004: Overlapping Balloons
It’s April! Happy April! Spring came early to western New York (after a particularly harsh February). All of the snow has melted, except in all of the parking lots where it used to be a 15-foot-high pile. Some of that’s still around. It doesn’t look good.
So, what’s new? Oh, yes—We Called Them Giants was nominated for a 2024 Foreword INDIES Award! It’s a true honor to be thought of so highly by librarians. Shoutout to librarians for holding it down—even the evil ones from Parks & Rec. Go to the library, you guys.
Also, it took nine long months, but my sister finally had her second baby! That’s right, I have a niece now. A real one—not one of those hackneyed cousin-nieces or friend’s-kid-nieces. Congratulations, Alison and Alex Coté! BTW, please visit Ali’s Patreon, fair readers. When it comes to creative inhibition, Ali is my polar opposite. Her work is fun, beautiful, and interactive!
Other than that? I’ve just been plugging away at lettering. The second half of March was much more hectic than the first, with fifteen books going to press in a two-week span. This meant many long days at the desk, gazing out the window at my sunny, snowless neighborhood while various Anthony Bourdain shows and Final Fantasy soundtracks kept me company. I’m not complaining—I’ve grateful to have plentiful work, and bottlenecking is inevitable when you work on several titles (and you reach the end of a fiscal quarter). Oh well, I survived it.
On to the content!
Sound Effect of the Month:
This is from a future issue of Star Trek: Defiant. What’s with the asterisk??? You’ll have to buy every upcoming issue to find out! Rendered with Victory Speech and Sez Who Sez You.
Q&A:
No entry for this month. That’s okay, we’re all busy people. If you have a question you’d like me to answer in a future edition, ask away in the comments section.
Tip: Overlapping Balloons
So this month, I thought I’d highlight one of the more subtle elements of the craft of lettering—overlapping balloons. It’s not talked about very much, and not every letterer does overlaps the same way I do. This is just how I was taught, and I’ve stuck with it because it makes sense to me for the purpose of storytelling.
This is the default. The balloon that reads first overlaps the one that follows. If there’s enough space in the panel, I won’t normally do this, unless there’s a sense of urgency in the response. Usually these balloons are overlapping because there’s not enough space in the panel to keep them apart.
This is an interruption. The balloon that reads second overlaps the first, as if the first speaker is being cut off. This is used most often when the first balloon ends with a double-dash, but sometimes I’ll overlap the first balloon if the responder is speaking with urgency. Some letterers always put the first balloon underneath the one that follows, and they have completely valid reasons for doing so, but I like to this technique this for casual things like these.
And this is a big, emotional interruption! This isn’t the first time they asked about snow peas today. Odds are they were asked about snow peas by the same person. I’m a stickler for readability, so I’ll only obscure the text in the first balloon only if the interruption itself is more important. Sometimes I’ll be asked to partially obscure normal text with more normal text from another speaker to someone talking over someone else, or to show that some speech is just atmospheric and less relevant to other speech. This will happen in scenes with crowd rabble or a focus character is being bombarded with speech.
NOTE: The balloon text above was rendered with two VC fonts, which aren’t available to the general public. Sorry, dudes.
Community:
The 2025 Rochester Indie Comics Expo is in a couple of weeks! I’m not table-ing this year, but if you’re in the western New York area, you should go anyway! Good buddy Jackie E. Davis, who I mentioned in the inaugural issue of the newsletter, will be hosting a Comics Workshop for Kids (in addition to table-ing), and my boy Dave Chisholm will be table-ing too! The floor exhibition is on Saturday, April 12th from 11am-4pm!
Clover Press just launched a Kickstarter for a Jorge Jiménez DC art book! Jorge is one of my favorite artists working today, and I hope this art book includes his dazzling (and, at times, intimidating) sound effects! Man, I love working with him. His Batman is the fifth head on my Mount Batmore. Bruce Timm’s is the first head. I forget who the other three are.*
Recommendations:
Comic: This Beautiful, Ridiculous City: A Graphic Memoir by Kay Sohini. When I started this memoir about living in New York City, I didn’t expect my takeaway to be “I don’t know jack about India.” This is a very interesting read, especially the parts about India’s post-colonial development, and how its culture (and, let’s face it, most non-American cultures) have contorted themselves to accomodate western consumerism. It’s also beautifully drawn and colored, with some of the best renderings of food since Delicious In Dungeon.
Non-comic: Right Ho, Jeeves by P.G. Wodehouse. We could all use a laugh, and few make me laugh harder than P.G. Wodehouse. After I was accosted by both my uncle and grandpa, who insisted I must read Wodehouse (this was not at all in character for either of them), I gave Right Ho, Jeeves a try and instantly fell in love. This particular passage really got me, as told by the narrator, Bertram “Bertie” Wooster:
The discovery of a toy duck in the soap dish, presumably the property of some former juvenile visitor, contributed not a little to this new and happier frame of mind. What with one thing and another, I hadn’t played with toy ducks in my bath for years, and I found the novel experience most invigorating. For the benefit of those interested, I may mention that if you shove the thing under the surface with the sponge and then let it go, it shoots out of the water in a manner calculated to divert the most careworn. Ten minutes of this and I was enabled to return to the bedchamber much more the old merry Bertram.
May we all return to the bedchamber much more the old merry Bertram.
Stuff With My Name In It (April 2025):
4/2
All-New Venom #5
Birds of Prey #20
Daredevil: Cold Day in Hell #1
Gotham City: Year One TPB
Star Trek: Lore War #1
X-Men #14
4/7
Astonishing X-Men Infinity #17
4/9
Absolute Batman #7
Alien: Paradiso #5
Daredevil #20
Star Trek: Lower Decks #6
Star Wars: Jedi Knights #2
Uncanny X-Men #13
Uncanny X-Men by Gail Simone vol. 1: Red Wave TPB
4/14
Astonishing X-Men Infinity #18
4/16
Star Trek vol. 4: Pleroma TPB
Star Trek: Defiant #26
4/23
The Power Fantasy #8
Predator vs. Spider-Man #1
Star Trek #31
X-Men #15
4/28
Astonishing X-Men Infinity #19
4/30
Adventureman: Family Tree #2
Black Canary: Best of the Best #6
Doom Academy #3
It’s Jeff: Jeff-Verse TPB
Kid Venom: Origins TPB
Weapon X-Men #3
And, finally, the cat photo:
See you all in May!
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*Yes, I am aware there are only four heads on Mount Rushmore. That’s the joke.
When did you discover your passion for lettering? What keeps you still going?