Jason Rodriguez - The Moose in the Closet: On Letterers y El Funeral

The other day I was talking to a friend of mine that was putting together a comic book. Having no previous published material, he was doing the right thing and hiring an art team since the chance of his book being picked up, despite how good it is, is pretty much -36%. He has no doubts that he’ll be self publishing this book and he welcomes it. So, he has a budget, not a huge budget, but a budget none-the-less. Fair prices to pay the art team taking into consideration the fact that will most likely be no back end and they’ll never see a dime for their work otherwise. He showed me his numbers, they looked fair, but I noticed he had no letterer budgeted. So I asked him why that was.

“I was going to do the lettering,” he informed me. He has never lettered a page in his life. This is a huge problem that I’ve seen with a lot of would be comic creators, they feel as if he lettering is easy and “not a big deal”. It especially upsets me when these beliefs come from a writer. In Lettering Comics the Comicraft Way, Richard Straking tells us that letterers are the writers’ inkers and I’ve never heard it summed up any nicer than that. You can write your ass off but if the lettering is bad, people will notice, and you writing will look bad in turn. If you’re going to put time, effort and money into a book, why would you allow the lettering to kill it? If you’re putting a book together, do yourself a favor and hire a letterer. It’s an extremely unappreciated job that hardly gets noticed by anyone except other letterers but it is a specialty art that is crucial to any project you may be putting together. As the old saying goes, people only notice the letterers work when he fucks up. But you know what, that fuck up is reflected onto you as the writer and publisher of the book.

If you don’t know where to look for one Digital Webbing is a decent start. If I may be so bold, I do recommend Jason Hanley. The guy has been doing all the books for us over at Hoarse & Buggy, his lettering is superb and his rate (for now) is better than anything you’d get from most of the DW hacks (they're not all hacks, mind you). I’ve even included some samples of his work below. Contact him if you’re interested. But please, whatever you do, don’t do it yourself. And if you do, for God’s sake buy Illustrator, you can’t letter in Photoshop.

These samples of his work are from Western Tales of Terror #4 and Elk's Run #2:

Continuing what’s turning out to be a week of depressing stories centered on the Rodriguez family (don’t worry, next week I’ll do all funny shit)…

When I walked up to the coffin, and saw him in it, I broke down. And I don’t mean I broke down as in a cried and someone had to comfort me. I mean I broke down as in I started crying, then screaming, then I stopped breathing and then my father had to drag me out of the funeral parlor. I went to a lot of funerals throughout the years but there was none of them like when we buried my cousin Steven. He was only eleven.

The whole family was there after not talking to each other for several years. This was about two years before the letter; we had a temporary reprieve in the fighting.

I was dragged out of the funeral parlor and calmed down. I went outside with my cousin RJ, Steven’s brother, and we stood around with a bunch of neighborhood kids, talking about Steven. Even B was there, something like this throws all beefs away, despite how strong they are.

The procession was amazing; I’ve never seen anything like it. There must have been 70 cars at least; the funeral was packed with people. I hardly knew any of them. But my family was there, we huddled together and comforted each other – for the first time in years we were a family again.

Steven was the son my cousin Ray, I guess he was technically my third cousin; I’m not sure how the labeling goes. Ray was my father’s cousin, so what does that make me and Ray’s son? Either way, RJ and I were close and even if we weren’t, Steven’s death was just wrong.

But this one is about the family, the stuff we’ve been through. After the funeral we went back to Ray’s house, he lived a block away from my Grandma. I remember all the men went down to the Red Hook pier; Me, my father, Ray, RJ, Luis, Grandpa and Tio Andy. It was just silence. We looked out, over the water, and we occasionally tried to say something but it just wasn’t the place.

Finally my grandfather said something, he apologized for not being there. He told Ray that he was going to be around more often, that he’ll always be there for him. And for the first and only time in my life I saw my Grandpa cry.

Guilt. Death is sad, it’s final, you cry (sometimes) and you get over it. Guilt is everlasting. Guilt is when you can’t get that forgiveness, when you know you fucked up and right now someone you care about is at the lowest he or she will ever be and you want to make up for it.

There was a lot of guilt surrounding Steven’s death. I still have some guilt, to this day. I can’t even think about Steven without this sinking feeling, this overwhelming sadness, and it’ all due to guilt. I’ve already gotten over the death.

It fucked us all up. And we got together because of it, we needed each other. Two years later we’ve drifted apart again and I wrote the letter.

This was one of the things, I remember Ray telling my dad that the rest of the family pretty much stopped talking to him for no reason.

If something like this can’t get us to forget our petty differences, what chance do we have as a family?

A pretty good one, but that’s a story for another day. As far as Steven’s story, that’s for another day as well and, honestly, not my story to tell. But you’ll hear it soon.

I’ve depressed you all enough. Next week I’ll be talking about lots of sex, introduce my “first” and maybe even do a posting dedicated to my most embarrassing sexual moments, because they’re pretty funny. Of course, I already told Hooker Hand and No Dick, but there are some equally embarrassing stories. If you made it through this week, you deserve a break.

metallica sucks, fanboy: No Alternative

Labels: mitc

On Letterers y El Funeral

Friday, April 08, 2005

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