Comic book colorists and letterers

[daBronzeBomma]

I am ashamed to finally admit that, for all the reading of comic books I've done since I was 9, I have only ever paid attention to the writers, pencillers, and editors.

I rarely ever acknowledged the inkers.

And worst of all, I never ever acknowledged the colorists nor the letterers. In fact, I can't name a single one of either profession without cheating (internet).

So I have some basic noob questions that I'd very much like to get schooled on here:

1. Who are the top - tier colorists in the field today?

2. Who are the top - tier letterers in the field today?

3. Are either professions in danger of obsolescence? If so, how dire?

4. Do you honestly consider the colorist and/or letterer of a book before you buy it?

5. What makes a good colorist in this day of digital coloring? Same for a good letterer?

Thanks for any feedback!

[MRP]

Check out this article that appeared in the Atlantic back in August to get a better sense of the contributions of both... https://www.theatlantic.com/entertai...comics/535497/


To get a sense of who is doing quality work, check out the nominees for the Eisners in those categories each year, plus this years Ringos and previous years Harvey. Look up Todd Klein for letterers, and check his social media, he is always posting tidbits about lettering and design, etc.

Here's the Ringos page http://ringoawards.com/

Here's the SDCC page on the Eisners... https://www.comic-con.org/awards/eis...s-current-info

and here's the Harveys FB page... https://www.facebook.com/theharveyawards/

they're skipping 2017 and restarting in 2018 at NYCC.

-M

[MRP]

As for colorists and letterers whose work I consider top notch, and I am sure I will forget some...

Colorists:
Dave Stewart
Dave Hollingsworth
Jordie Bellaire
Elizabeth Breitweiser
Laura Martin/DePuy
Paul Mounts
Laura Allred
Matt Wilson

Letterers
Todd Klein
John Workman
Richard Starkings
Nate Peikos & Blambot (speaking of which check out Blambot's webpage for more on lettering http://www.blambot.com/

-M

[Sugar Spun Sorceress]

♡ Some colorist's I love ♡
Julia Lacquement (Green Arrow)
Annie Delobel (Adelé Blanc-Sec)
Adrienne Roy (The Spectre)
Glynis Oliver (Classic X-Men back-ups)
Robbie Busch (Sandman)
Konami Kanata (Chi's Sweet Home)
Kelly Fitzpatrick (Shade, The Changing Girl)
Guy Major (Madame Xanadu)
Maarta Laiho (Lumberjanes)
Lee Loughridge (By Chance or Providence)
Tamra Bonvillain (Doom Patrol)

♡ Some letterer's I love ♡
Aubrey Aiese (Lumberjanes)
Todd Klein (Sandman)
John Costanza (Sandman Mystery Theatre)
Tom Orzechowski (Uncanny X-Men)

[daBronzeBomma]

Check out this article that appeared in the Atlantic back in August to get a better sense of the contributions of both... https://www.theatlantic.com/entertai...comics/535497/


To get a sense of who is doing quality work, check out the nominees for the Eisners in those categories each year, plus this years Ringos and previous years Harvey. Look up Todd Klein for letterers, and check his social media, he is always posting tidbits about lettering and design, etc.

Here's the Ringos page http://ringoawards.com/

Here's the SDCC page on the Eisners... https://www.comic-con.org/awards/eis...s-current-info

and here's the Harveys FB page... https://www.facebook.com/theharveyawards/

they're skipping 2017 and restarting in 2018 at NYCC.

-M

Very enlightening MRP! Thank you!

[dancj]

1. The ones I've noticed being great are Dave Stewart and Brian Buccelato

2. No idea. It a letter is doing their job well then for the most part, the story will flow well and you'll barely notice them. When the letter does a bad job and you wind up reading balloons out of order, then you notice. The exception here is Dave Sim who made his lettering part of the art in Cerebus.

3. Nah.

4. Nah

5. I couldn't tell you for the colourist. For the letterer, see my answer above.

[Kirby101]

I pay attention to colorists and letterers.

Adrienne Roy, Glynis Oliver, Julia Lacquement, Guy Major and Tamra Bonvillain are some of my favorite colorists.

Aubrey Aiese, John Costanza, Todd Klein and Tom Orzechowski are some of my favorite letterers.

Sugar Spun, I cannot read your post. Could you make the font larger and maybe a darker shade. The small. light. italics all make it harder to read.
Thanks.

[Iron Maiden]

I think Matt Hollingsworth has been doing an outstanding coloring job over Maleev on the recent maxi series Infamous Iron Man. I admit being uninformed on the subject of the techniques used. I think he uses those digital painting tools.



Paul Mounts is another colorist I've noted and he's been with Marvel for many years. IIRC he has some kind of record for number of issues of Fantastic Four being done.

One thing that strikes me is that when Stan Lee began including credits on the title page of Marvel comics, we never really knew who the colorist was. I think a lot of that work back in the 1960's was done by Stan Goldberg. CBR did an interview with him a couple of years before he died in 2014. Stan Goldberg also had a long career as the artist for Archie comics after he left Marvel in 1969.

I found this part interesting and had seen it elsewhere. If you notice in the Marvel books, the heroes had costumes in primary colors like red or blue and sometimes with a bit of yellow. The villains were in green or purple. But let him tell it:

As far as coloring those books, it was all left up to me, really. If you look at those first five years, from 1961 to 1965, that’s when I did all the books. Right after that I was just doing special books, but those five years I did practically everything. There might have been something Marie [Severin] had done, but I did ninety percent of creating all the color schemes for the heroes and the villains. If you look at the heroes you can see basic colors: reds and blues and a little bit of yellow. The reds and blues were very important for the superheroes. You really wanted them to pop out and those were colors that I could ensure that I was going to get. Place them in the right spots on the heroes, it worked. Jack made it easy. The first [“Fantastic Four”] didn’t have any costumes but in the second book he put this long underwear on them with the number 4 on the chest and I figured just keep them blue. I’ve never given blue to a villain. Orange was a color that we used and The Thing wasn’t a human being so I could have made him anything, but orange was the best color to work with for him. He looked like bricks or earth. I got word from Kirby that that worked out fine.

he villains were green and magenta and burnt umber and gray and everything else that went along with deep and dark muddy colors. If they couldn’t come out that well, it was okay, because they were the bad guys. The heroes always got their red, yellows, and blues. I could go on with a lot of stories about why I did this and why I did that, but never in my wildest dreams did Stan and I imagine that we would talk about this for so many years.