Letters & Lines: An Interview with Hassan Otsmane-Elhaou about The Art of Comic Lettering and Comic Journalism - The Short Box Podcast Ep. 419

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Intro plays

01:35
Yo short box nation welcome back to the podcast for another episode if you're new welcome to the show My name is Badr and this is the short box podcast the comic book talk show that brings you top-tier Conversations and interviews about comic books with the people that put their blood sweat and tears and then making them This is episode for 19. I said that like a robot. This is episode for 19 and today I've got a guest who I can't wait to introduce you to his name is Hassan Otsman-Elhaou

02:03
He's a multi award-winning comics letterer who's been employed by DC, Dark Horse, Image, Dynamite, Vault and Dynamite Entertainment to name a few. He's currently lettering the new Kid Cudi comic Moon Man, as well as my favorite comic of the year so far, Beneath the Trees Where Nobody Sees. Hasan is also the two times award-winning editor of the digital comic magazine Panel by Panel. He's a voice behind the seminal YouTube channel Strip Panel Naked. And as of October of last year, he added published comic writer to his already extensive resume.

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by releasing his debut graphic novel, The Unlikely Story of Felix and Macabre. He's on the podcast today to talk about comic lettering, comic journalism, and I might be able to get him to share the secret to unlocking a 25th hour in the day to be able to do all these great things. So if you're an aspiring or current comic podcaster, critic, content creator, maybe even aspiring comic letterer, et cetera, you might appreciate this episode just a little more than usual. Short Box Nation, without much further ado, let's finally welcome and give it up for Hassan.

03:02
Hassan, how are you doing, sir? I'm good, yeah, thanks. That's a good intro. Hopefully I didn't butcher the name too much. No, it's good. It worked. From one interesting named individual to another. Hopefully I didn't butcher it too bad. I know the pain. How is your weekend treating you, man? We're recording on a Sunday. I told you it's not my... I used to record on Sundays a lot. It's not my normal days now. I kind of flip-flop, but it's nice to kind of get back into the old routine. How's your weekend going?

03:32
Uh, yeah, good. Yeah. Um, I'm, I'm pretty, I'm shattered to be honest. I'm quite tired, but not that's, that's not, uh, related to, to this. That's, that's more just cause life's long in it days along. I got you. Damn. My heart would have been broken if it was like, yeah, this podcast, you know, it came at a bad time. It's just, it's just, you know, just, just, just time in it. Just time. Yeah. Just, just things, just, just life just carries on. Yeah.

04:01
I'll keep it light. I'll keep it light for the rest of this. No, no. Let's get into existential dread and some heaviness, man. The fans get the light stuff all the time. Let's get real. But I brought up there, obviously I brought some attention to the name, and I guess I should ask, where does the name come from? It's Algeria. So I'm half Algerian. So half British, half Algerian. And yeah, it's just, I mean, there's a whole history to it that we, of sort of, you know, French rule and...

04:30
French changing the name, that is probably not that interesting to people listening, but it's basically, it's an Algerian name with a slight French rework due to colonialism. It's not funny. I don't know why I'm saying that with a giggle. That dark colonialism will do it all the time, I tell you. But does your name have any special meaning? I think it means like, I don't, this is, I...

04:54
This is going to sound egotistical now, but I think it means, I mean, if you see the video clip of this, then you'll, you can take your own idea from that. But I'm pretty sure it means like handsome.

05:08
I mean, I don't know. Like I don't, I've got no idea, but I don't know. That's what my mom told me. Interesting. Yeah, that definitely sounds like something your mom would say, no baby, it means handsome. It means the chosen one. You know, I was waiting on that. Awesome. Yeah. No one, no one write in to clarify. Let's, I think let's leave it with that. Let's just, we're all happy thinking that's what it means. Yeah. Let him have this. All right, internet, let him have this. We don't need your opinion on this.

05:37
You currently reside in the UK, right? Anywhere in particular that you'd care to share? Just all over. OK. Just the whole, just one big house that covers the whole land. Damn, comic lettering pays well. Well, I was going to ask, I was bringing up location-wise, because I'm always curious what the comic scene like is in any particular area. Like, if I was to make a trip to the UK and I wanted to do comic book specific things, are there any?

06:04
shops or related things that I should go do or see or visit. The thing is that I think with like, the UK is so small that you, I remember I was in America once and I was chatting to this guy and he was like, I want to go visit England. And he's like, I want to see, I think he said he's like, I want to see like Manchester, London, and I don't know, some other Cornwall maybe. And he was like, do you reckon I could do all that in a week? And I was like, to be honest, you could probably do that in a day. It's not, it's not, it's not like a big.

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It's not like this, you could drive from, I'm so bad with geography. I was about to make a bold statement about how many hours it would take to drive from one place to the other. But it's, you know, most places, you can drive from one end of the country to the other in a day with change, you know, with a lot of time spare. It's not, it's not very big. So you could, you could hit off all the places. There's some cool shops in London. Thought Bubble in Harrogate is like my favorite show every year, comic convention is really good fun.

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That's the big one for me. That's my favorite comic related thing of the year in England. How often do you make your way out to comic conventions, whether that be in the States or just around Europe? I know the conventions in Europe are numerous. I always feel like I'm always learning some new ones. I had Declan Shelby on the show a couple of weeks ago, and he was dropping all these names and places. I'm like, wait, there's one in Milan. There's one here and there. It's like, damn, I need to start using my passport more.

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So I guess, how do you go about conventions? Do you do a lot of traveling? Well, I mean, Dex, you know, Dex Bigtime. That's what we call him, Bigtime Dex. And he's like, he's everywhere. He hits up all the shows. I mean, I genuinely, I do one, I genuinely, I go to one comic convention a year and that is probably too many for me. I don't know how much I enjoy comics. I'm just getting up a bit. Monday through Friday.

07:57
I go to Thought Bubble every year. I mean, Thought Bubble is like a really fun show. It's like a really, really cool show. It's all about comics as well, which is always good fun. So that's like my one excursion out of the house a year is to go to Thought Bubble in November. Yeah, so if I wanted to get any one of my many comic books I now own that has your name on the cover as letter, I have to make that trip to Thought Bubble to come see you. All right, I got it. Challenge accepted. I don't want to go anywhere else. All right, no, challenge accepted, good sir. I wanted to ask off the top.

08:27
What's harder or what role do you enjoy more? Editor, writer, letterer, podcaster, video creator, or director? They're all quite different. I just like lettering comics, I think. I mean, that's probably as probably obvious from the fact that that's like the only one of those things that I really do anymore. But I like lettering a lot. I think I really miss making panel by panel. I think that will be coming back to that, I think, just cause it's really, that was really, really good fun.

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And that was like a nice way to kind of like, do something that sort of felt valuable in a way that lettering doesn't necessarily feel valuable. It's just, you know, it's like, no, it doesn't feel valuable, but you know what I mean? It's like a job that I enjoy doing, but like panel by panel was a fun way to kind of like keep up to date with everything and work with people and get, you know, try and help people like kind of get their work seen and stuff like that. It felt kind of like quite.

09:24
It felt like a fun involvement in comics criticism. So I really, really missed doing that. So that I want to bring that back at some point soon. So that those two things were like, probably like my two favorite things to do. Was that the question? Yes. Yeah, actually. And then what's harder? What's harder out of all of those?

09:47
Well, panel by panel was really, like was much harder. But I mean, just because like it's hard, it was harder to give the time of day because it wasn't, it didn't really make a lot of money. So it's harder to like give the amount. And that was, it took, like, it took a lot of hours. And also for like Tiffany Bab, who co-edited like most of that, of the 70 issues with me, like it took like a lot of her hours as well. The writers gave a lot of their, a lot of their time. It was a, it was a, it was a big grand idea that I didn't

10:17
We didn't expect it to be as involved as it ended up being. And so it kind of just took us all along for the ride for the most part. So that was, it was really, it's like, I mean, once I counted up how many hours a month it took me, that was when I was like, it probably time for a little bit of a break from making that. But it was, it was, but it's hard, but it was really, really good fun. Like that, that's been kind of like the most rewarding thing, I think that I've sort of worked on. But just, but just because you're working with other people.

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And it's

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positive, I suppose. So it was hard, it was hard work, but it was kind of, you know, I think it was worth it. I have a link to the Panel by Panel magazines. They do this great thing where you could buy bundles of the different years that they put out the magazines. So I have a link to that in the show notes if anyone wants to check that out, as well as Strip Panel Naked, which I cannot recommend enough if you like getting into the weeds, into the nuances. Hell, I think your tagline for Strip Panel Naked says it perfectly.

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showing you some of the cool stuff lurking in the pages of some of the best comics. I think you accomplished that mission very well. So check that out, folks. I guess let's start from the beginning of your comic book journey. What was your first conscious exposure to comics? Like do you remember the first comic you read or the one that made you a fan? The one that I'm in, the first comic I read would have been like a, like a Beano or Dandy, which is like these British, British, like a, like anthology.

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comics, I guess you'd say. They're just like gag, gag comics. And like every kid in England read a, has, will have read a Beano or Dandy of my age. I don't know. I don't know what kids read now, like Monster Fun or something like that, or Phoenix, which is really cool. But anyway, that's a different question. But the Beano and Dandy were like these really fun comics. I had like Danis the Menace and, but the British Danis the Menace and they, just the silly gags, like fun, silly things, bash street kids. There's a lot of fun stuff.

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So that was, I read those, but they were just like, you know, the stuff you would read because you didn't read books, like cause you were too small to look at lots of words. And the, and then I remember I would get like a lot of Lucky Luke's was kind of like the first time I was kind of like interested in, I think probably like the first time I was like drawing stuff was seeing things in Lucky Luke's. I read a lot of French Lucky Luke's. Um, and then I got a copy of, I borrowed a copy of Spy. Like they used to do these black and white reprints, uh, Marvel.

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called Essentials and they had like 200 pages on like crap paper. Yeah, they were big telephone or phone book size books, cheap paper and hell, you can find them now for like five bucks in every single discount then. But yeah, dude, same here for me. Those were like my gateway into, at least like the Marvel universe, but comic books. My dad used to buy those by the heap and I would tear through them. Yeah, I love them.

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were great. They were really good stories. They were in black and white as well, which I didn't realise wasn't the norm. Then I got, I don't know if someone bought me a comic or I'd gone to a shop and found a comic. It was in colour and I was like, wow, my god, they do them in colour as well. That's insane. They look so much cooler in colour. Then I kind of just started. Then I had a burger van job when I was 14. I would flip burgers in the park and then I would put all of that money.

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into buying comic books. My dad traveled for work, and so I would email comic shops in the area he was going to, and I'd be like, can you get this? And this Arab guy's gonna come in at some point and make a deal with you for the comics. And then my dad would go in, and my dad hated, he would go in and he was like, I don't wanna talk to anyone about comic books. And I was like, that's fine, I've emailed them, they understand the exchange is happening.

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And my dad would just go in with an envelope of cash and hand him an envelope of cash and be like, I'm here for the comics. And they would hand him a bag of comics and he would just leave. And he did that for, bless him, he did that for me for two years while I had this burger. It was the only time in my life I've ever had money. So it's like I had two years of solid comic buying. And then, yeah, and then I got into them. I don't know where I was going. That might be one of the best origin stories because there's a lot of similarities to my own.

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I got into comics the same way with the Essentials. I worked at Domino's Pizza for my first job. Literally spent 90% of my paycheck on comics. The only difference is I didn't use my dad as a secret agent. I wasn't his agent M sending him on these missions to get comic books, that's awesome. He didn't, I don't think he liked it, but he was. But he was.

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I think it was like, you know what I mean? It was like, he was like, I don't want to be in these nerdy, I don't want to be seen buying comic books, like in case people think like, why is that guy buying comic books? But he did it. He did it. I remember I was talking to him about it recently and I was like, do you remember doing that? And he was like, yeah, I was like, did you ever, because there was one shop he went to a lot while he was in this area. And I mean, probably for like most of the year. And I was like, did you ever speak to that guy that ran it? And he was like, I don't think I said a single word to him.

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And so I think I must have just like described my dad or something in one of the emails. And then my dad was like after the first couple of times, he just knew like he knew me. So he just he just gave it to me. I left. And I was like, that's unbelievable. That's incredible. Big shout out to the Pops, man. The things that dads do for their kids. I love it. So I guess what would you say was your first conscious exposure to to letter? So like really honing in on lettering and focusing and being impressed by like lettering and, you know, that whole aspect of the medium.

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Before I started lettering, it was probably reading Arkham Asylum, but Gaspar Saladino's work on Arkham Asylum was probably the first time I was like, oh, that's like, like he's, there's choices being made that aren't normal, not normal, but you know what I mean? That aren't like typical, I suppose. So that was, that's the first thing that always sticks in my mind as being like, oh, I've, that's something I've noticed about lettering. And that wasn't, I mean, that wasn't even that long ago, really.

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And then once I saw that, once you see it, it's kind of like you start looking at other things and being like, well, what are they doing? And most, I mean, most guys, especially superhero stuff, like the stuff that I was reading, there is a kind of like a range it falls into. And so it's, you tend to see something that doesn't fit that range more directly usually. But then when you look at like other stuff, you know, you look at indie comics and you look at people like

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cartoonists that do their own hand lettering and stuff and all of a sudden your mind is blown from the possibilities. But within the superhero world, what Sal De Niro did on Arkham Asylum, I think, is so fascinating. Is it a full circle moment for you considering that you are the letterer of the Batman City of Madness story arc with Christian Ward, who I think for the most part either this is a spiritual successor or

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sequel to Arkham Asylum, or I know it's heavily influenced by Arkham Asylum, but is it a full circle moment for you to be working on this book as a letter? Yeah, that was fun because Chris kind of asked me if I wanted to do it, which I said yes, like before I even knew what it was, because I'm a big fan of Chris anyway. And then he was like, oh, it's kind of like, you know, this was before it was revealed in the third issue, how it ties, I'm sure I won't say anything because it's worth reading.

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there's kind of a direct sort of tie to Arkham Asylum. And so he said that to me early on, he was like, it's kind of like my response or like my follow-up or something. I don't wanna put words in his mouth, but like spiritual success was probably the better term so it's Arkham Asylum. And so that was fun, because I was like, as soon as I said that, he said that to me, I was like, oh, that's great. Cause now I can, it gives me like a valid reason to go back into that book and kind of like go through it again and see what was going on. So there's loads of stuff in City of Madness that is-

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like an homage to what Gaspar did in that book. Like even just like the Batman narration captions was kind of influenced by some of the stuff in the end. Some of the voice for the Batman below is kind of lifted from like how, what Gaspar did for the Joker and stuff. So it's like that was like a fun way of kind of referencing this thing that I don't know. They say influential, like I think it is influential. It's one of those things that you kind of put as like a benchmark for interesting creative choices. So it's fun to be able to like.

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play up to that was nice. So I guess I should probably take a step back and talk about your first lettering gig and assignment. I've read somewhere in an interview where you mentioned that you first got into lettering in 2016 because of a writer friend suggesting that you might be good at it. You mentioned that your first attempt was pretty bad, but you got some great feedback from another letterer. And then you continued to practice and refine your skills. And obviously, you've gotten a bunch of credits and a lot of work.

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I guess for starters, can you tell me about that first lettering gig? And then I guess in retrospect, with so much experience under your belt now, can you spot like those early mistakes pretty easily? Or is it like, were you making, I guess, pretty common rookie beginner mistakes that a lot of comic letters do? I haven't looked at it in a while. That first, the very, very first thing that I let was like, it was a pitch that I was putting together, like I had written. And it was OK. It was fine.

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The art was really cool. The, the, uh, lettering was not great. But what's fun, what the thing is, it's like, it's just, it's never going to be good. The first time you do it, it's not going to be, it's like, it's, you don't have, how do you describe it? It's like, you don't really have like a good reference for what you want it to be. Even it's not even like I was, it's not even like I had an idea and I just couldn't match the idea. I just didn't even really have an idea. I was just kind of like following, uh, Jim Campbell, who's a really, really good letter. I followed his blog to like learn how to.

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to use like illustrator and stuff. But it was just, I was just like, is this anything? You know, it wasn't, I didn't even have anything to aspire to, I was just kind of doing stuff. And it was fine, it was okay. I haven't looked at it in a long time because I just know it'll be terrible and it'll be upsetting to look at. But I mean, the problem is, you asked the question of like, do you look at that stuff and just see problems? And the thing is like, I look at most of my work and just see problems, no matter at what point it was. It's hard looking back through stuff because the other thing with lettering is you go through so many pages.

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so fast. Like, you know, I'm hundreds and hundreds of, I mean, literally hundreds of pages a month. And so you're better at the end of February than I was at the start of February. So even the stuff I might look at in January, I'm like, I don't know if I'll have still done it like that. I opened up a pitch for a book that got greenlit that I worked on in like 2021. And I opened that up to have a look at that one recently, because I had to redo some new pages, do some new pages.

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And I just had to redo the pages for the pitch as well. Cause I was looking at it and I was like, I can't, I just, it's choices that I'm at the time I'm like, this was a great idea. And now I'm like, I wouldn't do it like that anymore. It's very strange how your, your taste and your kind of like, what you, what you, what you think is good or good, or like what you think is working is different. And your mindset can change so quickly. But I mean, two years is a very, very long time, I suppose. So, but it's, you know,

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I don't know where I'm going with this answer. I'm just quite excited about saying that. I guess it might be advantageous to hear your response to this. And I always try to consider that maybe there's someone listening that has no idea about the topic or is coming in with a very rudimentary understanding. In your words, what are the duties of a letterer from, and I guess if you could explain it in the sense of, what is the bare minimum that a letterer is expected to do? And then on the, you know, on the,

22:13
further side of the spectrum, what is an exceptional letter? I think there's two, there's two things that like, there's like, what is a letter expected to do is quite simple really, which is just put, take what's in the script and put it onto the page. So that's like the bare minimum. I like, I mean that it's take who said, you know, the script will say in panel two, this person says this dialogue. So it's take that dialogue, put it into the script, bold where it's, you've been asked to bold it, italicize where you've been asked to italicize it, whatever.

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It might say shout, you know, or it might say, it might say exclaim or whatever. So put that in a burst balloon, whatever. But essentially put the balloons in the order in which they appear in the script, pointing to the people that are saying them. Like that's like the minimum. Like if you can do that, you've kind of let the comic book. But there's. Like that is if you do that, that doesn't necessarily mean it'll be good. You'll have just done what you needed to do to make it legible. Like I do when I like kind of.

23:12
done classes about lettering. My example of that is to take like the aerial font, which I guess everyone knows, or like what's the default word for Calibri, and then just put that in a box, in a square, just a square box with just like a very sharp triangle pointing to the person. And it looks awful, but you have technically done what you've been asked to do if you do that. So the level above that, I guess, is kind of like making it feel that it belongs in the world of the comic book.

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So we, you know, by using like a comic book font that might be based on like handwriting. So it kind of feels a little bit less digital, maybe roughening the balloon or putting like a special balloon stroke on to kind of give the balloon the air of like having been drawn rather than like pasted on by a digital machine computer man. So there's like that. And like, that's kind of really what you would expect like a professional minimum to be is speaker order, knowing who's saying what, being able to read it is like a

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decent size and legible font and everything like that. But also with just like a touch of like elegance so that it works within the world. But then I think you can go beyond that, which is to say like, how do I, rather than just doing what is the minimum, like how do I bring myself, how do I bring some storytelling to that? So like, that's like design, right? So that might be like, for example, beneath the trees, in beneath the trees.

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there's this narration from the main character and it's just written as narration, right? It's just written as some kind of voiceover thing. And so it's kind of your job to figure out, well, what's that gonna look like? Is that just gonna be a rectangle with left aligned italicized font in it? Is it gonna be something else? Is it gonna be a phone text? Like, is this a person that maybe like writes this stuff into their phone? Is it just meant to be thoughts? Is it like a journal? I like the idea that like in that book, which is about a murderous bear.

25:07
If people haven't read it, it's really good. It's like a Dexter but with bears and other animals. And so for that, I really liked the idea that the main character would journal stuff. I thought that was kind of like, just because she makes decisions that are vaguely questionable. In the first episode, she murders someone and buries them, but too nearby, I think. So I was like, maybe is she the person that would write stuff? I don't know. This never comes up in the comic book, but this is the thing that you're like, well, how do I decide what this will look like?

25:36
And so for me, I did like a scrap of paper and like a yellow journal. And I did kind of ragged edges on one side, which is fairly sort of typical comicky thing to do. But it also means that you can be loose with that. Like we just did issue five, which is not out yet. I won't spoil anything. But things get a little bit hairier in issue five. And so you can play with the captions a little bit. I like kind of had all the caption tour around the entire caption. So there was no kind of straight clean edges. So it felt a bit messier.

26:05
So these are all decisions that you want to make. I sometimes will like add sound effects if they're not in the script, if I feel like it needs it or I like on certain books, like what's the furthest place from here? I might throw like a joke in if I think it's funny and see if Matt Rosenberg and Tyler Boss, who work on that, like that joke. So there is like a range to your job. It's not just take the script and put it onto the page, but that is a perfectly reasonable way to do it. But like I like to, I suppose.

26:34
do try and like kind of like push to put a bit more of me into it, which is not to not not as to everyone's tastes as well. I won't. That's not necessarily the right thing to do. But you learn quickly if people don't like it and then you don't do it anymore. But I think there's a I think it's like how do you use the lettering to add to the storytelling because there's like this all this is average just lettering average. And this is a really long answer. I'm sorry. Now where they

26:59
This is the one thing that everyone ever knows about lettering, is that good lettering is invisible. Which to me is like the complete, it's not even that that's not right, I don't think. It's not that it's wrong either, but it's not even that it's the right question or the right thing to say. Because everything is invisible and so you don't want it to be invisible anymore. And that's, the lettering should work the exact same way as that. The example I always give is in comics, everything will be coloured normally.

27:27
and there might be a fight scene and then in the fight scene someone might get punched in the face or shot or whatever and the panel will turn red like the colorist might color that panel like red background. That's not to say that the world has suddenly turned red but it's like an emotive response and you notice it. It doesn't take you out of the story, it heightens that moment and I think lettering can be used in the same way. So I always find that idea of like, well, letterers should just be kind of doing a style that's very incognito and isn't noticed by anyone.

27:56
you do that until you want to make something bigger and louder or make something stand out or use your skill set of lettering to elevate the story, the narrative. That to me is like where you would take it. That's like the next level of good lettering, I think. That was a really well said answer. And I'm glad you brought up that old adage of lettering. I think the first time I ever heard it was from a professional comic letter and a good friend of

28:23
in the early days of the show. His name was Adam Wallet. Big shout out to Adam. He's lettered to comics. He's written comics for Action Lab. He's done a bunch of comic lettering. He was the one that talked about that. Good lettering, you don't notice it. Bad lettering, you absolutely notice it. Where does lettering fit into the comic book making process? Is it at the end, like most of us would assume, or do you get involved early on when we're talking scripting and plotting, or even before pencils are laid out? Yeah, I mean, for the most part.

28:53
we're coming to the, we're coming at the end. Like sometimes, sometimes over the inks, sometimes, it's not an ideal way to work, but sometimes over the inks, usually, preferably kind of like, you'll get the finished colors, the finished script, and then it's your time to kind of like, assess what that should look like and figure out the style guide and stuff like that. And it's, it's sometimes, depending on the project, you might get brought in early and people might have got, cause I remember I brought in, I got brought in early for one project.

29:21
not announced, and they wanted to figure some stuff out on the lettering design side before anything was advanced in the story side. So sometimes, it's rare, it's mostly you're going to come in at the end when everything else pretty much is finished, and then it's your job just to wrap up the book. When I say professional letterers, what I guess I mean, I'm being very specific, and I mean direct market American comic letterers use

29:51
Adobe Illustrator. And then there's like a whole suite, like a whole bunch of stuff within Illustrator that you can use to like, uh, un-undigitalize, that's not the right term, but the look of the balloon. So like you can create custom brush strokes and things. Like it's quite fun to like draw stuff on paper, scan it in, and then turn that into a brush stroke. So it's kind of got some like analog feel to it. But people, people, I mean, you can do anything you can letter in any, I don't think the, like if you want to be a professional letterer, that

30:22
DC books or whatever, you'll be using Illustrator. If you want to just letter comic books, you can use anything. You can hand letter, you can use Photoshop, you can use whatever, like Affinity Designer or whatever, like whatever Illustrator like tools there are. It doesn't really matter. The end result is the end result ultimately. But professional letters in the field of like direct market comics usually have a certain workflow that publishers are expecting. That's a very dry answer.

30:52
Is that kind of? I think that is an honest answer. And sometimes when we're talking about work, it's dry. It's clear cut, right? So no, I think that's a great answer. I don't know how to make Illustrator more exciting. I spent years trying to figure out how to. I don't really know how to. I'm currently trying to learn. I've got some experience of Photoshop. I know my way around. But for work, I'm starting to use InDesign.

31:15
And that, to me, is almost like a foreign language. So there is no way to make Adobe products fun, I think. I think Photoshop is probably the funnest program of that suite. Everything else is a little more nuanced. But it's good to hear the tools in case there is someone that's aspiring to maybe do lettering. Who are some letterers that you look up to or you're inspired by? And maybe just to really enhance that question, if you had to make and really put you on the spot, unfortunately, if you had to make a Mount Rushmore.

31:45
of like all time great comic book letterers, who would be on that Mount Rushmore for you? See, this is tough because I don't, I think the most interesting letter is in terms of like, who do you look to inspire you? I look at like a lot of stuff that isn't like direct market comic book lettering. Like I read Lucy Bryan's Thieves, which is

32:14
incredible French graphic novel from last year, maybe 2022. And the lettering in that, that I think was done by Lucy, is just mind-blowing. It's phenomenal because it's so baked into the story. And someone will say something and the balloons will drip, or someone will have a moment of falling in love or whatever and the balloon will just completely change. Not even that it'll change, it'll just be a different thing. It'll be like a cloud or whatever.

32:43
So that, like, I always find that really fascinating. That and looking like what like Jaime Hernandez doesn't love in Rockets is really, really interesting. But these aren't necessarily things that you, that I don't know that I'm like, are they the best letterers? They are like incredible at lettering their own work because it's so intrinsic to the texture of their work. But that's the stuff that I always like to look at is like how do cartoonists letter their own stuff. Because that's to me like, where you really start to see the synergy of the.

33:10
the art and the words and the style of the lettering. But I think in terms of like Derek Market stuff, like Aditya Bidikar is like king to me. He gave me tons of help and advice and everything when I was starting out. And him and people like Russ Wooten were like who I see as the kind of, they moved transitioned digital lettering into like a next phase of going, okay, we understand how to like,

33:40
do good digital lettering and now we're gonna go like, how do we elevate this to something else? And I think they, not that they're the only two people that do that, but I think I always picture them in my head as being like the two guys that were like pushing stuff in that direction. So I'd like two of them for me for sure. I'm a huge fan of Becca Carey. I think Becca Carey, she does like a bunch of the Massiveverse stuff. I think her lettering is really, really, really good. And she doesn't letter a lot, but she's got like, she does a lot of like graphic design stuff. She does really cool, buffy covers.

34:09
as well. And so she has like a really good graphic design mind that like plays into the lettering. So that's really good. I just, yeah, I don't know. Is that a good enough answer? I feel bad that I'm not saying more letters, but like, it's like, the thing is, it's like, I think it's good. I think it's interesting to look outside of what people are doing in the field to see what you can bring in. Cause if we just keep looking,

34:37
inside we're looking at people who are doing the same thing. Whereas if you start looking outside at, again, Lucy Bryan or whatever, you start to see ways that exist that no one else is doing in the sphere that you work in. Which is a long-winded way of saying just look at other things. I said Gaspar earlier, what Todd Klein and Clem Robbins have done in terms of...

35:03
It's so interesting because they, I've talked about like Russ and Aditya like, like doing stuff to push lettering in different ways. What, what Todd and what Clem have done specifically is turn their hand lettering style into a very, very, very clever bunch of like font software in a way that they are able to mimic the digit, like the hand lettering that they used to do in a, in a really clever way. So like Todd just turned all of his styles into fonts. And so Todd's

35:33
Todd's post-digital lettering work kind of looks really, really similar to his like hand lettering work. It's still Todd Klein. If you look at Clem, Clem has got this insane font that has like tons and tons of variations of like every single letter because he's got also like, you know, tons of hand lettering that he did previously to draw on. And so when you look at Clem's stuff now, it looks like Clem, but I don't, it's hard. Like it's hard. I would think it would be hard for most readers.

36:00
to know what's digital and what's been hand done with Clem. It's very clever. But yeah, so there's all these different facets of lettering, but I think it's always fun to look at the people lettering their own work and see how they do it. Because it's just so much more ingrained in the texture of it in an interesting way. I don't want to upset any, I don't feel like I've just said that all letters are less interesting, but that's not, it's not, I think lettering is like, lettering is a different.

36:27
It's lettering someone else's work. It's like a world of its own. It's like a whole interesting art form. But I just really like looking at cartoonists to letter their own stuff and just seeing what they're doing. I had on that topic, I did have a question on here about, is there a vast difference in the lettering approach or process when it comes to different forms of comic books? I said different forms of comic books with the understanding knowing they're all comic books, but does lettering differ?

36:56
in a manga versus webtoons versus original, you know, OGNs, graphic novels and illustrated books. Like is the process, does that, does the medium, there's a sub medium, I guess, subgenre, whatever. Does that dictate how the lettering process is done or is it still on the, the letter themselves and their creative decisions? Yeah, it's, I mean, yeah, it's all, it's all really, really different. I mean, like, so manga lettering,

37:26
I can only talk to it, and I've never really done this before, but just from my understanding of it, I can only talk to it from the translation side. So when you're doing manga translations, you're working mostly within the boundaries of the lettering balloons that have been drawn in, in the original Japanese. But lettering manga is unbelievable because some of the stuff that manga letters have to do, like redraw backgrounds, all the hand letter sound effects, it's just like...

37:54
phenomenal. There are so many great manga letterers. If you're interested, follow Sarah Lindsay on whatever social media platform of your choice. But you'll see just this fascinating world that is so unrelated to what American Western comic letterers do, with a whole different skill set as well. But yeah, if you're doing a kid's graphic novel, just basic stuff, the font's probably going to be a little bit bigger.

38:23
But also you're, you kind of got to be aware of your audience. Like if I'm doing something where this is being pitched to direct market readers, who have probably read like a bunch of comics, you can, you can be a little bit more fanciful in some of your choices in terms of like, even the style, but also placement. Whereas if you're making, you're making something that's probably going to be read by some, this could be that someone's first comic and they're like 10 years old or whatever, you're probably going to sit balloons higher at the top.

38:50
of the panel, you're going to make it much clearer. You're probably not going to put them in kind of, you know, sometimes you'll put a balloon somewhere to highlight something on a panel to make a point about something. You're probably going to do less of that for a comic where you just want to make it really clear and readable as like the primary goal. So there were choices. Yeah. I mean, Webtoons, it's way bigger because you're reading on the phone. So the font needs, you can't really do it the same font size that you would do a print book at.

39:20
technical things that come to the forefront, but there's also like creative decisions that you want to kind of, even down to genre as well, right? Like I don't want to necessarily letter a horror book the same way, even in style, the same way that I would let like a high fantasy book, because I want the lettering to match something like the grim tone or whatever. Someone's got a fanciful voice, it's probably going to be a bit creepier in the horror book and I'm going to make it drip and whatever, compared to a high fantasy where maybe it's got like a, I don't know, I'm just making things up now, like a gold.

39:50
glow behind it when an elf talks. I don't know. I don't know anything about anything. But you know what I mean? Like there's choices even down to the molecular level or whatever. There's like choices that you wouldn't make in one form that you would make in the other. Same as like genre choices and things like that. Man, the passion that you speak about the different aspects of lettering is really refreshing to hear. And it got me thinking about, while I was thinking earlier while I was getting ready for the show was, when did I start noticing

40:19
Hassan's name on being credited as the letterer. And I think it was either with from, it was either the Blue Flame series from Vault Comics, it might've been Project Patron or Above Snakes from Image. I think that's when I was like, oh shit, the same dude that does panel by panel and strip panel naked is doing, is a letterer now? Okay. And I don't know if it's just a case of, I don't know what they call it. I don't know if I was just looking for your name or I noticed it.

40:49
But then I just started noticing your name on a lot of titles. And I mean, this is not a full- It's quite a long name, to be fair, as well. Like it takes up a lot of space. That it does. And I say that in the best way possible. But what's interesting is that your name is on the covers of books. And I don't know if that is a conscious thing, to sell the books, if publishers and writers want that to be known, that hey, the same guy is doing the lettering, or if maybe the-

41:15
the attitude and perception of letterers has changed. What do you think? Are letterers getting the credit they deserve or do you think there's still room for them to be appreciated and given the credit in comics? Too much credit, probably. I think most of us, no, I'm joking. I think most of us are- You had me there for a sec. I think, I saw your reaction. I was like, wait, wait, wait, I don't genuinely mean that. No.

41:41
Yeah, I mean, this is like a publisher specific thing, I think. Like I don't think that I've been credit on things where like letters haven't been credited before. I don't think it's like a situation where I'm like, I'm not credit. Image is down to the creators normally. So there's like some image books where I'm not on the cover. There's some image books where I'm on the cover. DC, I don't think they put letters on as like a general rule. Rarely, I don't think anyway, unless it's just me. But the-

42:08
So it kind of comes down to the publisher. So I don't think there's any special consideration given to, if anything, I would say my name is legitimately more annoying to put on the cover because it's a bit too long. So I'm more than happy to be left off the cover. I think the thing is the response to the respect or whatever of the craft is not...

42:37
I don't know. It's one of those things that I don't, it's not really down to, it shouldn't be down to people to decide to respect it or not. I don't, it's a kind of irrelevant, I think. Um, it's more just like, it do is their space to do interesting work. I think that's more, like that's probably kind of more what I would think about. Like it doesn't really matter to outside of like wanting to get jobs so I can pay bills and stuff. It doesn't really matter. Like if

43:02
if people are like, that's a good letter or that's a bad letter. It's more like the relationship that I have with the creative teams I work with. Like, are we working in a way that's kind of like cohesive as a team? And is there space for me to kind of do like the way that I like to work? Right. Is there space for me to kind of work in a way that I would like to work? But I do think that I talked about like Russ Wooten and Aditya earlier. Like, I think there is, I think, thanks to the work that has been put down by people like that and also, you know, Gaspar and Todd, Nate Picos, like all these people that have kind of

43:32
sort of pave the way, I guess, and sort of set the tone for kind of lettering being a useful part of the storytelling medium, as opposed to just the way that we get to read the words. Like there is a value to it on the page. That is all huge. And I think they set the kind of like example of like, you changing, you picking a certain letter will give you a different book. And I think like, if it wasn't for people like that, I mean, that's people spanning a lot of time, right?

44:00
there's a big, there's a whole big range of people, Pat Brosseau, Clem that I talked about, like that you were doing really, really good lettering work and just making sure that people were aware that like, there are decisions being made that aren't just technical decisions. And so if you replace me, like if you take me like, like Poison Ivy or whatever, right? If you take me off of Poison Ivy and you put a different letter on, it would be different. The story's gonna be the same. Probably the arts is gonna be the same.

44:27
But like there will be something that's different. Now, if that's noticeable to anyone, I don't know. If that makes any difference to the way that people engage with that book, I have no idea. Obviously I'd like to say yes, but I have no idea. We're still a very replaceable part of the process. And I don't think anyone has any misgivings about that. Like you could take me off a book and replace me. And like 99% of people aren't gonna, they're not gonna make, they're not gonna care. They're still getting the book that they want, if that makes sense.

44:56
Um, but, but my goal, I suppose, is always to try and make replacing me as difficult as possible because you want to go. Yeah. But what I mean by that is like, you want to, you want to be adding something to the experience. So like, if that's the way that you work with people that, that it might just be that it might just be, you know, trying to be helpful and have a good relationship with people you work with. It might be that you throw a gag in, as I said, like with like what service place from here or something that isn't in the book already. Um,

45:25
So it's just doing something that just like, why hire me? What's the point in hiring me if we're all so like replaceable, which I don't know. I mean, it's a bad thing to say I kind of believe that, but if we can all do the job, right? If we can all do the job, like what's the difference between me and someone else? Like what can I offer that someone else can't offer? So all I can offer is my own sort of process and artistic.

45:50
process, I guess. That's the only thing that's going to separate most of us because we're all doing the same technical process really. So I don't know, I honestly can't even remember what the question was, but I've gone down and I'm at the end, I've hit a wall and I don't know where else to go. I'm enjoying everything you're saying. And I think you're being too modest, man. I think you bring a certain special sauce to the titles that you work on, especially thinking about

46:20
your lettering gives it that it matches it. And then it also enhances like that eerie kind of like something is not going. Something's not right here. I guess what title pushed you to take your, your job to the next level or maybe try new things or, you know, just think outside the box. I mean, some of the projects that I've always been impressed with include your work on all against all. I mentioned the kid, the new kid, Cuddy, uh, Kyle Higgins comic moon man. Um, I thought your work in that was great. And the first issue

46:49
You've worked on Batman, Batman Beyond, Beneath the Trees, Bitter Root, The Flash, Red Sonja, Bamperella. Is there a project on here I didn't name that you're like, no, this is the one that really took my work to the next level? This is going to be one of those probably quite a boring answer, but I think the thing is each thing has such a different personality. Most things have such a different personality.

47:14
like there's some stuff that you kind of take from one thing to another, but like everything's got its own, everything's got like its own challenge to solve. Like on like, uh, all against all, right, has like, we had these alien things that are like in these robot suits. And so they all had to sort of talk the same in my head anyway, but it was quite hard to differentiate them on purpose. And so like there was a challenge of like, well, how do we give them all different personalities? How do we like, what's this going to look like? And also Casper Wingard's art and that was like,

47:43
mind-blowing. And it was like, how do I do that while falling into the thing that he's made? So that was a really tough challenge. A Blood Snakes had a similar thing where Hayden's art is just incredible. And Sean had such a specific kind of tone to it. And what Hayden was doing with the art was grounded and gritty and kind of visceral, but also had a blueberry kind of mobius

48:13
So I wanted to bring that to it. So it's like, everything's got a chat. Like every, it's the beauty of it is like that, even if you would end up working again with the same artist. So I worked with Josh Hickson on Shanghai Red. I worked with him on Children of the Woods. And I worked with them on The Deviant, which is coming out now. And each of those three things is lettered differently. Even though it's the same artist, you know, Josh hasn't, I mean, Josh's style and stuff, he's kind of a changing, but it's still Josh's work.

48:39
And so it's like, how do you adapt yourself to the story you're telling, to the style that you're telling it in, to the genre and everything. So even when you're working with the same person, it's still a different process. Like John Pearson. So I've done three things with John Pearson. And again, his art is also changing and that's kind of the nature of his style. But it's like, I don't want to letter him the same way every single time. I was just doing this with Erica Henderson recently because I did two short stories with Erica Henderson.

49:09
three shorts, two short stories there again, for the Harley Quinn backups. And it's still Erica's work, but Erica's doing like a different genre thing in each of these different stories. And it's like, well, how do I, how do I adapt this thing that I think fits Erica's art to these different styles? And so every, no matter the job, I think the fun thing is like, how do I, how do I approach it with a fresh, like a different take of the, even though you're kind of sometimes doing the same sort of thing. So.

49:38
I don't think there's a particular book that was like, this made me better. They've all, they all, I think they all make you better because you learn, you make mistakes in all of them. You learn from all of those things. But everyone, yeah, everyone's got a challenge. Do you have a preference when it comes to whether working on a limited series or like a longer run that might exceed like, you know, the six or eight mini issue mini series? Do you have a preference? Well, I mean, it's nicer to know you've got like 10 months of a book.

50:08
in terms of scheduling and financial security. But no, I don't think so. Like, again, it's kind of like things change. So your first issue of something is not, you're not, I don't think you approach it in the same way. Like I just finished, but the thing is that you also don't really get a chance to work on long stuff. Well, I don't anyway, like that, that frequently, because I don't do a lot of, I don't do a ton of superhero, like long running superhero stuff. So the longest book I think I've done is,

50:36
Time Before Time, the image book with Dec that Dec Chalvi co-wrote with Rory McConville. And we did 29 issues of that. And that was good. And I think you'll, I don't know if anyone else will see it, but like I can see the difference between issue one of that and issue 29 of that. But you get a lot of confidence. I think that's nice. You get a lot of confidence with those long running series and you get really comfortable in them. Like you know what will work. You know how to do certain things. I mean, the fun thing with Time Before Time was the artists...

51:03
had like five or six different artists on that series. So there was always something to catch you off guard with, which was quite good fun. But yeah, I don't know, like with Poison Ivy, you know, we're coming up to, I think after 20 issues, 19, 20 issues of Poison Ivy, and Willow put so much gross things, creepy things into that series, that there's always some grim voice you've got to design or there's always some gross thing to come up with. So like even 20 issues in, there's still, you know, you still get used to, there's still surprises.

51:32
To pivot off that, considering how many comic series you've worked on, are there any pages of original art that you've received that have just absolutely floored you or wowed you or just like, you know, just had been ingrained in your memory? I don't think that I've got any, I don't think I've got any pages from things I've worked on actually. Like if you were given the opportunity to own an original

52:00
page of a project that you worked on? Are there any that immediately come to mind like, oh, I wish I would have had this page from this series? No, I tell a lie. I tell a lie. I've got two. I've got one from Owen Marron from Killer Groove, which was an after shot book I did a few years ago. It was a really cool page. From Felix and Macabre, there's the introduction of the Macabre character. I've got the first page of that. That was cool.

52:29
I mean, I would have that whole book, but if Junie would have given it to me, but I don't know if I, or if I had space in my house to store it. But yeah, probably those. Yeah. I've got like, I mean, above my head is a page from the Moon Knight series that Deck drew, which was like a, like a gift from my partner. And I've got, Daniel Warren Johnson sent me a page of extremity, which was really, which was really, really cool. That was a nice surprise. Yeah. That was very kind.

52:59
Walk a fine line when it comes to, I guess, when you're receiving the original art and it's your turn to do the job and place, have the word balloon placement, like is there a dance to it? Like, do you want to be sensitive to the art? And I guess, is there any hesitance or do you get over that pretty quickly? Because as you've said multiple times, it's the job, right? It's like my turn, it's, I guess, can you explain that?

53:27
of dichotomy of wanting to respect the artist and their creative decisions, but also asserting your own perspective and creativity. Yeah, I think the thing is, I think most of the time when you see, yeah, I think most of the time when you look at pages, you get a sense after time of where an artist wants you to letter things. A lot of artists will put the balloons.

53:55
like the roughs of the balloons in their pages. And so when you see a piece of comic book art without balloons in it, a lot of the time you can just look at it and you'd be like, oh yeah, it's gonna go there. But you just know, you can tell that the artist is asking you to put the balloon in that space. So that makes it a lot easier when you can tell that it's been planned for. Sometimes you work on stuff and there's not a lot of space and you're not fighting the art, but it's a bit tougher to work around it. But that rarely happens, I think.

54:24
But I just do it. I just do it in a way that makes sense to me. And with the idea of like, you know, if the artist was lettering this, would they do it like this? Maybe. I think they would maybe draw this thing in or like, you know, draw this sound effect there or whatever. And if people don't like, I mean, the fun thing about digital lettering is if people don't like it, you can just take it out. It's very easy. So I like my, that's usually like my philosophy is I'd rather kind of like give you, I'd rather give you something that's too much. And then you are like, bring that, just bring that down. Don't do that again.

54:53
But I would rather than give you something where people look at it and be like, yeah, okay. I think that's, I don't think that's the best response. So yeah, I'd rather like try it and miss than not try it, I think, I guess is what I mean. Yeah. Well, shoot for the stars and see where you land. I mean, the worst they could do is say no and control Z all day.

55:20
Considering your occupations in projects and things that you've worked on, writer, director, years of experience examining the medium of comics under a critical eye, would you say that working in comics has come easy for you now? Or is there still a level of difficulty taking theory and actually applying that to practice? And I guess maybe this is more so relevant to you in your early days of getting into lettering.

55:46
You know, you're known as someone that is able to examine and tell you why a comic book works. Was it, was it pretty easy? Is it, I guess was it pretty easy and is it pretty easy currently for you to do the work that you do?

56:00
Um, yeah, well, it's, you know, things, I think it's just one of those things where things just get easier the more you do it. So yeah, yeah, it's easy. Like, but it's not, it's easy. I think it's easy because of experience. There's still stuff that's, that's tough, but like, um, I know how, like, I know how to let a comic book, which I didn't know, like seven years ago. So like the, I know, I like, I know, I,

56:26
I guess it's like I have an easy, we talked earlier, I talked earlier, right? About how like when I first did the thing, I didn't even have an idea of a thing I was trying to reach for. I was just doing a bad job. Now it's like what I am reaching for and what the end result is, is closer. Which I think is probably the way to mark like how much better you are at a job.

56:47
Like if I'm gonna, I can picture something and I can get fairly close to it. So it's like, yeah. So it's easier. It's easier for sure. Yeah. The theory stuff, look, I don't know that the theory stuff is like a day-to-day forefront of the mind concern. I think it's just one of those things where like you, it becomes embedded in your process, I guess.

57:15
But yeah, I think it's definitely easy. I don't know if it's easy, but it's not, I mean, I listen, there's a lot, it's an easy job. Like realistically, it's not hard. It's not like a hard job. I don't want anyone that has like a proper job to listen to this and be like, oh, this guy's like talking about how this is a really difficult time. It's not, it's like, it's a, like it's a, realistically, it's a pretty easy job. And probably fun is how considering all the art that you get to like just see and, you know, just the.

57:43
Just to be a fly on the wall, I think on some of the things that you get to work on and see and your privy to for the comic stuff. Yeah, it's fun. I like I've got it's not I don't I can't really argue. It's a fun job. It's like there are at the end like I don't you know, it's a job at the end of the day as well. Like there are there is a lot that goes on that you're like, but it's just but it's there were things like the worst jobs to have.

58:10
Oh, for sure. Yeah, there's a few jobs. The hot dog cart, or the hamburger cart, like you were saying. It was a pretty good job, man, to be honest. I quite like that job. I guess with your direct involvement with the comic book industry and the comic making process and all the work that you've been able to do, maybe this was a question I should have asked in the beginning. But as someone who appreciates, I think I really appreciate your work ethic, among other things. I really appreciate your work ethic. On top of the quality you put out,

58:40
the admiration you have for comics, but the work ethic. And it got me thinking like, man, this dude has, for the most part, built a multifaceted media brand. You've got panel by panel, the magazine, two-time Eisner award-winning magazine. You got the YouTube channel, highly acclaimed. And then for a while, you were also doing a podcast yourself. You're a comic letterer. And I'm like, man, that's so much time spent on just thinking about comics. And I guess to ask a very basic question,

59:09
I guess why comics? Why the medium of comics? What is it about this medium that you like so much that you find so special that you dedicate so much time into? I've stopped doing most of those things just because it was a lot of time. But why comics? It's just really interesting. I don't think we treat it like in the... We don't treat with the sort of reverence that we treat a lot of.

59:37
a lot of other mediums for whatever other people smarter than me can give you an explanation as to why that is. But there's, in other places, there's the thing in Europe they call it the nine thought or whatever, because they kind of look at it as a valuable artistic medium. Not really as much in America and even in British comics as much. And so I just, I think that's a shame, firstly.

01:00:07
But I think it's also just if I can... Again, it's not... This is probably just being very British, but it's not about me, but it's like if there is an opportunity to put more light onto something that's really interesting, I think that's good for all of us to kind of like reassess and look at it in a different way and see comics as like... Because so often there seems to be this disposable thing, but to stop and be like there's a lot of craft and attention that someone has put into this.

01:00:37
And if you, you know, regardless of if it takes you five minutes to read it or it's like, uh, I don't know, Ulysses where, well, I'll say, I'll say, I can't read Ulysses. It's too much, but I try to think of like, what's it, what about the power broker, right? Robert Caro is the power broker, like 1500 pages on Bob Moses and the state park system in New York. Right. So it's like, regardless of like how long it takes you to read the thing or there is a level of care and craft that has gone into it. That is I think worth kind of celebrating.

01:01:06
That was kind of my original run into this sort of stuff was reading comics and being like, we should be talking about the interesting decisions that people are making in this process. Because there wasn't really a lot of stuff that, at the time anyway, there wasn't a lot of stuff that I found that was doing that sort of thing. So that's always been the interest for me is to celebrate this thing that I really like and just point.

01:01:33
to things that I think are really interesting. I'd be like, isn't that interesting? And then people can say yes or no, but that's kind of, you know what I mean? Like that's just, that was all, yeah. That was just always my drive in goals, is that the right? That's not a term, driving force. There you go. Yeah, no, I think you nailed it. And, you know, I think considering the acclaim, the subscribers on YouTube, all that, I think there's a lot of people that are saying, yes, please, you know, talk about and celebrate it to the level that you're doing.

01:02:03
And I noticed that your pinned tweet on Twitter is one from 2019. It's a photo of, it is a pinned tweet. It is a photo of an Eisner Award for best comics related periodical and journalism for panel by panel. Your caption is very simple. It's LOL so weird. And I was curious, considering your celebrating comics and the nuance and upholding this medium as a true art form,

01:02:32
What was the feeling like to be recognized in that way? Here on the show, we say something that has always been described when it comes to the Eisners. It's like, yo, that's the Grammys of comic books. If you're chasing that as your sense of goal and wanting that kind of.

01:02:50
Celebration, I guess, or achievement, that is what you strive for. That's what a lot of people strive for, to become an Eisner award-winning so-and-so comic creator. What was that like for you, to win an Eisner for panel by panel, something that celebrates the medium? It was, do you know what, it was a cool day, because it was the day, the 2019 one was the day that Algeria won the African Cup of Nations as well, which was, that was- So you were celebrating.

01:03:17
Yeah, it was a really, that was a fun day. Yeah, it was good. It was cool. It was, it's nice to, you call it the Grammys of Comic. I think that they're kind of like the Oscars of comics, but if no one cared about the Oscars, I don't, it's not, it's a very like, because I mean, they are like within the industry there, obviously they are, they're highly revered. But if you mention it to anyone that doesn't, I mean, not even people that don't read comic, like a lot of people don't read comic. If you mention it to anyone that isn't, that doesn't want...

01:03:47
to try and get one, the response is like, I don't know what that is. So that's not, that's not, that feels quite mean, but that's, it's just the British thing again. I'm just putting myself down. I'm really sorry. I won't do it anymore for us. No, I should be used to this because, cause a big deck, as you call it, deckless Shelby, he was kind of the same way. He was like, look, it's just in our nature not to like, you know, big ourselves up or talk about our achievements. The thing for me that like, because panel by panel was like,

01:04:15
is not, that's not, it is like a thing that I started, but it's like my, as I said before, my involvement in that is, I consider that my involvement has to be quite minimal. To me, that for me was a showcase for everyone that wrote for that magazine. And so my job on that was to showcase their work as best as I possibly could, as best design as I could, get it into as many people, in front of as many people as I could. My job was to help the writers in that magazine. And I think...

01:04:45
we did that and I'm glad that it got the recognition because I think the recognition was for those people. If you could, again, sort of about replacing me with lettering and probably people would notice, I think you could easily replace me panel by panel, but if you replace the writers, I think people would notice. And so that's what I liked about that was that it gave recognition to them. And it also is valuable for writing. Writing about comics is like a...

01:05:13
terrible idea. It doesn't pay very well. It's tough to get people to read it. So like I said, my job was to try and fix some of those problems for the people that wrote for the magazine. I can't fix it any bigger than that, apart from your own little garden. And so it was like to give them something, to give people that wrote for that magazine something where they can say, if they go get a writing job somewhere else or whatever, that they wrote for an award-winning publication, that's a good useful thing to have. This is probably my dad's voice in my head of stuff for your CV.

01:05:42
But give people something that had some prestige behind it that would help them with whatever they were doing next after panel by panel. So I guess I have to ask, considering that I think maybe it was a month or two ago that there was the news or announcement that the Eisners were no longer going to have a category for best comics related periodical or journalism. Something to that extent. I apologize if I don't have all the details in front of me, but I think it was something to that extent that they were kind of...

01:06:11
either downplaying or removing just in total that particular category. Like what was your reaction or response to that? Cause it almost feels like, you know, you mentioned that writing comics is a hard thing, right? Like it's hard to make any money off it or, you know, I get people to much less readership. Like, do you feel like that decision is kind of, you know, a death blow or, and that might be a little too extreme, but you know, like it almost feels like a really bad blow to comics journalism. Like I guess what are your thoughts? Yeah, it's not.

01:06:40
It's not good because I mean, it's one of those things where it's like, so what I think happened is that they shifted best comics related journalism slash periodical, which is the thing that the award category that we won. They merged it with best comic like book about comics, I think best scholarly work or something. It's something like that. So it's, they've kind of got rid of the journalism part. So it's kind of like best book or periodical about comics. I think it's something like that. Again, I'm just getting this wrong probably, but it's like, it's in that vein, right? So

01:07:09
which is a shame because it's one of the few award, like industry award bodies where they recognize critical writing about the industry. Like the Oscars don't have a category for best film journalism, for example. So that was like a fun way of the industry kind of recognizing that this stuff is valuable. It's like its own art form. It's its own craft. And so to get rid of it, it feels like a kind of like

01:07:39
It's almost like writing a wrong in a sense, because no one else does it. So I can see why they're kind of why in their heads, they would be like, well, we can just get rid of that because no one else does that. I understand that point of view. I think it's I think it's a shame because I think what we should be doing as an industry supporting each of these different facets of the industry and we should be spending time talking about good writing about comics, because I think good writing about comics makes it better. People that make comics.

01:08:04
It's its own art form. It's not a devaluation of the work that anyone else is doing or anything like that. But what it is, is its own process of appreciating and understanding craft in different ways. I mean, that's a very simplified version of it, but it's not. It is both tied to the work and untied from the work. It's its own work as well. And I think people forget that or don't see it like that. That when you're writing comics criticism, it's not... And criticism is a weird word as well, because it's not criticism of the books.

01:08:32
it's critical writing about work, which is not necessarily, it's not the same as like when we think of constructive criticism or whatever, it's his own art form. It's not criticism of the book, but it is criticism of the book because that's the term. But you know what I mean? So it's its own thing, right? And we shouldn't be saying, oh, well, I don't have to deal with that because as I say, I am a better comic book letterer because of critical writing about comics. I'm a better fan of comics because I've read good work about comic, written by comic critics.

01:09:02
I think the industry is healthier when there are good spaces for people to write and learn and grow their craft. I think that as a whole that we creators should engage more in critical writing about comics. It always breaks my heart a little bit when you see someone say, oh, there's no good writing about comics anyway, because there is. It's like, it's kind of like, it shouldn't necessarily, you can't just because you don't see something doesn't mean it doesn't exist.

01:09:29
And there was incredible writing done by really, really good critics that you deserve your attention. And that was kind of what we wanted to do with panel by panel was in a sense, like, you know, strip pile naked was used as a way to get people's eyes onto this other thing. And that allowed us to have more viewers, more readers than we would necessarily have had if we were just a bunch of people making the magazine. And so that was kind of like my...

01:09:56
process of thinking was if I can use some leverage of like the subscribers from YouTube or whatever to get their eyes onto these Pete and pay money to read this stuff, then I can pay these writers money to write this stuff. And we can do some, like it can do a little like a little bit of good, but it's, there is incredible writing about comics, right? That just happens. It happens. I think Popverse has been doing some really, really good stuff. Tiffany Babb, co-editor of Pound by Panel has been doing works at Popverse.

01:10:24
I think Steve Morris's Shelf Dust is a very similar collection of brilliant, brilliant writers that write really, really interesting stuff about comics. And so those are two good places to start. Women Write About Comics, also Eisner Award winners. You can support them on Patreon. So there is no excuse to not know where good critical writing about comics lives. It's very easy to find. Just ask me and I'll tell you where to go to find this stuff. It's not hard.

01:10:53
But yeah, if we stop seeing it as its own thing and see it as a healthy part of the industry, I think of cinema and stuff like, here's the cinema where you had these creators who were using the critical process to break down and understanding a film to reimagine what it could be. That's valuable stuff for the health of a medium. And to just kind of say we don't want to engage with it because we don't think it's very good or whatever, it just feels very short-sighted to me. Well said, Ren.

01:11:23
Great answer overall, love hearing that. I wanna take a, I wanna pivot really quickly and talk about something that's maybe somewhat semi-related to this topic right here, but I mentioned in the intro that you made your debut as a comic book writer in October with the release of The Unlikely Story of Felix McCabber. And when I think it was a press release, you mentioned, or you said this quote here, with Felix and McCabber, Junie and I,

01:11:50
wanted to explore the idea of doing whatever it takes to become something great. What does it take to be great in comics? Like what kind of work ethic do you need to have? What kind of sacrifices do people need to keep in mind when it comes to like working in the industry? Like how do you be great in comics? Well, I think like there's, I think this is maybe a non-answer, but I think the thing with that is like your goal, it depends on what you define to be great, right? Is great just self-expression, artistic expression.

01:12:20
In which case, you don't need to be part of an industry at all. You can do that by, you know, comics is, there's comics, the industry, and there's comics in the medium. And your value as a creator is not tied to the first one of those. It's not tied to the industry. It's tied to the medium. The process of you creating work has, is irrelevant to the comics industry. But you could be, you can be, you know, like I think one of the greatest comic book writers of all time doesn't even engage, doesn't engage with the industry in any way, shape or form. And so you can, you can.

01:12:49
as long as you're creating work that is the work that you want to create that feels true to the stuff that you want to make, then that's what makes you great. It's like, you know, it's like who's a better, this is a weird path to go down, but I was like, who's a better musical artist, right? Like Beethoven or Britney Spears, but it doesn't really, it depends what you're trying to do with the work that you're making, right? So it's irrelevant to compare those two things. And I think like, what's the phrase of like comparison being the thief of joy?

01:13:17
It's like what you're trying to do is you've chose comics, you want to make comics because you love the medium, you love the process of making them. And so that should be the thing that always drives you first and foremost. I said this to someone recently who's asking about how do I get into comics and I was like into the medium. And I was like the thing with that is like-

01:13:36
there's the industry, there's the medium. So it's like, do you really, do you want to be drawing 20 pages a month for like the next like 20 years? Or is actually, is the thing that drives you, there's a story that you wanna tell, you wanna tell that story and then see where it goes after that. And that's maybe not a great answer, you know, for a career wise or whatever, but I think sometimes we get lost, we can move away from the thing that drew us to it in the first place, which was the process. And like, that's the thing that you have to remind yourself when you're doing a thing that you enjoy doing as a job as well. It's like, remember why you're doing this.

01:14:06
because there are easier ways to make money and there are easier ways to make more money without also just damaging your body from being sat at the computer all day every day. So think about the process of the thing. Think about the thing that drives you in the first place. And I think that's how you'll make great art. That's the source of great art, I think. Damn. Well said. A very good answer to that. It perfectly encapsulates a lot of the things that we were talking about, especially the comic journalism thing. But if you had

01:14:36
infinity stones collected and you were tasked to change one thing about the comic industry, whether that be on the creative side, the retail side, consumer side, whatever side, what would you change? What is the most glaring thing in comic books that you would change for the better? What are the infinity? There's like the soul stone? Well, I mean, when you get all the- Is there a mind stone? Yeah, soul, mind-

01:15:03
Did they just let you change anything? Well now you got me on the spot. I don't know about comics. Well I mean with all the stones you get the ability to do anything you want. You can change anything with the snap of a finger. Okay so maybe two things to this. I think one is that this is anecdotal I suppose but I think there's often the idea, this comes back to what I was talking about like an hour ago about the Beano and Dandy, is that sometimes people see comics as like a stepping stone to proper books.

01:15:30
Which which you know proper books are also quite good. I say proper, but I'm doing proper with like air quotes But like you know novels are also fun But I think people see them as like the the thing you read when you're not ready to read like a big epic or whatever Yeah, but you'll maybe you'll just look at comics But again, it's like remember is reminding people that like it's like an it's like its own art form There's own visual language in its own unique way of telling stories And I think that if we can however you explain that to people so they stop seeing

01:16:00
comics is, yeah, it's just this kind of literary stepping stone. And I think the other thing is like, is that we should allow people to like to enjoy it, to explore and enjoy the comics in the format that they like to enjoy them. And like we always, I think people always argue like, you know, this is, this is real comics or like, this is real comics or like comics are dying. Cause we don't make this thing anymore. We make more, but like, I saw, is it heartstopper that what was adapted into the Netflix show back?

01:16:26
There's like a million copies of Heartstopper in my local bookshop. It's ridiculous. People like love that comic book and it's like that has driven tons of people to read comics. People that wouldn't also call themselves comic book readers, they're just like, oh, I like that book. And it's like, if we can figure out a way to show them that there are other things in this medium that they will also enjoy if they enjoy Heartstopper or whatever, I think that would be really valuable. And like, you know, people that read like Rainer Telgemeier's books,

01:16:56
move on to books. It's like there are stuff you would go to next. There is like a whole world of books. And if someone's like a manga reader that isn't not comics, you know what I mean? That's not, there's no animosity if people find manga that they love or like if they only read like YA stuff or whatever. It's such a massive medium that we need to, I think we should stop thinking about. I shouldn't say this because my work is in a direct market and I would like to keep doing it but...

01:17:23
Like, that's not like where it begins and ends. Like, there are a multitude of stuff and we can work in collaboration and we can take things from each of these different approaches that will make our version of comics healthier. I don't think that's really the question you asked me. No, that's exactly, you gotta stop down and these questions, they're like, they're really well thought out answers. And I think that's a great use of the Infinity Stones to, you know, improve comics. That made me wanna ask, what's your white...

01:17:51
Buffalo in terms of work or projects. You just got to become a published comic book writer. You're doing the lettering. You've got panel by panel and the strip panel naked on the back burner. You're still doing those just a little more less frequently. But I guess what's on the horizon for you? What do you want to do? What is still out there that you haven't accomplished yet in the world of comic books? Or just, I guess, larger professional goals?

01:18:21
I really like if Luka Doncic was to do a call out with him. I'd really like a letter of that. I think that would be really good fun. For the audio only listeners right now, Hazan completely surprised me when we got on camera. I knew that he was from the UK, but my man had a Cincinnati Bengals coffee cup. He was drinking out of a Cincinnati Bengals coffee mug, and he's got a rad, it almost looks a little retro, but he's got a Dallas Mavericks hoodie on as well.

01:18:49
I've done a couple of cool basketball, one basketball thing that hasn't been announced. And I did like, I got to do the, I got to do the Colin Kaepernick graphic novel from the other year. That was really good fun. So any sport, I really liked doing like sports stuff. Like the sports stuff is quite good fun, but I don't think Luca is into comic books, but if Luca Donjic should ever decided like, ah, I'm going to make a comic book, just let me know. I suppose that would be, that would be really good fun. Is that how you unwind from all of, just cause I mean, like I said, I imagine you're

01:19:15
constantly thinking, talking or working on something related to comic books. Like how do you unwind from all of that? Like what is the, what do you do? I watch a lot of sport. Yeah. Yeah. I watch a lot of NFL, NBA and baseball, like my three. I want to get into hockey, but it just seems like a whole thing. Oh, it's definitely a whole thing. Was that something that you just like sports was sports always in the house? Was that something like your family put onto you or you just found on your own? I don't know. Yeah.

01:19:42
Yeah, I mean, we watched a lot of like Algerian national football when I was a kid. From like a dodgy skybox. That won't mean anything to you, but from like a dodgy skybox that my dad had. Is a dodgy skybox, or look, is a dodgy skybox like bootleg cable? Sky, sky, sky was like, sky is like a British version of kind of like, yeah, I guess it would be like cable. And we had, my dad had like a, like a, like a, I don't know if it was like a, like a hacked one or something that got like Arabic channels, but it was like.

01:20:10
He just had this old skybox that got Arabic channels for some reason when we were kids. All right. Well, in that case, I could definitely relate to that because we had hella bootleg and people were growing. My mom is, I'm Moroccan, so my mom's Moroccan. So she always wanted Arabic channels. So my dad and just family in general found certain ways to get those channels for her. So I could definitely relate to that. That was cool to hear, man. That was cool to hear.

01:20:35
I want to go to end on that happy note. And I want to thank you for your time and just sharing your perspective. And hopefully the listeners learned something new, whether it be about the comic making process, lettering, or just, you know, just in general. Maybe hopefully they learn what a skybox is. Even if that's the only takeaway you got is what a skybox is, I hopefully the listeners enjoyed. I'm going to have links to your socials, to your websites in the show notes. I'll have a link to people check out the YouTube channel and panel by panel.

01:21:02
But do you have anything that you want to personally share or plug or tell the listeners before we wrap up? Yeah, I think just try panel by panel magazine. Like I'm really proud of that. So give that a go. And like I said, check out some of the like Shelf Dust, Women Write About Comics and Pop First. Have like have a look at some good writing about comics as well. And yeah, I don't know. Good stuff. Well, hopefully the next time that we chat.

01:21:30
It'll be to promote and talk about this Luca comic book that I didn't know I needed in my life. And so now, but it's been great and I appreciate you a lot, man. Thank you. Thanks.

01:21:43
There you have it short box nation. That's the end of the show. Thank you for hanging out. Thanks for being here. And a special shout out if you made it this far. If you enjoy this episode and you have some thoughts or comments that you want to share with us, write us at the short box, jacks at gmail.com. And if you really liked this episode, help us spread the word, share this episode with a friend or someone, you know, that loves comics as much as we do. And don't forget to leave us a five star rating and review on apple podcast or Spotify or wherever you get your podcast.

01:22:13
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01:22:38
Speaking of our Patreon community, I want to give a big shout out to our current members, including Adam Chittani, Tony Aupi, RC Gamet, Blake Simone, Blythe Brumleaf, Bo Evers, Brian Brumleaf, Chad Lannenberger, Chris Hacker, Chris Jinx, David Morales, Triple D Mystic, Dominique Jackson, Errol White, Edbot 5000, Generation Jaguar, Greg Hopkins, Greg Lichtaeg, Henry Hernandez, Hershel, Hydrus96 aka Mac J. Sinner, Jeff Frimmett, and

01:23:07
Thanks again to everyone that listens and supports this show. Be sure to come back next week for a new episode and most importantly, take care of yourselves. Read a good comic.

01:23:35
and continue to make mine and yours short box. I'll catch you soon. Peace.