007: The Star Trek Captions
Happy summertime, everyone! To the children reading this, have a neat summer (children should not be reading this)! My summer vacation is about to begin, and for that reason, this month’s newsletter is a little light. So let’s get into it.
Comicbook.com made a list of the 10 Best Image Comics Series, and The Wicked + The Divine is ranked #1! Seeing a book I lettered at #1 was pretty out-of-body for me. I assumed #1 would be Saga or The Walking Dead, but hey, the landscape is changing! The weirdest part of my job is meeting young professionals who grew up with WicDiv—especially when it’s the book that showed them that comics could be Something Else. It’s spoken of in the same breath as the Vertigo books us Millennials grew up with, and it’s wild to me that Image was the Vertigo of the 2010s. Anyway, shoutout to WicDiv. I’m glad I got to be your letterer.
I impulse-bought some Magic: The Gathering Final Fantasy cards the other day, and that hit my inner child like a bolt of lightning (no pun intended—I did not get a Lightning-from-FFXIII card). As I mentioned in last month’s newsletter, I have never played MTG. But I have played an awful lot of Final Fantasy. Here are some of the cards I was excited to see:
I hope Wizards of the Coast makes more of these. I also hope this doesn’t become a habit.
Sound Effect of the Month:
This one got clipped before the book went to press, but I liked it enough to save it. It’s the sound of one person hugging two other people. Simple, but effective. Rendered with Blambot’s Astounder Round.
Tip: The Star Trek Captions
The Lanzing/Kelly/Cantwell run on Star Trek came to a close last month, and I’m sorry to see it go. It was a dream job that I didn’t know I wanted. So I thought I’d highlight the most unique/challenging part of the lettering—the voiceover captions!
Typically, a voiceover caption will have a tag of some kind which indicates who’s speaking. Most of the time, they’re fairly simple. A tag or drop-shadow or the caption itself will have one to three colors that match the speaker’s outfit or some other visual cue. But in a series where most of the characters are wearing either red, blue, or gold, it’s a challenge. I can’t use plain old red in a book where Captain Benjamin Sisko and Lieutenant Tom Paris are both wearing red uniforms, so I had to get creative. The resolution? Rank insignia!
For those of you who don’t watch Star Trek, every member of Starfleet has their rank indicated on their uniform. In The Next Generation era of Star Trek, they wear “pips” on their collars. One pip for ensigns, two for lieutenants, three for commanders, and four for captains. Here are some of the captions I used in Star Trek:
The insignia hack didn’t work for everyone. Scotty, Kim, and Kira’s captions are keyed to their unique uniforms, Kahless gets the symbol of the Klingon Empire (his favorite empire!), Jake gets a writing PADD (because he’s a writer), and Captain James Tiberius Christopher Pine Kirk gets the Captain’s three sleeve bars of his era.
Star Trek: Defiant was even trickier. In that series, not only was most of the crew wearing black, but none of their uniforms had rank insignia. Instead, I had to rely on trivia. Since a Star Trek comic book reader is likely to already be a hardcore Trekkie, I figured I could get away with it. I’m speaking to my own people! Here are some of the Defiant captions:
Worf’s captions have the House of Martok symbol, Spock’s has the IDIC crest, Ro’s is her earring, B’Elanna’s displays her forehead ridges, Lore’s is the Soong-trademarked yellow eye, and Sela’s is—you guessed it—her hairdo:
I think Bashir and O’Brien are easy enough to figure out—medical/science lieutenant and chief petty officer. Nymira’s is meant to show her weird visor thing, and, well, I promise the green is supposed to be the color of her uniform and not the tone of her skin. Tying caption colors to fleshtones should be a last resort (on that note, my sincerest apologies to Yoda, Yaddle, and Aayla Secura in Star Wars: Jedi Knights).
Anyway, Star Trek: The Last Starship begins on September 24 (my birthday, coincidentally)! Yes, there will be insignia-based captions in that book too. Get pumped!
Community:
My dad started a YouTube channel—Kinder-Toons! One of his gigs is animating music videos for the world’s most famous children’s show featuring puppets who live in the city, but not all of the songs make the cut. So he’s releasing them anyway, complete with fresh animation. That kid in the avatar looks suspiciously like my nephew. That kid who says “Kindertoons!” sounds suspiciously like my nephew. For all I know, that is my nephew. The sound effect lettering is aces.
Recommendations:
Comic: The Mythmakers: The Remarkable Fellowship of C.S. Lewis & J.R.R. Tolkien by John Hedrix. I just finished this very thick examination of a powerful friendship and the idea of myth itself. The biggest surprise? Tolkien was far more rigidly Christian than Lewis—who, it turns out, did a lot more than just write The Chronicles of Narnia. It’s a very dense read—and I think it has more Lewis content than Tolkien—but it’s still worth checking out.
Non-comic: What’s In My Bag? A YouTube series created by Amoeba Records—the country’s second-best record store (the first is the Record Archive, ROC represent)—each episode features a creative type buying stuff and explaining what it means to them. This is a terrific avenue for discovering new films and music. Bad Brains comes up a lot, and I’ve had a great time listening to them lately. The Jason Mantzoukas episode is especially eye-opening. Other favorites include Seal and Russell from Sparks. Also, if there’s a comic shop that does this, I’d love to watch that too. And I’d love to be a guest on it. I will gladly go to your shop and buy Excalibur comics that I’ve bought twice already.
Stuff With My Name In It (July 2025):
7/02:
Adventureman: Family Tree #3
All-New Venom #8
Birds of Prey #23
Daredevil #23
Marvel Zero #1
Star Wars: Jedi Knights #5
What If…? Galactus TPB
X-Men #19
X-Men by Chris Claremont: Prelude to a Future Past #1
7/07:
Astonishing X-Men Infinity #28
7/09:
FML #5
The Power Fantasy #10
Predator: Black, White & Blood #1
Star Trek: Lower Decks #9
Trinity: Daughter of Wonder Woman #2
Uncanny X-Men #17
7/14:
Astonishing X-Men Infinity #29
7/16:
Absolute Batman #10
Alien: Black, White & Blood TPB
Daredevil: Cold Day In Hell #3
Giant-Size House of M #1
Mystique: Most Wanted TPB
Predator vs. Spider-Man #4
Star Wars #3
Wonder Woman #23
7/21:
Astonishing X-Men Infinity #30
7/23:
Living Hell TPB
Star Wars Modern Era Epic Collection: Yoda’s Secret War TPB
Uncanny X-Men #18
7/28:
Astonishing X-Men Infinity #31
7/30:
X-Men: Hellfire Galas TPB
And, finally, the cat photo:
And with that, I. Am. Outta here! See you in August!
If you have a question you’d like me to answer in a future edition, ask away in the comments section!
Dang this is cool. Above and beyond the call of duty.