except for the story titles, which is just as puzzling to him as to me. That left only the matter of the date. “You know,” I said, “The STRANGE ADVENTURES issue is dated October, 1951, but that meant it was on the newsstands in August, and likely lettered at least a month or two before that.” Gaspar admitted I must be right. When I pointed out the stories in JIMMY WAKELY #7, cover dated Sept.-Oct. 1950 would have been lettered no later than June of that year, he reluctantly agreed he must have started at DC earlier than he remembered.

Over the weeks this process was going on I continued to look for more reference on JIMMY WAKELY, and on eBay I hit the jackpot. Someone was selling a CD filled with scans of the entire 19 issues for a few dollars! While of questionable legal standing, this was something I had to have, and I bought it. The CD arrived after I had the above conversation with Gaspar, and as I was starting to assemble material for these articles. I began going through the issues page by page. Again, the scans vary in quality, though all are readable at least, and most are clear enough to see the lettering style.

Here’s a sample of the lettering from the first issue. There are a few minor similarities to Gaspar’s work like the long central stroke in the S, but overall it’s very different with narrower, rounder letters, a G with a serif, and so on. Much the same was true for all of issues 1-4. Then I opened issue 5, and my jaw dropped. There were four main stories, and every one of them seemed to be lettered by Gaspar! I had to have a better look, and soon found another reading copy on eBay that wasn’t too expensive. When it came, the actual comic did nothing but confirm my opinion. Here are some scans.

Story one splash page, art by Alex Toth and Joe Giella. Look at that thought balloon’s wide ovals, and the style of the initial capital Y in the caption. The title, while a bit odd, is closer to something I could see Gaspar doing, especially if he hadn’t quite figured out title lettering yet.

Here’s a closer look. The letterforms are very much in Gaspar’s style: wide with mostly straight strokes. The G has a straight right side but no serif, the C is half an oval, the S has that very long center stroke, and so on.

Here’s a detail from page 2 of the story with a very Gaspar radio balloon and another of those open initial caps with black brush shapes behind it.

A detail from page 4 with an interesting very bold and square I, and notice the unusual zig-zags in the caption border. It’s the sort of thing I’ve used to denote a radio or TV caption, but that’s not the case here. I think Gaspar just put it in as a design element to break up that dull straight line. Remember this detail, we’ll get back to it.

A detail from page 5 showing Gaspar’s two most common small balloon styles. Rounded for speech, large ovals for thoughts.

A sound effect from page 6, very Gaspar, especially that angular S!

Are you getting the picture? Here’s the splash page from the second story I believe Gaspar lettered with art by Alex Toth and Bernard Sachs (all art credits are from the Grand Comics Database). The title and logo on this one are by Gaspar too, I’m sure, and look at those elegant scroll captions.

The third story Gaspar lettered, again with a title that looks more in his style, quite creative in the use of broken dry-brush strokes for SHERIFF and YEAR. (The logo is probably an existing one by Ira Schnapp.) The art is by Joe Kubert and Bernard Sachs.

The fourth story has a different style to the initial cap and the title is not as well done or very typical of Gaspar’s work, but again, perhaps he hadn’t quite figured out the best ways to do titles yet. Art by Alex Toth and Frank Giacoia.

Here’s another of those captions with a few zig-zags, and some nice open lettering from the fourth story.

And another sound effect that’s classic Gaspar work.

So, I was convinced that Gaspar had lettered these stories, but before I had a chance to talk to him about it, my research was interrupted by Hurricane Sandy. Ellen and I evacuated to my mother’s place for a few days, then brought her here. Gaspar and his wife live on Long Island in an area hit by the storm, and he wasn’t reachable by phone or email for a few weeks, which had me worried. I finally heard from Clem Robins that the Saladinos had been sent down to Florida by their children, and would stay there until after Thanksgiving.

When Gaspar was home and I finally was able to talk to him on the phone, I told him about my new discovery, but he was skeptical. He’d been looking at the samples I’d sent from Jimmy Wakely 7 again, and wasn’t sure he’d done them. “The STRANGE ADVENTURE story is definitely me,” he said, “but I don’t remember working on JIMMY WAKELY.” I had to say I felt he was wrong, but I probed for anything he could remember about his first lettering work for Julie Schwartz at DC. “It was a romantic western,” he said. “I think the first story I did was drawn by Carmine Infantino. All I remember is there was tons of captions and dialogue.”

After we talked I thought about this and decided to do more research. Could there be another comic I was missing that contained Gaspar’s first DC lettering? The answer will follow in Part 3 of this article. Similar articles can be found on the COMICS CREATION page of my blog.

 

All images © DC Comics, Inc.

It’s no secret that my favorite letterer and role model in lettering is Gaspar Saladino, and lately I’ve been talking to him about his early days in comics. Gaspar has said in past interviews that his first work for DC was lettering western romance stories for editor Julius Schwartz. Creator credits for comics are usually a matter of guesswork for stories of that era, and educated guesses can be found on the Grand Comics Database, I checked under “Letterer” and “Gaspar Saladino” and “sort by date.” The chronological first lettering credit they have for Gaspar is for ALL-STAR COMICS #33 cover-dated Feb.-March 1947. That’s way too early, Gaspar was in the service then, so it’s a wrong guess. The next listing is for issue 7 of the comic JIMMY WAKELY that ran for 19 issues, cover-dated Sept.-Oct. 1949 to July-Aug. 1952. The series is about a singing cowboy, so I surmised that might qualify as a romantic western. I thought it might be interesting to see if I could identify the first work by Gaspar on the title.

ADDED: Thanks to Ralf Haring, Gaspar’s listings on the GCD have been updated to reflect the research in these blog posts, which I appreciate. If you’d like to follow my line of research, please read on rather than checking the GCD!

Gaspar was born in 1926 in Brooklyn, NY. For his high school education, he attended the School of Industrial Art (later the High School of Art and Design) in Manhattan, commuting by subway from Brooklyn. The school was attended by a number of other artists who made careers in comics including Bernard Krigstein, Carmine Infantino, Joe Orlando, and Gaspar’s classmate in the class of 1945, inker Joe Giella. Later graduates included Sy Barry, Alex Toth, John Romita Sr. and Dick Giordano. While in high school, Gaspar did a some inking for the Lloyd Jacquet studio, a packager of comics for various publishers, though he doesn’t remember any specific titles or features. Jacquet was clearly looking for new talent at the school, and was helpful to Gaspar in getting him a desk job in the Army when he enlisted after graduating. That experience provided Gaspar with some familiarity with several aspects of comics work, including the lettering, as in those days (and for many more decades) the lettering would have been already on the pages when he inked them. He says he didn’t do any lettering at that time, though.

Gaspar was in the service about two years, stationed in Japan in a public relations job that didn’t involve art at all. When he got home in 1947, Gaspar told me he was out pounding the pavement looking for work. At some point he put together sample comics pages that he drew, lettered and inked and took them to DC Comics, hoping to find work there. This seems like a natural idea, as several of his high school classmates were already working for the company. Sol Harrison, then in charge of production, showed the samples around to the editors. Julie Schwartz said that, while he didn’t like Gaspar’s art enough to hire him for that, he did like his lettering, and offered him regular lettering work. Gaspar was happy to get it.

When he started, Gaspar told me, they sat him in the Production room between logo and cover lettering man Ira Schnapp and then production artist Mort Drucker (later of MAD fame), and he began lettering work for Julie, and soon other editors like Robert Kanigher and Mort Weisinger. It was freelance work paying $2 a page, but he did it in the office five days a week, lettering about nine pages a day on average, or 45 pages a week. At the end of the week he’d fill out a voucher for the work and get a check. Gaspar said $90 a week pay was good money in those days, and he was quite happy with his new job.

I suspect having on-premises letterers was a fairly new thing for DC then. Ira Schnapp had not been in his staff job for long, but was now busy doing most of the company’s logos, cover lettering, house ads, and some story pages as well. Gaspar told me there were two students from his old high school that were also coming in to do lettering, probably after school. One was a young man named Artie Secunda, the other was a young lady, he doesn’t remember her name. From the early days of comics and in comic strips, lettering was usually provided by the artist, or more often an assistant, but it was part of the product delivered by the artist. Some comics packagers or “shops” had guys specializing in lettering, like Howard Ferguson at Joe Simon’s shop and Abe Kanegson at Will Eisners, but in general lettering was seen as an entry level job one would do on the way toward inking and eventually pencilling. Many artists who came into the comics business in the early days followed that route.

If there were errors or changes needed in the lettering, staff production folks (like Mort Drucker) could do them if there wasn’t time to send it back to the artist, but I can see how editors would benefit from having the lettering done in-house where they could read over it and have changes made on the spot either before or after the art was inked.  At DC the inker was often NOT the penciller, further breaking up the art chores into different assembly-line jobs. In essence, DC was creating a production shop of their own, along the lines of those run by Lloyd Jacquet, Joe Simon and Will Eisner, among others. The difference was, DC had more control over the process by hiring each individual worker in the assembly line. Gaspar doesn’t recall anyone else doing freelance lettering at the time he started, though there might have been some working for other editors, and not in-house.

Knowing the time period and the title, I thought I should be able to identify Gaspar’s seminal lettering on JIMMY WAKELY. First I had to find scans of the comics. Some were available online, but not all the issues, and the scans were of varying quality. Of the issues I could view that way, the earliest pages that looked like Gaspar’s work were indeed from issue 7. Wanting a closer look, I ordered a well-worn and not very collectible copy on eBay, above.

Here’s a detail from the first story in the issue, clearly NOT by Gaspar. The letters are all quite narrow, the S is curved throughout, the G has a serif on the bottom, and the letters are generally not very even.

The title page is also not him, nor does it look to me like the work of Ira Schnapp, a possible candidate. GCD lists the letterer as Morris Waldinger, but that seems very unlikely, as he hadn’t started working for the company yet, I believe, so I’d call that a wrong guess.

The detail above, and the one at the top of this article are from issue 7′s second story, “Desert Justice,” with art by Alex Toth and Bernard Sachs (all art credits here are from the GCD) and clearly look like Gaspar to me. The letters are wide and even, well formed. The S has a long straight central stroke, the G is squared on the right side, the U is square at the bottom, the loops of the P and R are narrow, the question marks and exclamation points are large. Those are just some of the clues that I look for in Gaspar’s work. In the first example above there’s a scroll caption with a notched end. The radio balloon has large straight points. In the second example, the thought balloon has large loops and a trail of oval pointer bubbles. The other balloon tails are wide. Above all, I was impressed with how consistent and professional this work is! My earliest lettering is pretty awful even compared to what I did a year later, so to see Gaspar starting out at such a high level made me admire his talent all the more. I asked Gaspar if he had studied lettering in high school or later, and he said no. “It was just something that came naturally to me,” he told me.

Another detail from the second story shows an open initial capital that sits on what look like black strokes made with a square-tipped brush, though I’m sure they’re actually outlined in pen and filled in. This is one of the characteristic initial capital styles I found in Gaspar’s early work, another is in the open letter B above, though that’s more typical of all lettering for the time.

Story three was probably lettered by the same person as story one, not Gaspar, but story four,  “The Stranger from Sunburst Bend” with art by Gil Kane and Bob Lander, again looks like his work, including the story title in a handsome scroll.

The above example from that story even has some upper and lower case letters on a map that I find very convincingly Gaspar.

Story five again looks like Saladino lettering. There’s the same initial cap style, and sound effects very familiar to me from his later work. So, even though I hadn’t seen all the issues yet, I was pretty confident issue 7 had three early examples of Gaspar’s lettering.

The only problem was the story titles. Except for “The Stranger from Sunburst Bend,” they didn’t look like Gaspar’s work. This is quite puzzling. Possibly editor Julie Schwartz didn’t have confidence in Gaspar’s title work and had someone else letter them. Or perhaps Gaspar was still finding his way with lettering styles for titles on this western comic.

So, with this much knowledge, I emailed scans of a few of these full pages from issue 7 to Gaspar to see what he thought. “Parts of it do look like my work,” he told me, “but those titles are definitely not my style. No, I don’t think I did these stories.” And when I told him the date of the issue, Sept.-Oct. 1950, he thought it was too early. He remembered starting at DC in 1951. This set me back a bit. More research was needed, and I’ll continue with that next time.

Other similar articles can be found on the COMICS CREATION page of my blog.

 

 

 

This image and the next three below © Magnus Aspli, Michael Deshane and Jelena Djordjevic (as close as I can type it here).

What were you doing in 1951? Myself, I was being born in January of that year in central New Jersey. Not far away, in New York City and Long Island, Gaspar Saladino was beginning his career as a freelance letter for DC Comics (among others). Gaspar continued to produce his skillful, dynamic, and creative hand-lettering for DC until they moved to all-digital lettering around 2002, essentially putting him into retirement. A few weeks ago I learned from fellow letterer (and friend and admirer of Gaspar) Clem Robins that “The Master” had returned to the drawing board to letter some sample pages for an international team of would-be comics creators, something arranged by Clem himself. With everyone’s permission and help, I’m delighted to be able to report on this work, which has allowed Gaspar to extend his comics lettering career to a seventh decade! The sample above is from the first page, and it confirms to me that my favorite letterer, and the man that I (and many others) saw as a role model in lettering has still “got it.”

The proposed comics project is titled by the creators, “Empire of Blood,” and co-writer Magnus Aspli describes it as “an epic historical drama grounded in realism, but which also deals with fantastical Slavic folklore elements, anachronistic technology and horror genre aspects.” It begins in “1855 as the Crimean War rages and the Russia Empire is in turmoil, internally as well as on the front lines;  two men—one a vurdulak and protector of Tsar Nicholas I, the other a steadfast revolutionary—are sent on a vengeful collision course. A course that will change the fate of nations.”

Magnus Aspli is a native of Norway, his writing partner Michael Deshane lives in Canada, and their artist, Jelena Djordjevic (my blog program simply will not recognize some of the actual letterforms in her name), resides in Serbia. Magnus told me, “I started with the idea, I think it was in 2010, then hooked up with Michael online and we began writing it together in the autumn of that year. We worked on the story/scripts for a year before we contacted Jelena through DeviantArt. Luckily she was intrigued and the three of us have been developing it since.” Earlier this year, with some finished art ready, they contacted  Clem Robins online, hoping to enlist him as a letterer for their comics proposal.

Clem told me, ” I liked the art a lot, but with all that cross-hatching, I thought it’d look lousy with computer lettering. I called Gaspar and asked him if he’d be willing to try it. I wasn’t sure he would be, but he was delighted. As it happens, the artist was a big fan of (Gaspar’s work on) ARKHAM ASYLUM, and couldn’t believe he would be interested in working on her pictures. Gaspar did the work on vellum overlays and mailed it to Michael in Canada, who scanned the lettering and sent it to Norway, where it was digitally combined with the artwork. For his part, Gaspar liked the story, so far as he read it, and loved the woman’s art.”

Here’s the complete first page, and you can see what Clem meant about all that cross-hatching, but I have to agree, I think the art is quite good, and doesn’t Gaspar’s handsome upper and lower case lettering work well on it? And the style he’s created for the whispered dialogue is creative and I think unique.

Here’s another page with standard balloon lettering that also looks great to me.

A closer look at one balloon. At this size, the lettering is a little rough in spots, but certainly quite readable and very much in Gaspar’s style, reminding me of what he was doing for DC in the early 2000′s.

I spoke to Gaspar this afternoon for the first time in at least 10 years, probably more. Clem has been encouraging me to give him a call, and this seemed a good time to make the effort, as I wanted to make sure he was okay with me blogging about this project. We had a good talk, and Gaspar sounds just the same as ever. After some catching up, I asked how it was for him doing this lettering, was he rusty? “No, not really,” he replied, telling me that he keeps his hand in practice by writing things every day, but with a regular pen, not lettering pens. He seemed very happy to have this chance to do some hand-lettering again, and when I told him nearly all my lettering work is on the computer now, he said jokingly, “You should get back to hand-lettering, you traitor!” But he understood when I told him that computer lettering is what all the major companies are geared for now, and what they want from me.

Before I conclude this post, I thought it might be interesting to look at some examples of Gaspar’s standard balloon and caption lettering over the years, and they begin below. (Gaspar, if you’re reading this, hope you don’t mind this stroll down memory lane!)

This image and those below © DC Comics, Inc.

Here’s part of a page from STRANGE ADVENTURES #7, cover dated April, 1951, which I believe is lettered by Gaspar, and quite early in his career. It’s scanned from original art.

A closer look at the big caption shows elements that identify it for me, including Gaspar’s distinctive S with a long straight central bar. This early work is a little stiff, but quite professional. Editor Julie Schwartz was already making good use of Gaspar’s talent, even then!

In this panel from SWAMP THING #2, cover dated December, 1972, Gaspar’s work had become rounder, and begun to show his use of a pen with a slight wedge tip, making the horizontal strokes a little thicker than the vertical ones. (It was a Speedball FB6 filed down to a wedge shape, I believe.) This example is also more condensed, and it’s worth noting that this lettering is done smaller than the earlier sample. The standard DC art size had shrunk from about 200% of printed size to about 150%.

Here’s part of a page of lettering on vellum over photocopied art from the LOBO PARAMILITARY CHRISTMAS SPECIAL from 1991. Look at that great first caption and its decorative capital S! I could write volumes on all the wonderful display lettering and sound effects in this comic alone.

But I’m focusing on the regular lettering here, and these two examples show Gaspar’s style had shifted again to one that’s more angular and less rounded. The wedge-tipped pen work is also more obvious and pronounced. Some of the S shapes are getting back to the angular look of the first example from 1951. And while I don’t have any examples handy, I think this trend continued toward more angular work until Gaspar’s style reached the place it is today in his latest lettering.

When I spoke to him, I asked Gaspar if he’d like to do more lettering. He said he would, and this confirms what Clem has told me, that he was very happy to have this small project in front of him. Of course, he’d be doing hand-lettering, and I imagine would like something he could take his time with, nothing with a tight deadline. Perhaps other projects that would fit that bill will come his way in the future. I and all my long-time lettering friends would be delighted if they did. We’d like nothing better than to see more work from the man we admire so much, the one we call “The Master.”

 

Images © Chris Ware.

At the Baltimore Comic-Con I recently attended, an art dealer had a page of Chris Ware original art for sale. It’s the first one I’ve seen, and I asked and was given permission to take it out of its plastic sleeve and photograph it. The page is unfinished, with some panels complete, some partially complete, and some only pencilled in non-repro blue, meaning a pencil color that is easily removed after scanning or photographing for publication. (I know of a few other artists who work or worked this way.)

I asked the dealer if he knew why it was unfinished, and he didn’t but said the page is in print in one of the ACME NOVELTY LIBRARY volumes, he wasn’t sure which. I don’t know either, it’s not one I have. The dealer suggested Ware might have completed the page digitally, either adding in pieces done on other paper, or just inking it on the computer, which seems possible. This could also be a page that was abandoned and redone completely. Without the printed page to compare, it’s hard to say. In any case, I was quite interested to see all this original Chris Ware lettering.

Here’s a closer look at the upper left section. The page is pretty large, and even showing just this part, the lettering is clearly quite small. That’s characteristic of much of Ware’s lettering, it’s often too small when printed for me to read comfortably, which is one reason why I haven’t read a lot of his work. I like his blue pencil layouts for the title: very old-school sans-serif open letters with a nice bounce to them.

Here’s a similar section at lower right. Even at this distance you can see from the amount of blue pencil behond the large block of lettering in the center that he wrote out all the text in pencil before inking it, something I like to see. It was the standard method at DC Comics when I started there in 1977, many of the artists, especially ones that had worked for the company for years, loosely pencilled in all the text so they knew about how much space it would take up, and could draw the art around those areas. Curt Swan and Kurt Schaffenberger were both quite good at this, and it made lettering their work much easier. Only a very few artists do this now, P. Craig Russell being a prominent example.

Here’s one tiny panel very close, about as large as it would look if your nose was nearly touching the paper. You can see that Ware began with horizontal guidelines drawn with his blue pencil, and probably made with the help of an Ames Lettering Guide. Then he pencilled in the actual words. You can see the word BE at the end of the third line. When he inked the lettering, he didn’t follow his pencils exactly, but instead made adjustments for good spacing. I would say the lettering is done with a Technical Drawing Pen, like the ones in THIS post, though perhaps not the same brand.

Part of another panel with even smaller lettering! This is approaching the limit of what’s possible with pen in hand, I’d say, at about an eighth of an inch high. A little shaky, but still quite readable at this size. (Probably barely so at printed size, at least for me.)

Here’s part of that large block of text. Note that he uses a different size pen point for his emphasized word BANK, though not for the comma after it, as I probably would have. Ware’s letterforms are very traditional and most would fit into a rectangle that’s a little narrower horizontally than vertically, giving them a slightly condensed look. The imperfections visible at this size are usually not apparent when printed at a smaller size.

One last panel which has only the lettering inked. This is a great example of getting maximum interest and excitement out of minimal linework.

The only letterer I know of who consistently worked as small as Ware was Bob Lappan. He lettered for DC in the 1980s-1990s. Lappan’s work was further from the classic lettering model than this, and I think perhaps harder to read, though I haven’t looked at any of it in a long time. Chris Ware’s lettering is often too small for my taste, but it’s well done and his title and display lettering are truly masterful.

More about lettering can be found on my COMICS CREATION page and the HOW TO section of my website.

 

A few weeks ago, logo designer Alex Jay posted a fascinating article on his blog about Ira Schnapp, a man we both have an interest in, as he was the main logo, cover lettering and house ad designer and letterer for DC Comics from about 1949 to 1968. I’ve written several articles about Schnapp recently, but in all my research I failed to uncover what Alex did: a series of 24 newspaper articles like the one above, published in The Toledo (Ohio) Blade from January to July of 1940. Since Schnapp lived in New York and the articles were published in Ohio, it seems likely they were syndicated, though there’s no information about that in any of them.

While Ira Schnapp is revered by some for his lettering and design work, until Alex came up with these articles (you can see poor but readable reproductions of all of them in his post), nothing he had written or drawn had ever come to light in the comics world, as far as I know. Jack Adler of DC Comics, who worked with Ira, once said that he was well educated, and knew a lot of things one wouldn’t expect. Yet, Alex Jay found evidence in the 1940 census that Ira had only two years of high school education. This strip proves Ira did know a lot about classical art, and we can only guess that he was self-educated, making good use of libraries and other resources to build the kind of knowledge seen in these articles.

So, Alex found poor scans of the articles, each of which describes and shows a particular piece of art by a wide range of artists. The articles are interesting and well written, if rather dry. The art is all done by Ira (some of it signed) interpreting the original paintings, sculptures and so forth in line work, as well as a portrait of the artist. While newspapers are notoriously bad at reproducing such things, I thought the scans we had must be even worse, and suggested to Alex that, if we could find examples of the printed articles, the art would look a lot better. About a week later, Alex had found four of the 24 articles for sale on an eBay store! The price was quite high for some old, browning newsprint clippings, but we both made offers to the seller anyway. I was willing to pay more than Alex, and so ended up with the articles. I’ve scanned them for this post, and at the end of it are links to higher resolution scans, if you’re interested.

Here’s a detail from the painting as reproduced by Schnapp. It looks to me to have been drawn on some kind of textured paper and then inked with a combination of  regular brush or pen lines first. Then texture was added either with a dry brush or a china marker (also known as a grease pencil or a lithography crayon) allowing the texture of the paper to come through in varying amounts. While this is probably a pale shadow of the original art, it’s miles better than the poor scans Alex found online, and I think pretty attractive work.

Here’s a scan of the original painting, “Evening Prayer – Angelus” by Millet. As you can see, it’s full of soft textures and I think would be quite a challenge for any artist to reproduce in line work. Perhaps many wouldn’t think it was worth the attempt, and in today’s internet world there would be no need to try, but in 1940 most people would have no access even to photographs of many of the paintings and sculptures in Schnapp’s series.

I also like Ira’s line drawings of the artists from various sources, and look, this one is even signed by Ira in a very Art Deco style. Perhaps if he’d ever done any comics art, and was allowed to sign it, the signature would have looked like this. Ira also hand-lettered all the large text in the articles like the painting titles, and it’s very much in his style.

Here’s the second clipping with not only the painting title but the artist’s name and subtitle info lettered by him.

The original painting is in the Huntington Library in California, and I saw it on my visit there a few months ago. As you can see from the above scan, Schnapp could only hint at the details in the clothing and background in his linework version, but still, I think it gets the feeling of the original across pretty well. Of course the blue satin clothing that made the painting famous can’t be conveyed in the line drawing at all.

Here’s a closer look at the artist portrait with another Schnapp signature, a little different this time, with a serif I. The lettering under the picture is similar to a block letter style he often used on comics covers.

In this third clipping, Schnapp tries something even more difficult I think, a line drawing of a statue.

Here’s a photo of part of what Schnapp drew. Again, I think he did a pretty good job considering the limitations of the medium. This is not something one could simply trace, it takes a lot of thought to work out what lines to put down, and what to leave out so the essence of the statue comes across.

Schnapp’s portrait of the artist again shows a lot of character, I think.

And here’s a closer look at a bit of the hand-lettered title. Classical Roman letterforms that Schnapp knew well.

The fourth clipping has what is probably the most ambitious attempt by Schnapp to capture a painting in line work. Here’s the original:

I don’t think this one is as successful, there’s just too much going on, too many figures in the painting to capture well in a few lines and textures, but I have to admire Ira for trying.

Here’s a detail showing the Christ figure, and it loses a lot in this version.

Schnapp’s version of the artist’s own portrait is charming, though.

“The Art of the Ages” represents a large body of hard work on Ira Schnapp’s part, and I’m really glad to have seen it. Huge kudos to Alex Jay for discovering them. We don’t know if it ran in other papers, but that seems likely. Even so, the series could not have been a financial success, or he would have done more, I’d guess. Selling high culture to the masses is always tough! But at least one person liked these enough to clip them and save them. I have to admit that my favorite things in the articles are those cool Schnapp signatures. They show me how proud the man was of the hard work he did here.

Below are links to higher resolution scans of the four articles.

THE ANGELUS BY MILLAIS

THE BLUE BOY BY GAINSBOROUGH

STATUE OF MOSES BY MICHELANGELO

THE TRANSFIGURATION BY RAPHAEL