[upbeat instrumental music] [upbeat music continues] [upbeat music continues] [upbeat music continues] - Hello and welcome to "Comic Culture."

I'm Terence Dollard, a professor in the Department of Mass Communication at the University of North Carolina at Pembroke.

My guest today is Letterer and Artist, John Workman.

John, welcome to "Comic Culture."

- I'm happy to be here, looking forward to a good talk.

- John, you are perhaps one of the best known letterers in the history of American comics, and I'm thinking about, well, the fact that you've had such distinguished runs on books like "Detective Comics" with Marshall Rogers and Steve Englehart, and your work with Walt Simonson on "Thor."

When you are working on a book where they are looking for a particular feel or a particular power behind the words on the page, how do they sort of incorporate what you can bring into what they are looking for?

- Well, I base everything I do on the artwork, and in both cases with Marshall and Walt, we talked first about what the artist and what Walt, the writer, wanted.

I remember Marshall wanted to go back to around 1940 with the look of the lettering, having the narrative balloon start with a little circle with the first letter in there in white on a black background.

And he wanted thick borders, and that all sounded pretty good.

Now, I believe that was among the first things that I did on the interiors of the books at DC.

Originally, I was doing cover lettering.

Your Superman shirt there is one thing that I did, I think 2001.

Marshall and I talked about the look that he wanted, and I was in full agreement with it.

When "Thor" came around a few years later, I didn't know what to do about the shapes of the balloons.

The Marshall balloons were done with a French curve and just playing around.

It looked different than anything else, but it worked with Marshall's artwork.

He wanted to be an architect originally, and you can see it in his backgrounds and all that.

But it really worked with his, didn't necessarily work with other people's.

So, I adapted, tried different things.

And when I started working on "Thor" Walt said, "How about just an oval, maybe a circle at times, but mostly ovals of different sizes."

And I thought, "That's too simple."

But it worked, it worked beautifully.

It went well with Walt's artwork, and I was very happy with it.

- And you know, it's funny because you have this partnership with Walt Simonson that's gone on now for 40-plus years.

So, as somebody who he turns to time and time again to work with on various projects, are you keeping with that same style, it's going to be that oval or it's going to be that one balloon that's going to cut into the panel gutter?

Or are you always sort of adapting because his work on this book might be different than his idea on another book?

- Breaking the panel border is something that I did years earlier.

I stole it really from Carmine Infantino and Al Williamson, other people like that.

They would give a plus to the artwork, the overall design of a panel by doing that.

They didn't do it a lot, but it had quite an effect on me and I thought, "That looks good."

So, I was doing it quite a bit.

Walt and I think the same, and he is a good letterer.

Well, I know he lettered for Howie Chaykin on some of the stuff that he did very early on in the '70s.

And he did the sound effects lettering on "Manhunter" originally.

I don't know that he actually lettered any of the balloon lettering there, but he had control over it just as he did with "Alien."

When Walt did "Alien," all his balloons are Walt's.

I filled in the dialogue and any narration that there might've been there, and I did almost all of the sound effects for "Alien."

But Walt's perfectly capable of doing all those things himself.

- You know, it's funny because when we read comics we're reading the work of the letterer, and yet I think in a lot of cases the idea is that the lettering should sort of be generic and anonymous.

It should just be words on a page, and yet you're able to have a style and a personality that comes through in your figures.

As you are lettering a book how do you sort of balance between what might be a natural inclination in your penmanship to what the editor might expect for the professional look of a comic?

- I'm the worst person, I think, to have anything to say about my own lettering.

I don't like it generally.

There are a couple of, well, one story.

One day years ago I got a package from DC, and it contained five or six copies of a Batman special, a villains special.

And I wondered why in the world they'd sent those to me.

And I skimmed through them, and there was a beautiful Batman story in there.

It was gorgeous, and I thought, "Why is Mike Mignola drawing an eight-page Batman story here?

He's doing so well with Hellboy and all that."

And as I looked through the story I got to looking at the lettering, and it was really amazing.

And I thought, "Who in the world did this?

I could learn from this person."

And I went back to page one and found out that the letterer on it was me.

[Terence laughing] And I had done the story years earlier, sent it off to Kevin Nowlan, the ink I think.

And turned out that Denny O'Neil, who was an editor at the time, didn't like that story at all, so it was shelved.

And then years later under a different editor I guess, they brought it back and had it inked and everything and printed, but I had totally forgotten that I had worked on that story.

And I was amazed at how good the lettering was.

Stuff like that can happen.

But again, I bounce everything I do off of the artwork.

There have been, I won't go into detail here, but there have been a few times when I've actually requested to not be lettering a book because I couldn't get anything out of the art that could propel me a little further with the lettering.

But I've been very lucky.

So many people that I've worked with, they're inspiring to me, John Paul Leon certainly, Tommy Lee Edwards, Walt of course, Marshall, all kinds of other people.

- You know, lettering is one of those things that on the surface looks so simple, but for those of us who have tried to letter, especially using an Ames guide, it's, well, a tool of devilment.

So, as somebody who has managed to do this for decades, and perhaps maybe you've moved over into the digital tools, how do you sort of I guess have the discipline to do it on that tight deadline?

'Cause I'm pretty sure letters are given probably the least amount of time out of everyone on the assembly line of the American comic.

- Yeah, there were times when I had to do things very quickly, write on the boards using pens, and nowadays I letter, I hand letter into the computer.

I insist, and sometimes I have to really practically beg the editors, to get me the script as soon as possible, even if no artwork has been done on it.

Because I can start lettering the thing.

For instance, "Jupiter's Legacy," when Tommy and I started working on that we decided to go with only round balloons.

I'd done that also with John Paul on "The Winter Men."

If I know I'm gonna do a round balloon it's easy to letter.

Sometimes if there's a lot of dialogue there I might split it into two balloons.

Usually, I can letter the stuff, and if I have to restack it for some reason, if the balloon needs to be wider or taller, or whatever, then I could do that very easily.

The original on-the-board stuff, I loved it.

And I still do Walt's work on "Ragnarok" on the boards.

Although, even there I will go in and maybe scan a balloon that I've done and play with it a little bit, give it some extra height or something.

Do something with it to make it, give it more oomph.

- I was going to say, I was reading on social media one of the many comic book personalities that I follow on social media, was talking about how when you are putting together a balloon that the perfect ellipse is not your friend.

It's too, I guess, mechanical, whereas if you had something that was just maybe a straight line and a curved line.

So, when you are working with maybe a French curve or if you're picking the shape of a circle to work with, how are you putting the personality in so it doesn't look like it is just somebody there maybe with a compass drawing the circle?

- Well, I was always amazed at the EC books.

They were Leroy Lettered, which was a very mechanical process.

But because of that they actually heightened the artwork, this mechanical thing with a hand-done, by Al Williamson, or Wally Wood, or Graham Ingels, balloon around it.

The letterers didn't do the balloons, or the balloon tails and all that.

It actually gave more emphasis to the artwork.

And that's the way, if I'm using a complete circle, and I just create it on the computer, or an oval, it actually works to heighten the humanity of the artwork.

Now, there are times when I will freehand something on the computer.

I do that a lot with Tommy Lee Edwards.

Some of his stuff requires something more than just an impersonal oval.

And it goes along with his art style.

- You're talking about humanizing the artwork by having the balloon be something that is more mechanical, more computer to do that.

So, again, you're talking about how you work with the artist, you think about the art, you think about how that's going to interplay.

So, how much time do you have to work on a book to really get that impact, or are you sort of now, because you've been doing this for so long, you can look at something and say, "You know what, I know that this particular, this technique will work very well with this particular panel or this page?"

- Well, my fun in doing the lettering on computer now is in the placement, and that's where the art comes to the fore.

I get a kick out of, of course, breaking the balloons, or breaking the panel border with the balloons.

I've done that for quite a long time.

But also, I like to do little psychological things.

My general rule is that if I'm doing a Batman book, Batman's balloons are subtly thicker and larger than anybody else's.

Unless somebody is crazy enough to interrupt Batman while he's talking, no balloons go over Batman's balloons.

Batman's balloons might go over someone else's balloons.

The one is obviously behind, to a degree, Batman's balloons.

It doesn't encroach on the lettering within the bad guy's balloons or whatever.

But the Batman ones take precedent, he's the boss.

I've done that with other characters, and I enjoy placing the balloons on different planes.

Sometimes they'll be back behind an art element that's in the panel, whether it's something in the background or a person's head, or whatever.

I'm reading, I've been reading a lot of things from the 1930s and '40s lately, and especially in comic, comic books as opposed to comic strips, they didn't quite know what they were doing yet.

And there were tails crossing two balloons.

One that really should have been on, started on the right, was actually starting on the left but had to, the tail had to go to somebody on the right and then the other ones are on the left.

All sorts of things like that, and I try to make it so the reader can, always knows this balloon comes next, this balloon comes next.

And I do that by the placement of them, and it's just such fun for me.

Sometimes I go overboard.

I remember an "Archie" story where I redid the balloons three times for this one page just in order to make them really work well.

- You know, it's interesting because as somebody, I'm a hobby cartoonist, and when I have the chance I sit down and work on a graphic novel that someday will be finished and then they can put me in the retirement home.

But I've done hand lettering and it is very difficult to master how much space to leave on the panel for the balloon.

So, in your career, how do you sort of work with someone who might have, a writer, who might have a lot of words to put into a space that an artist hasn't given you?

- Well, up until maybe the early '80s, especially the longtime cartoonists who had been at it for years, they got a full script for the most part, unless it was a Marvel book.

And even then, sometimes there was a full script there.

But they knew what the lettering was going to be, so they would rough it in.

I remember seeing Curt Swan "Superman" pages with all the lettering roughed in.

So, when the letterer got it he knew generally where it should be.

There was, Don Newton was a wonderful artist, just incredible.

He had a lot of Alex Raymond in him, and I really appreciated working on his stuff.

And he would always put in the rough lettering, but for some reason, even though he's working on something that was 10 by 15 inches, you know, before the reduction down to the final printed size, when he put in the lettering he did it as if it were the printed comic book.

So, I always had to find more room when I was lettering his stuff.

But at least he had it there as a part of the overall design of the panel, and I tried to keep with what he had in mind.

I've also been grateful with something like "Legion of Super-Heroes," I worked on it for quite a while.

And to admit something here, half the time I didn't know what character was what.

I was glad that at least they had the balloon tails pointing to people, you know, balloon number two goes to this guy and all that.

The assistant editor, I think, did the balloon placement on those, and every balloon was about the size of a quarter, whether there were 40 words in it or two words.

So, I had to adjust for that and all, but at least, like I said, he told me who was speaking.

So, that helped a lot.

A lot of books I don't get any kind of balloon placement, and so I'm free to do it myself.

When I was lettering "The Hulk" I never got any balloon placement.

I knew when the Hulk was talking, and I knew the other characters, so that wasn't a problem.

And it was kind of fun being able to place them.

- You mentioned the, I guess the psychology that you use in certain characters.

So, you mentioned the example of Batman, how you make his balloon, that the outline is a little bit thicker than everyone else's.

As you look at modern lettering, I've noticed myself that characters will have unique fonts or the balloon will be a certain shape or design for this character or that character.

Is this something that you lean into, or is this something that you think might be not as necessary as the right balloon the right way?

- Well, Walt Kelly kinda started that with, well, the bear character in "Pogo."

He was part of a circus or something so it was all circus lettering with him, and I think he did a few other things.

It can get out of hand.

I recently worked on a book where different characters had different balloon shapes and different types of lettering and all.

I had to take notes for myself so I wouldn't forget on these things.

But I think it has definitely gotten out of hand over the past few years.

Sometimes the simplest thing is the best.

- And I'm going to refer to a conversation I had with Tom Orzechowski, of course, the letterer on Chris Claremont's "X-Men" for decades.

And he talked about how if Chris had a particularly verbose passage, how could he not find a way to get the letters on the page?

And I know that lettering should be a certain size so that way it reproduces well, but if you are getting some really dense dialogue how do you sort of balance out what the reader is going to be able to look at versus how much really needs to get on that page?

- Well, I've been very lucky there.

I will play around.

If it's an extreme situation where there's a lot of lettering that has to go in, I'll sometimes play with the panel borders.

I'll actually move a panel over a little bit.

This is, I've done this maybe five times in the last 50 years or so.

It's not something I do all the time.

And I do remember a page of this one story where in the script there were two balloon, or two panels on the page.

One had like three words in a balloon.

The other one had two large balloons.

And for some unknown reason the artist decided to have that second panel with all the balloons in it and all the words as a small inset panel inside a full-page panel.

And I had the lettering going partially outside of that panel and down into it.

The editor took offense at that.

I was up at the company there doing something, and some poor guy in production had stetted that and was cutting up my lettering so it would all fit down inside that one panel.

But he was going over the heads of people and, you know, all the things I wanted to not do.

He wound up having to do that, and that bothered me.

There was also a wonderful bit of artwork by a British artist that I did.

He had the, he sent me his layouts for it.

And I remember there was this one panel where two people in the middle of the panel were sitting in a restaurant, and they were surrounded by other people.

And I thought, "I'm going to ignore the layouts for the balloons here because they're going over people's heads and all this."

And I moved them inward where they weren't going over anybody's heads.

And the artist when he got that, he called me up and he said, "Oh man, you saved this panel."

And so, sometimes I don't agree with editors or whoever might do the balloon placement.

I've been pretty good at that, I haven't been fired yet.

- Now, you mentioned earlier on in your career you were working on, I guess, covers like "Superman 300" before you started doing interior books.

So, how did DC sort of get you to the point where they trusted you to work on covers and then get you into an interior book?

Was there a mentor that you worked with?

- I think that a lot of it was probably Carmine, Carmine Infantino.

This brings up a story.

Bob Smith and I came back here in 1975.

We'd talked to Neal Adams and Dick Giordano and they said, "Come on back, we got work for you," and all.

And we came back and visited Marvel, got some work, visited DC, got nothing.

But I had started on a Plastic Man story.

I had come up with an idea for it, and Bob Smith had actually drawn out the first page and he, I think both of us, maybe it was only him inking it and then I lettered it.

But we were going to show it to Gerry Conway.

So, we made an appointment to come back the next week and show that story to him.

We thought we might get something going at DC.

Bob and I were sitting out in the entrance way to DC where they greeted people and all.

And the woman there told us that Conway was busy so we'd have to wait.

So, we sat there and Bob Rozakis came out, walked by and saw us and said hello.

And we'd seen him the week before.

He liked our stuff, and thought we might have some possibilities.

And he said, "What are you doing here?"

And in my mumbling way I said, "We're here to see Conway."

And he said, "He's not doing anything, come on."

And we followed him down the hallway right past Gerry Conway and into Carmine's office.

'Cause he understood that I said we were here to see Carmine.

So, there we were in Carmine's office.

He was always one of my heroes as far as artists, and he hired us on the spot.

But my stuff that impressed him, and it couldn't have impressed him much, but it was the cover lettering and things like that that I'd done, logos, that sort of thing.

So, they put me on that first, and I remember the first thing I actually did was a Jonah Hex story.

Now, they took it back because somebody said, "Give this to John."

So, they gave it to me, and they meant John Costanza.

[Terence laughing] So, I did the first few pages of the book and then John Costanza did the rest, and that was before they were giving credit to letterers at DC.

So, I don't know if anyone really noticed or not, although his lettering was beautiful.

It was far, far better than what I was doing.

- There are people that we look at and we can tell their style immediately when we see it on the letterer's page.

And I'm thinking for those of us who are comic fans, the fact that we can go to a convention, that's where you and I met, at HeroesCon, a couple of years back.

So, when you go to conventions you are known as being one of the great letterers in the history of comics, so how does that sort of go from being one of the uncredited collaborators on a book to being somebody who when you go to a convention people are seeking you out because hey, you did that great page in that issue of "Thor" where this happened and that happened.

- I still can't get used to the idea.

Somebody, there's a thing on YouTube.

It's a guy reading an article that I wrote about Alex Toth years ago for "Alter Ego."

And at the end of it he talks about how I am better than Alex Toth, which is a bunch of baloney.

Toth's lettering was gorgeous.

It had a bounce to it and an individualistic look to it, something that I could never match.

When I did the graphic novel of Roma, it appeared in "Dark Horse Presents" in four or five issues, and then later on was collected into a graphic novel.

I was trying to be Alex Toth.

If you look at the lettering, the balloon lettering that's in there, there's a slight Toth feeling.

But I couldn't letter like Alex Toth, he's fantastic.

And Gaspar Saladino, I will never ever in my life be able to do anything better than Gaspar did.

And Ben Oda, John Costanza, so many different people.

I mean, if I have any strength at all it's in design.

I can kind of bring a design to the lettering that goes with the artwork and pluses the artwork, makes it, gives it a little extra oomph there.

But the idea that I'm a great letterer is ridiculous to me.

- Well, John, that's where you and I will disagree because I think you're a fantastic letterer.

They're telling us that we are out of time.

I'd like to thank you so much for taking time out of your schedule to talk with me today.

- Thank you, it was great.

- I'd like to thank everyone at home for watching "Comic Culture."

We will see you again soon.

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