Since Marvel launched the new era of Star Wars comics in 2015, I’ve been reviewing them on the Manor though my only qualification for doing so was simply that I enjoyed reading comics (so, not much!). Over the years, I’ve tried to expand and hone my critiques, from better crediting all those involved to more detailed thoughts on the art, but as always, I know I can do better. One aspect I’ve not understood much, and therefore haven’t covered a ton in my reviews, was lettering. It’s far more complex and nuanced than just a few thought bubbles, as you’ll soon see thanks to our interview with letterer Ariana Maher, who was gracious enough to offer help with reviewers covering comics and even more patient with my endless questions, as a way to help spread understanding of her and other letterers’ craft. Head below to check out the interview!
Ariana Maher is the current letterer of Marvel’s Star Wars: The High Republic, written by Cavan Scott, so she’s responsible for pulling your eyes across its wonderfully detailed pages and enthralling story, because as she puts it in our interview: lettering is a comic’s metronome. A few weeks ago, Maher was on Twitter, curious about the lack of understanding of her craft, even in reviews from paid writers, and offered to help clarify all the fine details and nuance that goes into lettering. I reached out to Maher on Twitter and she was kind enough to follow through, eager to help me understand the layers of lettering, first by pointing me towards a series of resources which discuss and describe the basics of the craft. I highly suggest checking these out after reading our interview, as I found the Lettering Tips from Blambot to be the most informative with its simple, snappy graphs and images, helping me come up with many of the questions in our interview. So without further ado, let’s dive into it!
Tell us about your Star Wars fandom first!
Ariana Maher: I grew up enjoying the films, but it was as an adult when I became a huge fan. After work, my friends and I would have girl nights where we’d get drinks and snacks while binge watching DVDs of Dave Filoni’s The Clone Wars series. We still go back to watching favorite episodes and storylines out of sheer enjoyment. The cinematic universe is iconic, but it’s the stories that have been inspired by them, such as cartoons, novels, and comics like The High Republic, where I feel we get to experience the vastness of its galaxy and all of the hope and heartbreak contained within it.
What’s some of the most important aspects of lettering you think reviewers never mention?
When it comes to lettering, I notice that reviewers fail to mention elements where the lettering sets the pace. Art and story can set the pacing in a book, but the lettering usually dictates where the reader’s eyes will go when enjoying a page. If comic creators were a band, the letterer sets a metronome.
If the pacing feels slow or clunky when reading, then the letterer wasn’t considering the flow and the eyes aren’t going to the right places. A line could be on the opposite side from where the action is and the reader might only catch it out of order.
Another thing is SFX. I recommend my fave @ComicBookFX for calling out cool SFX when they find it. There is no rule as to what is Good or Bad SFX but when reading a book for review, take notice of SFX — note down any that leave a good or bad impression and why.
Lastly, there is little notice of overall style and whether or not it is consistent. Consistency makes for great lettering because when the letterer breaks consistency and does something unique, that leaves a bigger impact.
How much leeway do you have with your bubble placements?
When it comes to bubble placements, I have leeway to choose them 99% of the time. Some publishers send me a placement guide mapped out by the editor, but I don’t usually adhere to them. The editor can guess the best placements but the letterer has to make the decisions based on how much room there is to fit the text over the art.
When it comes to Marvel and Star Wars, there are no placement guides. They trust me to set the pace and to troubleshoot any issues with placement while I’m lettering. For High Republic, I worked on a number of lettering style ideas until the editors agreed on the style they thought was best for the book. The SFX, particularly the lightsaber SFX style were my own that they went with because they liked them. It’s a very fun book to work on!
I saw in your interview with Women Write About Comics that you’ve used hand lettering for sound effects, though still working on hand lettering overall. How much hand lettering did you use in THR? And are you trying to use it more?
When I hand draw SFX, usually by utilizing vector brushes, I do so to help create effects with a rather organic feel to them. An example of doing this is from my lettering in Peach Momoko’s Demon Days: X-Men. Her art in the book utilizes textured paper, watercolor, and markers – a lot of organic elements that inspire me to add texture by creating hand drawn sound effects to the work. As Star Wars is a fantasy within a science fiction stylized universe, I don’t often feel the need to hand draw – the harder lines from font styles lend itself to the feel of the world. However, I do make exceptions. For example, the lightsabers usually have a sharp line style to the effects from the particular font I like to use for them, but in the first issue Keeve falls from a peak and drives her saber into the rock to help slow her decent. On that occasion, since the saber was meeting the gritty dirt texture, I drew the sound effect using a vector brush instead to give it that rough feel.
Going back over the first three issues of The High Republic now I’ve consciously noticed that when Keeve whispers or talks under her breath, the font is smaller and there’s a greater space between the dialogue and the bubble edges. Subconsciously, I feel like I understood/read it much like your work intended originally, but now I actually see it. Do you feel like lettering is often unconsciously enjoyed? Or is that almost the point, it should be instinctual to the reader?
Tricks like those are intended to give you a specific interpretation while reading even when you don’t realize that’s happening. When studying how to letter, you have to see how books were lettered in the past. The letterers who came before helped build the shared language between the medium and the reader. Small text in large balloons indicate whispering, but that is not always consciously noticed because the reader’s mind has already accepted that from reading previous works that have done similar tricks. A fluffy balloon with whiskers indicates that a message is telepathic. Why? Because Professor Xavier had that same style when Tom Orzechowski lettered his telepathy in the 80s. The more you read comics, the more you take in the messages delivered in the design, not just the script. Thinking about your instinctual reaction as a reader is something the letterer keeps in mind with every page.
The lightsaber SFX you created I’ve really enjoyed next to the lightsaber animations from Ario Anindito (artist), Mark Morales (inker), and Annalisa Leoni (colorist), and I particularly thought, when Keeve and Sskeer clash sabers in the opening issue, and the SFX melds the two colors of their respective lightsabers together, it was a really neat effect. There’s also the big panel of the Ridadi smashing through the Keeve’s trial, where you have tons of SFX for their buzzing; you said it was fun to work on this book and that seemed like a particularly fun panel to letter. What’s been some of the highlights from working on it so far?
Every lightsaber effect is a joy for me. When I lettered the initial proof of the first issue, the SFX were easy to shape but the colors were black and white as a placeholder. I wasn’t quite sure how best to color them yet. I needed to consider how best to give the font a sort of glow effect to match the light saber’s glow, but I didn’t know how best to do that. Then, I received Leoni’s color pages and saw how she approached coloring the lightsabers. It turned out to be incredibly simple and effective. The sabers are so bright they are white in the center and the unique color for the saber would be a halo around the blade. It was a eureka moment for me – making the center of the sound effects white and the stroke around the letters the color of the light saber (spot matched with Leoni’s colors) give the effect that I aimed for.
When the Drengir are introduced in issue #3, I really liked their contrasting bubbles to everything we’ve seen before, the font now white and bubble filled in black, with the marks around the outside, which subtly tells readers they aren’t normal and something to be leery of. And when Terec/Ceret are under the Drengirs’ control, their bubbles similarly change, minus the quotation like dashes on the edges. How important was it for you to give the Drengir an otherworldly/villainous feel in the lettering? Can you share any other concepts you had for their word bubbles?
The style for the Drengir was a collaborative effort. Cavan Scott’s story gave the impression that the Drengir themselves are telepathic, so I went with the Marvel style of conveying telepathy. Meanwhile, those caught in the thrall of the Drengir are not necessarily telepathic – they are under their influence and it weakens them – so that informs the wavy look of the balloons and the color matching with the Drengir’s style. I worked with the editors and their feedback to get it just right. Good collaboration can improve a book immensely and this is an example of that.
Can you share any other concepts considered for THR or something you really fought for but didn’t make the cut? Or do you generally find the ultimate decision is truly the best?
A lot of my ideas come through in the end, but when someone makes a suggestion, those tend to be details that improve greatly thanks to their feedback.
I loved your example of the letterer setting a band’s metronome; rereading THR and some other comics after your comment has really highlighted to me how the dialogue and its placement really sets my pace of reading an issue, more than the art or wanting to know what happens next. How much control do you have in setting the metronome beyond the placement of the bubbles and effects, which you said Marvel and Star Wars have no guidelines on? Can you provide notes to the rest of the team and tell them how it might flow better if they adjusted their work? Is it just a collaborative process overall?
I have a great deal of control over placements and design. If I ever feel like the placement of dialogue suits the moment better in the next panel, for example, I can take that risk since experience informs me it’s a particular risk worth taking to make the reading experience better. Most of the time I’m not asked to put things back to how it was indicated before, but the editors can always override my initial decisions with suggestions for improvement and that leads to an even better reading experience.
Has there been any feedback you appreciated the most (be it from an editor/friend/fan etc) that helped you with your craft? Was there any feedback that made you laugh?
One time, after buying a stack of comics from Clayton Cowles {Editor’s Note: a long-time letterer of Star Wars comics!} he mailed the comics with an index card note thanking me for the purchase and saying the he finds my “SFX game to be most intimidating.” I’ll never win an Eisner for my lettering, but that index card is the next best thing, as far as I’m concerned.
Beyond the resources you pointed me towards originally, what’s your best advice to would be letterers?
Consistency is key. You can develop a wild indie style for a book or the most standard superhero style — whatever the art demands is best. However, once you develop that style, put together a robust lettering template so that you can keep that style consistent throughout the book. If you change particular things up at any point out of boredom or forgetfulness, you may draw the reader’s attention to your lettering in all of the wrong ways. So keep consistent. Break those rules only when you really want the reader to pay attention to something that you’re doing on the page, like a tidal wave emerging from calm waters.
If anyone would like to see recent lettering from me, check out Peach Momoko’s Demon Days from Marvel, the upcoming Crush & Lobo series from DC Comics, or the new Critical Role Origins III mini-series from Dark Horse. I hope everyone continues to enjoy Star Wars: The High Republic – it’s a joy to help make! {Editor’s Note: There’s also her website to check out and go follow her on Twitter!}
Thanks so much for taking the time to chat with the Manor!
Now that I’ve had this discussion with Ariana Maher, I’ve definitely found myself paying much more attention to the way lettering affects my reading of a comic, taking the time to appreciate how it adds and expands everything happening in the page. It’s also been nice to have someone so willing to discuss and inform people about their part of the comic making process, which is full of layers and nuances reviews aren’t privy to or don’t always consider touching on. I highly suggest reading The High Republic comic, as it’s one of the many excellent new stories expanding the era, with some truly stellar art that Maher helps us appreciate more with her work!
Ryan is Mynock Manor’s Head Butler. You can follow him on Twitter @BrushYourTeeth. You can follow the website on Twitter @MynockManor and Instagram @mynockmanor.