006: Four Ways To Letter Sign Language
May was eventful, to say the least. My sweetie moved into my house! Which is now our house! In addition to her, I now live with many useful storage implements, several books by Dorothy Dunnett, and Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman: The Complete Series. She, in addition to me, now lives with two moronic cats, a fleet of tiny Star Trek ships, and more comic books than anyone knows what to do with. Clearly I’m coming out on top here.
Here are some things that we both already owned:
The Ultimate Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams
Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell by Susanna Clarke
The Lord of the Rings (books AND DVDs)
The Complete Sherlock Holmes by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
The Sound of Music
Spaced: The Complete Series
The Jeeves Omnibus by P.G. Wodehouse
The West Wing, seasons 1-7
Overcoming Unwanted Intrusive Thoughts by Sally M. Winston PsyD & Martin N. Seif PhD
I’m feeling pretty good, you guys.
Dark Horse has announced their new Magic: The Gathering run of books, and I’m lettering them! I know absolutely nothing about Magic: The Gathering, except that its fans stuck with it much longer than me and my friends stuck with the Pokémon and Star Wars card games (shoutout to my cat Dougie for peeing all over my Star Wars cards). So MTG must be something special! Fantasy comics are always a great time, and I’m looking forward to exploring this world and trying new things!
Mommy and Daddy are talking again. DC and Marvel are crossing over! I’ve been tapped to letter the main story for Deadpool/Batman (the one published by Marvel), and I for one can’t wait to smother Greg Capullo’s artwork with Deadpool’s banter and Batman’s “Hn”s.
And finally, voting for the 2025 Eisner Awards remains open until June 5th. I’m up for Best Lettering, and if you—the past and present comic book creator—feel like voting for me, I’d damn appreciate it.
On to the content!
Sound Effect of the Month:
Q&A:
Q: I believe it was in ETERNALS: CELESTIA that you, Kieron Gillen and Kei Zama introduced the newest iteration of Makkari, who communicates in sign language. You use a distinctive word balloon with squared-off edges and tail. I've not seen this in comics before. Were you following an established convention for representing sign language or was this a new technique? If the latter, what was the thought process, did you have any conversations with Kieron or Marvel?
A: Wow, this takes me back! So, the Q refers to this:
I reached out to Kieron Gillen and Darren Shan (our Eternals editor)—neither of whom remembered much about this part of our Eternals adventure. Just as well, as this was nearly four years ago, and the last five years have felt like an entire decade. Kieron was kind enough to send his script instructions:
As far as we knew, sign language hadn’t been done like this in comics form before. We were starting from scratch. The samples I submitted have been lost to the sands of time, but IIRC, we tried these two looks, too:
The one on the right was my favorite, but I think it may have been too hard to read in print. So the rectangular balloon won out. The wiggly, squared-off balloon tail was a conscious decision to distinguish the sign language balloons from spoken word balloons (which used ordinary balloon tails). We made the balloons light red for the same reason (and to key those balloons to Makkari, specifically).
A couple of years later, I’d use another kind of sign language lettering in Alien which I strongly prefer, but it probably wouldn’t have worked in Eternals.
I confess that I bit this look from another book, but I can’t remember what it was. I want to say it was a young adult graphic novel like Squire or something. If anyone knows what it was, please sound off in the comments section (or ask a question of your own to be answered in a future newsletter)!
Community:
Peter David passed away. I lettered a few of his books early in my career, but I don’t think we ever spoke directly. As far as I’m concerned, he was the best X-Men writer who never wrote X-Men—a true master of getting at what makes an established character tick (if you haven’t read X-Factor #87, go read it now and finish the newsletter later). As of today, the GoFundMe that was recently opened to pay for his medical expenses remains open.
Recommendations:
Comic: You’ll Do Bad Things - I tried this out mainly for the artwork, but still, this one managed to hook me with a pretty compelling story within a genre I don’t normally care about. I’m not really a horror person, and I straight-up haven’t given a damn about true crime since S-Town (that shit was wack), but boy do I enjoy this book. Shoutout to writer and fellow Western-New Yorker Tyler Boss. GO BILLS! That was for him—I don’t care about the Bills.
Non-comic: Louis Cole - I don’t know how the hell to describe an artist like Louis Cole. He plays and does a little bit of everything, but if there’s a dominant genre in his work, it’s probably jazz. If you’re into Flying Lotus or The Book of Boba Fett’s Thundercat, you’ll definitely enjoy Louis Cole. My favorite album of his is nothing, which was recorded with a full orchestra.
Stuff With My Name In It (June 2025):
6/2:
Astonishing X-Men Infinity #24
6/4:
All-New Venom #7
Birds of Prey #22
Daredevil #22
Star Trek #32
Star Wars: Jedi Knights #4
X-Men #17
6/11:
Absolute Batman #9
Giant-Size Dark Phoenix Saga #1
Star Trek: Lower Decks #8
Star Wars #2
Strange Academy Omnibus HC
Trinity: Daughter of Wonder Woman #1
6/16:
Astonishing X-Men Infinity #25
6/18:
Adventureman: Family Tree #3
Batman and Robin: Year One #8
Birds of Prey vol. 3: Bird Undercover TPB
Star Trek: Omega #1
Weapon X-Men #5
Wonder Woman #22
X-Men #18
X-Men: Raid on Graymalkin TPB
6/23:
Astonishing X-Men Infinity #26
6/25:
Doom Academy #5
Giant-Size Age of Apocalypse #1
Predator vs. Spider-Man #3
Uncanny X-Men #16
X-Men: From The Ashes - Demons and Death #1
6/30:
Astonishing X-Men Infinity #27
And, finally, the cat photo:
That’s it for June. See you in July!
I LOVE the solutions you deployed for signing. Pure comics magic there.
Coming from you, that means a lot, Steve. Thank you.