CBR: Where The Hell Am I - Aug 10, 2011

[CBR News]

Jason Aaron returns, this week bringing Jared Fletcher along with him to discover exactly what it is a letterer contributes to the making of your monthly comic books.


Full article here (http://comicbookresources.com/?page=article&id=33828).

[maniacmatt]

That 28 word rule is a nice tidbit. I'll have to remember that.

[Kurt Busiek]

That 28 word rule is a nice tidbit. I'll have to remember that.

It's not remotely anything Stan Lee went by, though.

Just picking the first Spider-Man story page, panel 1 has 53 words, panel 2 has 36, panel 3 has 37, panel 4 has 35...

I heard the rule as 35 words, and it was ascribed to Julie Schwartz. Even so, Julie's books had so many panels with more than 35 words in them, it can't have been a rule he went by, either.

If you want a good rule of thumb, don't go by what someone said someone else told them some other guy said but clearly didn't follow. Pick a writer whose work you like, whose script "feels" like the right amount of words per panel to you, and type out a few issues' worth of dialogue. Then count 'em, and see what their panel averages are.

I know one editor who had a firm rule that no page could have more that 12 copy-blocks on it. Captain, word balloons, sound effects...12 or less, cumulative, on any page. he writers who worked with him struggled to get the story across in a naturalistic way, but what the hell, it was his rule.

He's not editing any more, and comics are better for it.

kdb

busiek busiek

[maniacmatt]

It's not remotely anything Stan Lee went by, though.

Just picking the first Spider-Man story page, panel 1 has 53 words, panel 2 has 36, panel 3 has 37, panel 4 has 35...

I heard the rule as 35 words, and it was ascribed to Julie Schwartz. Even so, Julie's books had so many panels with more than 35 words in them, it can't have been a rule he went by, either.

If you want a good rule of thumb, don't go by what someone said someone else told them some other guy said but clearly didn't follow. Pick a writer whose work you like, whose script "feels" like the right amount of words per panel to you, and type out a few issues' worth of dialogue. Then count 'em, and see what their panel averages are.

I know one editor who had a firm rule that no page could have more that 12 copy-blocks on it. Captain, word balloons, sound effects...12 or less, cumulative, on any page. he writers who worked with him struggled to get the story across in a naturalistic way, but what the hell, it was his rule.

He's not editing any more, and comics are better for it.

kdb

busiek busiek

Fair point! Just pulled Marvels off the shelf to see what that had, and a random couple of pages averaged around 13 words. I also looked at Hickman's issue of the Red Wing that came out today, and he seems to average about the same, but he has several that are 5 words, and several over 30. Very interesting aspect of writing style I hadn't noticed before. Counting my scripts, I'm around 15 words on average, but tend to vary pretty wildly.

[bongoes]

Jared is a fantastic letterer. I noticed his work recently on Detective Comics, it was one of the first times I've really paid attention to the lettering (I usually read comics without noticing the differences between letterers, unless it's done really differently). In fact, I just looked through the books I got today, four of them were done by him, and they were all great (at least in lettering).

[donuil23]

Thanks Jason!!
Letterers are in sore need of some respect. I'm glad you took the time so share this with us. Thank you Jared!

If anyone wants to learn more about lettering, I've learned a lot from Jim Campbell's lettering blog, just google it.

[saidestroyer]

Welcome back, Jason!