http://serifsup.com

Marvel bullpen boss Sol Brodsky hired me in January of '73 on the strength of the zines I'd lettered in Detroit. It was the final moment of Real Marvel: Stan still came into the office every day, though he'd given up scripting a year earlier. After eight months, small-town me fled across the country to Oakland, California, where I did flyers for bars. The fastest courier was Special Delivery Mail... three or four days!... so it's amazing that Marvel kept sending me work. As a third-stringer, I rarely handled two consecutive issue of anything, but did handle one of nearly everything. Savage Sword of Conan arrived pretty regularly, though, and then X-Men was relaunched in '75, supplying an 18-year gig. In short order, I moved north to Marin, then to Berkeley, took a jaunt to Toronto, then moved back to New York ('78-'81). A developing interest in early 20th century posters led me to know every city's good used bookstores. This led to calligraphy, '20s-'30s signcraft, and type design. San Francisco was home from '82 till '04. My wife and I and our cats now live in Portland, Oregon.

I've lettered comics for Marvel, DC, Image, Dark Horse, Kitchen Sink, Last Gasp, Star*Reach, National Lampoon, Playboy, Pacific, Eclipse, First, Viz, GT Labs, Oni, Archie... and probably others.

The heavy scripts on my early manga projects (Nausicaa, Appleseed) led to the development of some arguably passable fonts in '92. By now I have about six different styles, which I update every couple of years. They all taunt me with their kerning problems.

The last comic series I lettered by hand was Spawn, late in 2001. Oh do I miss the pen and ink. Fonts can be taught to do tricks, but there's nothing like the spontaneous expressiveness of a flexible nib.