In the second part of Ninth Art's interview with Comicraft's Richard Starkings, he talks about Comicraft and the art of lettering, Buddhism, Hip Flask, and the notorious WOLVERINE incident.
25 June 2001

Richard Starkings left the UK for America shortly after his divorce and an introduction, by way of writer John Carnell, to Buddhism. The idea was to kickstart his life without any of the old limitations. The same approach would lead to the creation of Comicraft, the company that revolutionised lettering in comics.

Click here to read part one of this interview, in which Rich talks about his days at Marvel UK. "Back in 1991, I was working at Graphitti Designs in Anaheim and living in Venice Beach with another ex-pat by the name of Griff Rowlands. He was, and still is, a carpenter and his business card bore the legend 'Proudcraft'.

"I was introduced to the MacIntosh at Graphitti and, left to my own devices, taught myself Quark Express. Even though I was lettering bits and pieces for Vertigo and Marvel US, I had barely looked at mainstream comics since living in New York in 1989, but somewhere along the line I spotted John Byrne's computer lettering in an issue of NAMOR. 'Uh-oh,' thought I, 'The clock's ticking on hand lettering!' I caught Byrne in a hotel lobby during the San Diego show that year and picked his brain enough to know what I should be doing to get started. Marvel ex-man Marc Siry hooked me up with a friend who taught me how to use Fontographer and Illustrator.

"A year down the line I was working with an assistant - John 'JG' Gaushell, still with me today - who asked me how he should answer the phone back in the days when we worked out of my Santa Monica apartment. Remembering my old roommate, I suggested 'Comicraft'. It stuck."

Some have argued that computer lettering leads to homogeneity of style, but Starkings argues that the reverse is true. "Computers aren't responsible for bad lettering. People are. You don't need a computer to do a bad lettering job." In fact, it was Starkings' distaste for homogeneity that drew him to the lettering business.

"In America the search for guaranteed success creates an homogenous world in which you can drive to a 7-11 on the East Coast and fill your basket with exactly the same candy bars, sodas and magazines you would find in a 7-11 on the West Coast," he says. "Pull into a Motel 6 anywhere in any state, and you can turn on the TV and watch M*A*S*H or I LOVE LUCY reruns at pretty much any time of day.

"Travel the equivalent distance from LA to New York in Europe and you'd be lucky to find a store that even remotely resembles a 7-11, let alone the same sodas and magazines you'd be able to find at home. Turn on the TV in Rome or Madrid, and even once you got past the language barrier, you'll be hard pressed to find your favourite show.

"I find Europe's infinite variety very reassuring, and America's pop tart accessibility completely unnerving. German graphic design is radically different to French graphic design. Dutch design is easily distinguishable from Italian. The personality of each culture is captured and communicated in each country's typography and yet, nourished by the sensibilities of their neighbours, continues to evolve.

'I find America's pop tart accessibility unnerving.' "When I moved to New York from London, I was surprised to note how much one letterer's work resembled another's. I soon discovered that I was the only letterer working in the states with German technical pens. Most every letterer working out of the Marvel and DC offices worked with American 'Speedball' nibs, and so right there and then my work was regarded as 'different'.

"It's ironic, therefore, that when I first approached US publishers with the concept of 'computer' lettering that they were afraid to lose the personality provided by hand letterers. Whether by accident or design, hand letterers in the States had already created amongst themselves a somewhat soulless uniform style."

According to Starkings, the stigma of computer lettering is fading. "Both Marvel and DC have in-house lettering and design services. The comic book industry has always been very competitive, so there will always be a demand for the kind of commitment and attention Comicraft can bring to a project." And what does Starkings think of Marvel's plan to run 'silent,' dialogue-free comics all through December? "I'm looking forward to it. I haven't had a decent holiday with my family for six years."

Comicraft has not been Starkings' only project since he left Marvel UK. He's also dallied in creating his own comics work. "Quite a few years ago, Dave Gibbons pointed out to me that British comics lacked a character as universal in appeal as Tintin or Asterix. I have always been a huge TINTIN fan, and was intrigued by the whole 'clear line' school of comic book art which Herge inspired.

"In my heart of hearts, I'm more indie than mainstream, and I had read enough 'Notes from the President' in CEREBUS to know that I couldn't really call myself any kind of an Artist unless I did everything myself. I had drawn a regular strip by the name of THEN AGAIN for the student magazine at college, and dozens of DOCTOR WHO gag strips for various fanzines, but HEDGE BACKWARDS was my first attempt to create something that I might present to the newspaper syndicates out here.

"Although I never quite got that far ... I was featured for more than a year in The Herald, the free newspaper of El Segundo, a small mid-western style town next to LAX, where I was living at the time. Although it was always my intent that Hedge should be an adventurous newspaper reporter, in the spirit of TINTIN, the strip developed a philosophical tone all of its own, and after two years it moved on, and Hedge spent another year or so in the pages of The World Tribune, the weekly newspaper of SGI-USA, the Buddhist organisation to which I belong. Most recently I've been reworking the material for presentation on the Web at www.hedgebackwards.com."

Another of Starkings' creations is HIP FLASK, a hippopotamus adventurer who has featured in several Comicraft spoof-cover advertisements. Yet the character is more than just a mascot, and will soon feature in a genuine comic book, to be written by Starkings and Joe Casey, illustrated by Jose Ladronn and published by Starkings' font house Active Images.

"HIP FLASK was originally the name of a very human, stereotypical private eye I created for inclusion in HEDGE BACKWARDS," says Starkings. "However, I got so tied up with Comicraft, HEDGE fell by the wayside, and Flask never even got to appear in the strip. A couple of years later, after my efforts to secure either the X-MEN or WILDC.A.T.S. to promote Comicraft fonts came to naught, I decided to give the job to HEDGE instead.

"But HEDGE BACKWARDS was such a personal strip, pretty much detailing my life and loves in California, I quickly realised that it was not an appropriate vehicle for promoting fonts such as 'Clobberintime!', 'Phasesonstun' or 'Comicrazy'. Hedge didn't carry a phaser and wasn't into Clobbering in a big way, so I started casting around for another, more suitable salesman.

"While I was looking through my HEDGE BACKWARDS sketches, I found my original drawing of HIP FLASK and proudly announced to my lovely wife, Youshka, that I'd found a character to promote our line of fonts. She liked the name, but, when I told her he was a private detective, innocuously asked me what made him different to any other PI. 'Oh, Er...' I said, thinking quickly, 'He's, um..., he's Hip, he's a -- He's A Hippopotamus!'

"She liked the idea, and it stuck. I later abandoned his PI identity when I became aware of the existence of the Australian character HAIRBUTT THE HIPPO, PRIVATE EYE. Who'd've thunk?"

Though the demands of being Comicraft's 'First Tiger' keep Starkings busy today, he still keeps an active hand in the creative side of things, and still regards the lettering process as a labour of love. "I letter pretty much all the title pages in Comicraft books; I lettered all of WITCHING HOUR and the first three issues of STEAMPUNK and I watched over every single page of DARK VICTORY even though Ace Comicraftsman Wes Abbott did all the page-after-page lettering. ... I'll often tweak pages in books like FF, SUPERMAN and X-MEN."

Lettering gets little public acclaim, but it does sometimes come in for heavy criticism. A few years ago an issue of WOLVERINE was published in which the word 'killer' had been mistakenly lettered as 'kike', and the book was recalled and pulped. WOLVERINE #131 had been rushed through Comicraft to meet a biweekly publishing schedule, and the typo was missed by Starkings, the editor Mark Powers and the staff proofreader. Looking back, Starkings describes the incident as his "long, dark teatime of the soul."

"The Comicraft letterer who made this egregious mistake did so unwittingly, with no malice in his heart. The word intended by the editor - 'killer' - was hand-written on the script in place of the scriptwriter¹s original phrase 'the man known as'. It seems to me quite likely that my employee typed the letters he thought he saw, without realizing that together they represented such an overwhelmingly offensive racial remark. He was a young guy and didn't understand that 'kike' was a slur even when it was pointed out to him. Mark Powers and I have always got along well, and he didn't blame Comicraft, instead he took the bullet for us before the powers that be at Marvel, and I took the rap in Marvel's press releases. It's a testament to Comicraft¹s reputation that industry professionals saw this for what it was and continued to work with us harmoniously. Nevertheless, no one here forgets the incident -- I won't let 'em!"

'The Wolverine incident was my long, dark teatime of the soul.' The incident brought more attention to the world of lettering than any good work ever has. "We only ever complain about public transport when the bus or the train runs late," Starkings reasons. "My personal approach to work in general and lettering in particular was shaped by a story shared with me by a Buddhist in New York by the name of David Kasahara. At the time I was lettering just to make a living and I was struggling to enjoy what I had once enjoyed struggling to master. At a Buddhist meeting in New York, I approached Mr Kasahara with my complaints.

"He listened kindly and then proceeded to tell me the story of a dishwasher in a restaurant who was unhappy with his lot because he just hated cleaning up dirty plates. He complained to his wife, who chastised him and suggested that, instead of bemoaning the circumstances his life had delivered to him, he should express his gratitude to his employers by taking it upon himself to make the plates and glasses shine so brightly that the customers would come back to the restaurant just because the crockery was so clean!

"At the time I remember rolling my eyes and saying to myself, 'What does that mean?' but I couldn't stop thinking about what he'd said, and began to see how his story was relevant to my work. Generally, you don't pick up a comic book and rave about the lettering any more than you would sit in a restaurant and say, 'Wow! These knives and forks are shiny!' But then again, nobody likes to eat a meal on a dirty plate. ... At the risk of stretching the analogy too far, a dishwasher can't guarantee the quality of the dishes, but he can guarantee the polish."

Buddhism - and specifically, the doctrine of Nichiren Daishonin - has been an important part of Starkings' life for over a decade now, and he believes it has helped him to rise to meet and conquer challenges. Starkings describes the doctrine as "Live in the moment."

Describing his meditation method, Starkings says, "I chant Daimoku, that is, the title of the Lotus Sutra, Nam Myoho Renge Kyo, to a scroll called the Gohonzon on which is written, in ancient Chinese calligraphy, the enlightened life condition of Nichiren Daishonin, a thirteenth century Japanese monk who practised and taught the Lotus Sutra, the highest teaching of Siddhartha," he explains. "Daimoku is usually performed during a morning and evening ritual known as Gongyo, during which one also recites two chapters of the Lotus Sutra.

"This is very much an energising and cleansing spiritual exercise based on the belief that commitment to an enlightened daily life will draw the support of the forces of the universe which will point one in the direction of one's ultimate happiness."

Clean plates and happiness. This, it seems, is what life at Comicraft HQ is all about.

This article is Ideological Freeware. The author grants permission for its reproduction and redistribution by private individuals on condition that the author and source of the article are clearly shown, no charge is made, and the whole article is reproduced intact, including this notice.




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