Are you Keeping it Geekly? 2.6.26 Newsletter
A few months ago, I made a proclamation to myself to do everything I can to avoid going on a hiatus with Keeping it Geekly. Ever since then, it has felt like Life took that personally.
Snowstorms, family illnesses, and the chaotic nature of finding a new place to move have pushed some of my plans to the back burner, but fear not. Where there is a will, there is a way, often meaning a lot of sleepless nights.
“We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit.” — Aristotle
I have been revamping my Twitch account and OBS for future streams. At the moment, I am only live-streaming interviews and the occasional MtG Arena session. I do plan on eventually playing Indie Games and demos more frequently. Once we find a larger place to accommodate a game room, I would love to get back into AAA titles as well. One step at a time, though
Upcoming Interview
We will be sitting down with fellow Yeti Jimmy Gaspero on Tuesday, February 10th, at 10 PM EST to chat about Penny and the Yeti + much more!
Jimmy has written short comics that have been published in Bi Visibility #1, Tales of the Bizarre, Band of Bards’ From the Static, and Comics from the Kitchen. Jimmy recently successfully crowdfunded Made in Delco, a comic anthology of stories he's written
Yeti or not, here we come! We will be talking about Penny and the Yeti!
Penny has a super normal life. She lives with her parents and big sister Peri. Her favorite thing is when she and her sister draw and color together, especially when Peri draws monsters she calls “cryptids,” amazing creatures Penny couldn’t even imagine! Penny thinks life is pretty great.
The only real problem is Penny’s parents argue…a LOT. Penny wishes her parents would stop, but what can she do? That’s when Yeti shows up, right out of one of Peri’s drawings and smack into Penny’s life! With Yeti’s help, Penny comes up with a plan to get her parents to stop fighting. Penny, however, soon finds out that her parents may need more help than even a magical Yeti can provide 👧✏️
Tools of the Trade - Ariana Maher
- Comic Book Letterer
- Current work includes Justice League Unlimited, Superman, Wiccan: Witches' Road, Rogue, Spider-Gwen, Lazarus, and Zatanna.
Keeping it Geekly - Letterers feel like the unsung heroes of comic creation, and I really wish there was more of a spotlight on them. What goes into lettering that the average reader wouldn’t assume?
Ariana Maher - Lettering is a subtle art. The reader may not note our work on the page, but it is the lettering that guides them through the page, setting the pace throughout the story, smoothing out discrepancies between the art and the script. The most important element, the quality letterers see in each other’s work, tends to be our placements – where you choose to place balloons, captions, and sound effects on the page sets the rhythm and allows the story to flow well. If I make a poor placement of a caption box on a comic page composed of complex panels, the impact of the moment will be lost, and the reader will stumble, their rhythm disrupted as they search for the next story beat.
KiG - Can you tell us a bit about your approach when lettering a panel? What all do you take into consideration when adding word balloons and sound effects to a page?
AM - There’s a well-worn design checklist in my mind. It’s practically muscle memory, so I don’t give it much thought. Instead, my conscious focus when lettering a panel is, as I mentioned before, on placement. When reading in English, our eyes will go to the top left of the page and make their way down to the bottom right. The path tends to be in a Z shape. Same goes for every individual panel: is there space at the top left of the panel to place the first line of dialogue? Is key artwork in the way? Okay, where else is there space along where the eyes tend to go? Selecting the proper placements of each line in the script on the art is constant problem-solving and easily my favorite part of the job.
KiG - What is the biggest piece of advice you can offer someone new to lettering, or who is interested in learning how to begin? Is there anything in particular that helped you evolve as a letterer?
AM - That’s a tough question to narrow down. May I offer three pieces of advice? One, please read and then re-read Nate Pieko’s “The Essential Guide to Comic Book Lettering” – I really wish I had that resource when I was a baby letterer. Two, unless you only want to rely on word-of-mouth, make your work easy to find by linking your portfolio on social media. You don’t want to make editors put in more than a few clicks of effort to find you, see your lettering, and send you an e-mail. Three, reach out to other letterers. We’re your community, not your competitors. If you’re stuck, or you think your workflow needs improvement, or a client is putting you in a difficult spot, who better to talk to than folks who have been through the same? It’s easy to find letterers. There’s a Starter Pack on Bluesky under my profile at airy.bsky.social where you can find a bunch of us.
Portfolio: www.arianamaher.com
Contact Ariana about lettering through there if you are interested!
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What I’m Playing
I am not sure what it is, but I have been playing a lot of retro computer games since the last newsletter. I have spent a TON of time playing skirmishes in the RTS game called Command & Conquer: Tiberian Sun. This was a game I played as a kid that was released in 1999 and is set in 2030, featuring a brutal war between the Global Defense Initiative (GDI) and the Brotherhood of Nod. A little close to home lately
You can find this title and more in the Command & Conquer - The Ultimate Bundle for $6.56 on Steam.
Fallout 2 is next on my list. This was another game I played a ton of as a kid, and it was free recently on GoG through Twitch with an Amazon Prime membership. I am a SUCKER for isometric top-down turn-based CRPGs, and this was the title that started it all for me.
What I’m Reading
My good friend Christof Bogacs released a FREE book detailing a step-by-step process for getting PAID WORK in the US comic industry from anywhere in the world. Best of all is that it’s completely free to download - https://christofwritescomics.com/break-into-comics-ebook
I am still diving deep into the process of analyzing and reviewing comics. This week, I am learning about the types of questions to ask and the blind spots reviewers often have. As you can tell, this book goes everywhere with me.
What I’m Watching
We finally had the chance to watch the season finale of Fallout 2, and without spoiling too much, I really enjoyed how Lucy, The Ghoul, and Maximus’ storylines and character arcs grew and intertwined. It’s been interesting watching all three characters develop into almost complete opposites of who we met in the first season.
There is a lot to be dissected within this season, and especially that ending. Stay tuned for a future episode of Keeping it Geekly, where we’ll be talking about all eight episodes in Season 2 and breaking them down!
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