By Christian Beranek

Recently I was able to interview letterer/production guru Thomas Mauer. I hope that my readers will find what follows as interesting as I did. It’s not often you get the chance to peek behind the curtain and see how the nuts and bolts of comic production works — and in such an efficient manner! So with that I invite you to dive in…

BERANEK: Lettering is a under appreciated art form. What made you want to get into the profession?

MAUER: Fortune and glory, of course! Though not as a letterer. I just couldn’t find one for a few short stories I’d written in 2005, did the lettering myself, and then found people who wanted to pay me to letter theirs. So I figured lettering would be a good way to keep a presence in the industry while writing my own comics.

Haven’t written anything substantial since–and fortune? Forget about that. It’s a living, but also a constant hustle. Gotta love it to do it.

BERANEK: Who are some of the great letterers who have inspired your current work?

MAUER: Tom Orzechowski was the first letterer I knew by name. Last year, I had the great pleasure of working on a backup story for SAVAGE DRAGON #143, and thus appeared in the same book alongside him. Tom’s doing SD by hand, hadn’t done hand lettering for years, and he still has the magic touch. We’re sharing space in the upcoming second volume of OUTLAW TERRITORY from Image Comics as well, btw.

Other current influences in my quest for perfect imperfection in digital lettering are John Workman, Clem Robins, and Gaspar Saladino.

BERANEK: What process and programs do you use when you letter a comic?

MAUER: Microsoft Word, Adobe Illustrator, InDesign, and Photoshop are the programs I use. In Photoshop, you can check that the artwork is at the correct size and reformat if necessary. The writer’s dialogue and panel directions come from Word of course. That gets copy/pasted.

Illustrator is what the main work is done in. You can do vector graphics in it, which means balloons and copy (dialogue and effects) can be scaled to any size without losing clarity. This allows you to print books with tiny type or to print out large cloth banners where clarity of the text is very important.

My workflow goes like this:

1. Copy all dialogue from Word into Illustrator.

2. Shape copy.

3. Draw balloons around copy.

4. Place balloons on page.

5. Add tails.

6. Create SFX and place them.

7. Mask balloons and SFX if necessary so they butt up against panel borders or mask properly behind objects and characters.

8. Save work file and export production file.

After the lettering is complete, the artwork and lettering files are married in InDesign. You can either send InDesign packages or PDF files to printers (there are other options but I don’t use them), so this program is perfect for it. Also, if you need to change the size of a comic because you’re using a different format than normal comic size, InDesign lets you do this quickly and all your balloons and effects are placed exactly where you want them. That’s why it’s important to make sure the artwork and lettering files have the same document size.

InDesign also makes it easy to export low resolution JPGs for proofs or the web. Like, say…the images you’re using in this edition of “Life of High Adventure!”

BERANEK: I’ve noticed you’ve developed several custom fonts, including some that are handwritten. Can you describe the creative process?

MAUER: Before I had a Wacom Cintiq graphics tablet, I’d write out sentences including every letter in the alphabet several times, scan them in, vectorize the letters in Illustrator, and clean them up. Since the Cintiq, the scanning part is gone. I can write directly in Illustrator. After that, they get copied into a font creation program in which you can tweak the letters and work out the spacing and kerning issues.

My fonts still see very sparing use since it takes quite some time to tweak them to perfection (which I haven’t had in ages). One is called “Backstabbing Bastard” and I’m using it for screams and sometimes story titles. You can see samples of it in Dark Horse’s RAPTURE and OUTLAW TERRITORY volume 1.

BERANEK: How do you feel about sound effects?

MAUER: They’re a lot of fun to do, but can be a chore if you have five per panel. I do them all by hand so they look more organic and don’t repeat too often, and this can sap up time. In general, I follow the school that less SFX is more in a comic (the same goes for bolding words). Use them to highlight very important beats and not to force cadence. Gluttony can make them meaningless on a page.

BERANEK: What about caption boxes?

MAUER: Well, captions are a lot quicker to do than balloons, so you could say I like them–certainly more than thought balloons which are still quite challenging to quickly create and make them look hand drawn with digital tools. Still working on this one.

As with SFX, overuse of captions is more a hindrance than help for a story. Show with your comic, don’t tell. All that exposition can be put into dialogue and action instead of plopping it down in a few caption boxes on one page.

Joe Kelly uses captions to great effect in BAD DOG for example where he uses it for inner monologue to change the pace and give us a better glimpse into the lead character, werewolf bounty hunter Lou.

BERANEK: Someone wants to get into lettering — what is going to give them the edge in today’s market?

MAUER: Focusing on writing or drawing.

Sounds like someone beating off potential competition, but seriously–everybody and their grandma think lettering’s simple or that it’s an easy way in (I did too). Unless you immerse yourself in the theory and study the great letterers of past decades and today, you’ll just be one of thousands who try their hand each year. At best, you’ll do a passable job. At worst, you’ll ruin your own comic.

Lettering will distract you from writing or drawing ambitions if you try to pursue it professionally. It takes years to hone your skills to the point that you’ll dare compare yourself to the greats.

It’s harder to find work these days than a few years ago because: Money is much tighter and creators try to cut down costs, lettering their own books. Rates are lower because there’s a lot of competition, and a lot of them undercut rates to the point where pros simply can’t work on a book because they wouldn’t be able to pay the bills. It comes with the price of less than stellar lettering of course, but this seems to be a an acceptable trade-off.

If you still want to put in the work and become a letterer after this, I’ll walk through the trenches with you and call you brother. Start by doing short stories for anthology projects and try to get into as many as possible. Expand your network, give 100% every time, continue to improve yourself and be critical of everything you’ve done. If people can see a quick progression in your work and you’re reliable and receptive to critiques, they’ll want to work with you again.

Plus, there’s a silver lining: The economy will get better, there’ll be more books to letter, and wallets will be looser to hire pros at better rates again than are currently standard. It’s just a question of time.

BERANEK: Outlaw Territory just came out and is getting great reviews. What was your involvement in the project?

MAUER: I’m the principal letterer and the book designer for this Western anthology. In volume 1, I got to work on all but two stories which were lettered by the creators themselves. Volume 2 sees a higher number of self-lettered stories and one lettered by Orz as mentioned earlier.

What’s important to me is to give each story a unique look. Since there are so many different art styles at work, using the same lettering style on each of them would be an offense to the creators and readers alike. Lettering is supposed to be like the musical score in a film, guiding the reader across the page, but being invisible in the grand scheme of things. If you don’t notice the lettering, the job is well done. This means that the style has to fit in with the artwork.

Here’s another example from OUTLAW TERRITORY volume 1. If you compare the style to the “Savage Practices” page further above, you’ll see what I mean.

The book design is meant to invoke the look of mid-19th century to early 20th century print, so the cover looks beat up like a well worn book, and the front and back matter have a design reminiscent of that era.

BERANEK: You work from your home in Magdeburg, Germany. What advantages and disadvantages do you have working on mostly American comics in Europe?

MAUER: Advantages are that all I need to work is a computer, a phone and fast internet access, and can move anywhere I like. Working on English language comics means a much bigger, worldwide audience than the local German market. My French and Spanish are way too rusty to attempt getting into those markets, and especially German and Franco-Belgian comics are dominated by cartoonists who do all the work themselves. Breaking in there as a letterer is much, much harder.

The major disadvantage is that networking isn’t as easy because it’s almost entirely done through the internet and via phone. A convention presence helps much more, but my budget allows only one trip per year.

And then there’s the exchange rates, of course. I get paid in Dollars, but the Euro has been so strong for years that I’ve never had a 1:1 ratio. Wonder if that’s ever going to change again.

BERANEK: What are some of your favorite comics on the shelves today?

MAUER: ATOMIC ROBO, THE MICE TEMPLAR, SCALPED, NORTHLANDERS, and SALT WATER TAFFY are my favorites, but I honestly have to say that the books I’m working on right now hold a special place in my heart as well. I only read scripts sequentially while working on pages, and sort of get the same experience on these books as the reader who picks them up off the shelf–and I can’t wait to read more of them!

BERANEK: What projects are you working on now that we can look forward to?

MAUER: AWAKENING Volume 1 HC by Nick Tapalansky and Alex Eckman-Lawn from Archaia: This is a zombie noir tale that may not contain zombies at all, set in a town slowly walking toward the apocalypse over the course of a year, focusing on how the people are dealing with it. Collecting the first half of the series, this book is finally out at the end of July. Volume 2 will be released directly as an OGN and we’re starting production on it in the next few weeks.

BAD DOG by Joe Kelly and Diego Greco from Image: Lou is a werewolf who never changes back to human form. He and his former preacher buddy Wendell are bounty hunters trying to scrape by as Lou has a crisis of conscience about the skips they hunt. It’s a buddy comedy with lots of action and Joe Kelly writing black humor at its best. My personal favorite: Mrs. Chico, the cougar bail bonds woman trying to jump Lou’s bones every time they’re in the office, while her paraplegic husband sits right next to her!

LOVE BUZZ by Leonard N. Wallace, Michelle Silva, and Dave Tuney from Oni Press: “What if the one that got away always kept coming back?” Norm Raymer, an aspiring comic artist, has a turbulent relationship with Maggie. With their passionate ups and chaotic downs, is this love, or a youthful lust? For better or worse, Norm and Maggie must discover whether or not they can ever really make it as a normal couple. Can you really be a normal couple when your whole life is just fodder for your comic book? A new romantic comedy graphic novel for young comic nerds in love.

OUTLAW TERRITORY volume 2 from Image: The second part of the acclaimed Western anthology is nearing completion and it’s shaping up to be even more fun than volume 1 which just came out. No idea when it will be released, but I suspect Image will want to space them out a little.

POPGUN from Image: The Harvey Award winning graphics mixtape is currently wrapping production on the fourth volume and volume 5 is already underway. We’re thinking about adjusting the release schedule for the book though since we don’t want to over saturate the market. Volume 3 only came out in April, after all.

RAPTURE by Mike Oeming and Taki Soma from Dark Horse: The Champions have all vanished, leaving the world in chaos and the rest of humanity in danger of organized cannibals. It’s the worst breakup ever in the aftermath of the apocalypse as two lovers separated by a continent try to reunite in a world that’s changed fundamentally.

There are quite a few other projects in the works that I can’t talk about yet unfortunately, but these titles should get you going. For a complete, continually updated list of what I’m working on, check the “My Comics Portfolio” link here, at http://thomasmauer.blogspot.com.

BERANEK: Thanks for your time, Thomas!

Christian Beranek co-founded and runs Disney’s Kingdom Comics with Ahmet Zappa. CB has a first look film/tv deal with Disney/ABC via his Lead Pipe Entertainment banner. He has several projects in development around town including Dracula vs. King Arthur, based on the graphic novel he co-created. He is currently working on his first novel and an album. CB is never late for dinner and invites you to add him on twitter: http://www.twitter.com/beranek.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, August 4th, 2009 at 12:56 pm and is filed under Christian Beranek's Life of High Adventure, News & Views. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.