Since the invention of written language, people have tried to find ways to reproduce it more quickly than the age-old method of copying with pen in hand. Writing is made of alphabets or glyphs that repeat in a myriad of combinations. The quest was to reproduce those glyphs reliably to order without having to create each one anew. This seven part series will explore that quest.

The first attempt was the printing press, and as that evolved, it gradually replaced the creators of hand-lettered book manuscripts —often monks in monasteries — with a new technology. Many things still needed to have hand-made copies, though, as in the case of the U.S. Constitution, above, lettered by Jacob Shallus, and other kinds of legal documents. In the early 1800s the job of “engrosser,”  “penman,”  “scrivener,”  or “copyist” was filled by legions of such letterers keeping records of all kinds for businesses, courts, and governments. The invention of the typewriter began to gradually replace those jobs with typists in the later 1800s as commercially successful machines were released. By 1900 or so, the majority of written documents were being typed rather than hand-copied. This undoubtedly put many scriveners out of work and was probably a source of tumult and outcry at the time.

That worked for many documents, but not all. Music manuscripts had to be transcribed by “music copyists” from composer’s hand-written originals, a skill that required lots of musical knowledge as well as drawing skills. Printed music was usually made from steel engravings of what the music copyist produced by hand, but the engravers needed their clear, clean pen and ink drawings to work from. Interestingly, the job of transcribing music manuscripts by hand survived until the 1990s, when computer software was finally able to do it equally well, in the hands of the right person.

The combination of pictures and words has often been another area where hand-made letters work best, as in this example from the Bayeux Tapestry created in England in the 1100s. It’s done in needlework, but any kind of art that includes letters, from paintings to sculpture, needed to have those letters created by artists.

From the earliest days of sequential art, cartoonists added text to their pictures with pen in hand, as in this example by Rudolphe Töpffer.

When Töpffer’s work was first translated into English and released in America in 1842 as “The Adventures of Obadiah Oldbuck” (considered to be the first American comic book), the publisher found it easy enough to replace the artist’s hand-lettered text with type, especially since that text was usually in a box below the art. While less organic and interesting than the original script, the type did the job of getting the ideas across, and thus the effort to marry art with type was present in American comics from the beginning.

Most of the comic strips that were created for newspapers continued to use hand-made lettering, as in this example from Little Nemo in Slumberland by Winsor McCay. The convention developed to use all sans-serif capital letters because they were easier to read at small sizes, and easier to draw, something that has persisted to the present day in comic books.

The styles varied greatly, here’s a looser one by Rube Goldberg from 1929…

…and a more conservative style by Charles Armstrong for Hal Foster on Tarzan in 1933, with an interesting unfinished lettering change at the end of the second line.

A few strips used type instead of hand lettering, like Barnaby by Crockett Johnson. The font seen here is probably Futura Demi Oblique, and in the 1940s when the strip ran, the type would have been set in galleys to Johnson’s specifications, then cut out and pasted onto his art by him. Even with that, it must have saved the artist time or he wouldn’t have used it. I think the simple linear style of the art makes it a better match for type than, say, a typical adventure or humor strip.

Later uses of type in comics can be found in most issues of MAD Magazine (example above from 1957), and HIS NAME IS SAVAGE by Gil Kane from 1968. Personally I think it works less well with these styles of art.

With the introduction of Wonder Woman in ALL-STAR COMICS #8 dated Dec. 1941 – Jan. 1942 a new kind of lettering entered the scene, one that looked more like type than hand lettering.

In fact, it WAS done by hand, but using the Leroy lettering system consisting of a scriber, technical drawing pen, and templates. The Leroy system was created for use in architectural and engineering drawings, and came to Wonder Woman comics first from artist H.G. Peter and his assistants. In 1945, Jim and Margaret Wroten began doing it, with much better results. Jim was a salesman for Leroy, and quite proficient at using the scriber. I’ve written an article about the Wrotens and Leroy lettering HERE.

In addition to WONDER WOMAN, the Wrotens lettered many stories for EC Comics, as seen above.

Artist and draftsman Robert N. MacLeod did Leroy lettering for CLASSICS ILLUSTRATED, where upper and lower case templates were used more often. The example has art by Angelo Torres.

While this was something the Wrotens could do well and quickly, it was still all hand work, and not really on the path toward the goal of making lettering in comics easier, except perhaps for them. And having tried the Leroy system myself, I can attest it’s harder and more time consuming than regular hand lettering for nearly everyone not named Wroten.

Another type of lettering template for use with technical drawing pens was named Wrico and made by the Wood-Regan company. Comics artist Jimmy Thompson used them regularly.

While an interesting idea, these template systems did not fulfill the dream of comics lettering that could be produced by typing. That was being tried at small comics publisher Charlton in the 1950s. I’ll continue with it in Part 2.