Hello friends, I hope this finds you well and that you are in the swing of spring and ready to celebrate Earth Day. In fact, this essay was going to be about Earth Day. I had some stuff to say about it, and I was going to tell a story about how my terrible band played an Earth Day celebration when I was in college. We had to play in front of the whole school, including the President. There is a scene in my forthcoming book, Welcome to Mansfield, that is loosely inspired by that moment. I will get into it more in a future newsletter.
The reason for the change of plans is that I received my book back from my publisher with the typeset totally done for my final review. My typesetter, Niki Tantillo, did a phenomenal job. I mean, it is pretty epic. I cried. I can’t wait to share it. She managed to capture the essence of my book and smashed it with the vibe of the beautiful cover by J.Kotik while making it her own. I am truly in awe.
This got me thinking about the words we often take for granted. I mean, the literal words, on the page or the screen. These words you are reading now for example are pixelated representations of words in a specific font, in a specific language. Centuries ago, typesetters had to actually take out the letters and set them, backward, so that a mirror image of the words could appear for the reader to read the right way. It was arduous.
Just for a moment think about the way a film is put together in relationship to how a book or comic is put together. The writer is the director. That person knows where everything goes, how the people sound, and what the story is. The artist is the cinematographer. That person brings the vision to life and makes it look amazing. The colorist is the composer. They set the tone for the whole thing.
What would happen though, if no one was there to run the cameras? Without folks to do the heavy lifting, Jaws would be a publicity stunt and Blade Runner would be a bunch of pale people standing around in the rain. If no one films your movie, you have a play. The letterers and the typesetters are the heavy lifters. They are the camera operators of the publishing world. Without them, there is literally no book.
They don’t just put the words on a page, but they make the pages come to life. Without them, the tone is lost and the style is missing. The words don’t live and breathe the way we want them to. In comics, they show us who is talking, to whom, and if they are talking aloud or in their head. They give us sound effects complete with onomatopoeias. They curl the Qs and arch the Is (I spent 20 minutes trying to find a font for this newsletter to make sure my pun worked with a capital I and a lowercase s that didn’t just look like the word “is.” A typesetter and letterer would have been able to do it in seconds).
So, when Welcome to Mansfield comes out on May 29th, make sure you send some love to the typesetter. I mean, I hope you love what my words are saying, but just remember, without Niki, things would be pretty bland.
Notes From My Bookshelf
I did a lot of rereading of late. I am teaching Mary Shelley’s masterpiece Frankenstein in one of my classes so I “had” to dig back in. Really, I mean, I had the pleasure of reading it again. Shelley wrote this book when she was 19. Sit and consider that, then go give it a read.
I saw there was going to be a big-picture adaptation of Judy Blume’s seminal work, Are You There God, It’s Me, Margaret?, so I decided to read that again. I have not read it since I was 12 and boy does it totally hold up. Blume is an American treasure.
Finally, worth noting on the old reread pile is Matt Kindt’s topsy-turvey conspiracy-laden, water-colored comic book series, Mind MGMT. I could tell you what it was about, but then you know, you’d be missing out on reading it for yourself. It is brilliant storytelling, set in our world, or one just adjacent to ours. I get something new every single time. I dug it out and gave it another read because he will be a forthcoming guest on my podcast. If you like deep dives into comic books, Indie Comics Spotlight can be found on the Comics in Motion Podcast Network.
Notes From My Desk
That Other Dashwood Girl, the second book of my series is coming along nicely. I feel great about where I am. I had to break my heroine’s heart recently and that was pretty difficult to do. I kept putting it off and putting it off. Eventually, I just tore off the band-aid and did it. The story just flowed forth from there.
In other publishing news, I just signed a contract to be the co-editor and co-writer of a collection of essays about comic books. Our mission, in these bi-annual collections, will be to prove that comic books are high art because they pay homage to and are inspired by high art. My essay proves that the comic book anti-hero Poison Ivy was inspired by Nathanial Hawthorne’s short story “Rappaccini's Daughter.” The folks we’ve assembled to write these essays are going to blow your minds. Watch this space for updates and links when the collection comes to print later in 2023.
I hope you have an excellent April and I will see you in May, as we get even closer to publication day!
ARF
Kommentare