CBR: FROM THE EDITOR'S DESK: Hassler Talks "Twilight"

[CBR News]

With the graphic novel adaptation of Stephanie Meyers' vampire saga a sales hit, Yen Press' Kurt Hassler spoke with CBR about the state of manga, the challenge of pleasing Twihards and the book's lettering debate.


Full article here.

[Union Jim]

I've zero interest in Twilight but I hope it's doing amazing business for Yen just so they can publish more Yotsuba&!

[Nan]

And as far as the balloon work goes, a lot of what I heard was "Oh, these are just randomly placed." That is absolutely not the case. When you're talking about a professional letterer working in comics, the role of the letterer is to stay out of the way of the art. You would absolutely never see a case where the letterer is allowed to place a balloon over a character's face.

No matter how I look at it, the lettering/speech bubbles are just atrocious. I think the whole fear of covering up artwork with speech balloons makes them look like an afterthought/poor planning irregardless. This is a comic - art and text should be well integrated!

On the flip side, Japanese comics do not shy away from covering up artwork. Natsuki Takaya (Fruits Basket, Hoshi wa Utau) frequently obscures faces with speech bubbles. And the end result is visually better, and it flows FAR more.

Anyways, not a twilight fan either but it's great if it's doing well for Yen. More Yotsuba& is always good!

[Awesome!]

Worst lettering I have ever seen in a comic. Artist's design or not, it is simply terrible. I love how the guy mentions that the artist had very good reasons for covering faces and such...what those reasons are remain a mystery however. To me it sounded like they just didn't want to pay a letterer to do a proper job.