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Glenn Hauman

Glenn is VP of Production at ComicMix. He has written Star Trek and X-Men stories and worked for DC Comics, Simon & Schuster, Random House, arrogant/MGMS and Apple Comics. He's also what happens when a Young Turk of publishing gets old.

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20 Responses

  1. Russ Rogers says:

    Did his sewage sub actually run out of gas forcing out hero to slog? And is that a foreclosure notice on Stately Justice Manor? BRILLIANT! I'm loving this comic more and more. And I'm loving that each episode is coming out, week after week, like clock-work. Can't wait for next week.

  2. Marc Alan Fishman says:

    Well done Mark and Robert. Love the sub, love the prop copter. And who doesn't love a little gun-in-the-face?

    • MARK WHEATLEY says:

      Well, I don't think LJ is getting too much of a kick out of a gun in the face!

      • Russ Rogers says:

        I've always imagined heroes like Batman, Daredevil and Lone Justice do get some kind of kick out of having a gun in the face while maintaining the self-confidence that they are still the ones in control of the situation. They are control freaks and adrenaline junkies. I think this is the basic motive of most "Heroes with Tragic Back Stories." Batman can't control the chaos of his childhood, the fact that Mom and Dad were randomly gunned down by some criminal. But he can put himself in seemingly chaotic and dangerous situations and then bring order to them. If heroes didn't enjoy a bit of danger and drama, they wouldn't swing around from roof-tops or flit about with Propter-Packs. There are safer (and cleaner) modes of transport than sewer-subs.

        • MARK WHEATLEY says:

          That is a thoughtful and reasonable take on heroic motivation. It might very well be a good fit for Batman. But I'm pretty sure that it is not the primary motivation for our Lone Justice. Especially considering just who is holding that gun. Tune in next week.And please – that is a storm drain – not a sewer.

          • Marc Alan Fishman says:

            To continue on the points Russ made… I feel that in today's comics (your Batman's, your Daredevil's, etc.) most heroes are merely reactive devices to their chaotic counterparts. How many times must we see Batman brooding in a chair before some warning buzzer alerts him to a crime anyway? Mark and Robert did a wonderful job thus far on LJ by NOT having the overly used caption/thought bubble explanation why "I am who I am because I need to cure my city" blahblah blah…. and instead toss us into LJs world, literally strapped to a wrecking ball crashing through a building.It's what we need more in comics today… less predictability!

          • Russ Rogers says:

            Was there a difference between Storm Drains and Sewers in the 1930s? When did we start worrying about water quality, putting in treatment plants and separating our runoff rainwater from our sewage?

          • MARK WHEATLEY says:

            Okay – Bob and I are going to change the ending to LJ:C! now. In about 50 pages LJ will come down with typhoid and soon after it will devastate the city.That is, unless you can prove there were storm drains and treatment plants in the 1930s.;)

          • Russ Rogers says:

            I don't want Lone Justice to come down with Typhus. I would like to see a scene with LJ carrying a gas can down to the sewer-sub and finding it crawling with rats. LJ takes out his pistol and shoots some of them, just because he's in an foul mood. I'm sure some PETA folks would object. But if you can't ethically shoot rats off your sewer-sub, when CAN you!

          • MARK WHEATLEY says:

            I see a scene where LONE JUSTICE uses a flute!

  3. Marc Alan Fishman says:

    To start a completely different topic… Mark.. do you use Comicraft fonts?

    • MARK WHEATLEY says:

      I have a limited number of Comicraft fonts. Comicraft makes really excellent fonts. I'm always tempted to buy more of their fonts because they not only design every little aspect of the letter forms, but they make sure every aspect of the kerning and leading and all the extra characters are worked out to the final degree. They also clean up the vector points on each letter so that the fonts are not RAM intensive. But you won't see much use, if any, of Comicraft fonts in my projects. Because I design my own fonts. And the reason I design my own fonts is – I don't want my comics to look like all the other comics out there. Comicraft fonts are ubiquitous. And while I don't do as good a job with the kerning and leading and extra characters, I do design fonts that work well with my projects. And I'm perfectly happy doing the kerning on a word-by-word basis (look – my fonts are not that bad).Until I created my current main font (that I call ComicJoe) I was switching fonts on every project. But ComicJoe has become a favorite, while also not being overtly styled in such a way that it looks out of place on either an EZ STREET contemporary graphic novel, or a 1930s pulp adventure like LONE JUSTICE: CRASH! But I have a deep inventory of fonts that I've designed, that I have yet to use on any project. Because fonts are fun!BTW – I do not use the industry standard of Adobe Illustrator to letter my comics. I use Quark. And maybe I will do a "Watch Mark Wheatley Letter" video in the future to show how I do that. Because I find that using Quark is much faster than using Illustrator.

  4. Marc Alan Fishman says:

    Wow. I actually put together books in InDesign. I find the intense tools for fonts make it pretty easy to work with. I personally despise quark. Do you use … Fontographer… to "create" (input letterforms) fonts? I'd like to try doing some title or display fonts that way. For standard copy inside a book, I have a few "rights free" fonts I've used, which seem to get the job done thus far. Very interesting, for sure Mark!

    • MARK WHEATLEY says:

      It is really all about the time it takes to do the job. I know Quark. I've been using Quark for 15 years. I've seen InDesign and it has a lot to offer, not the least of which is the work flow with Photoshop and Illustrator. But I would have to learn a new program and for at least a while my speed would drop. And I can't afford that. So I stick with Quark. And really – no complaints except for color-matching. And I expect my rather extensive lettering libraries for Quark would not port over to InDesign. And that would be a big loss. All my balloon shapes and tails that I've built over the years. I build my fonts in Fontographer. Even though Fontographer is in dire need of an update (so I wouldn't have to set my computer memory to almost nothing so the program will run). But I only get into Fontrographer sessions about once a year when I get on a font design binge. So I can live with it.Y'know – I must have 4000 fonts on disk that I've collected over the years. And I've never found a good way to keep track of them all except my memory.The bottom line is – lettering is a major storytelling factor, right up there with the art and the writing in comics. Lettering can make or break a comic. And too often it is treated as a budget-cutting afterthought.

  5. Marc Alan Fishman says:

    All amazing information Mark. I could pick your brain about lettering for hours! Being a graphic designer by day… I've learned the ins and outs of solid page layout, and how to properly treat type. The one area I would probly want more instruction is the basics of ballooning… Do you pros make the bubbles in illustrator and then type in quark over the bubbles, and set from there? Normally in InDesign, I keep illustrator open with the page I'm working in on a locked layer, draw out my bubble by hand, sew the tail to the bubble with the pathfinder, and copy and paste it right into indesign. From there, I'll generally re-use what I can, when I can… but as you said, it does come down to speed. Whatever produces the best results in the least amount of time, right? As far as font management, I recommend FontExplorer X by Linotype. It allows you to organize sets however you need to, and activate whole chucks at a time without having to restart photoshop, illustrator or indesign. I keep all my "comic" fonts in one set, and simply turn em on when I need them. Sadly, I'm still a newbie, and have…10-12 comic fonts total.

    • MARK WHEATLEY says:

      The "standard" approach for lettering (mainly due to how much work Comicraft does in the industry) is to work entirely in Illustrator. There is a very good book from Comicraft and published by their imprint, Active Images, on their process.Insight Studios does it a bit different. We do 98% of the lettering in Quark, and 2% in Photoshop. I won't try to do a step-by-step here, but the highlights are:I have libraries of balloon shapes, caption shapes, balloon tails and lettering styles. Every time I need an unique balloon shape or tail shape I keep a clean copy and add it to the appropriate library for future use. At this point my libraries are fairly extensive and I rarely need to create a new shape. BTW – you might have noticed that I prefer an "organic" approach to my balloon shapes. I am proud to say that none of my balloon shapes is perfect! I like to keep that human feel in the work rather than make it look like a machine is spitting out perfect circles, ovals and rectangles. The balloons and tails are blank item boxes, and I am able to set the border style and item color as I wish. I start lettering by dropping balloon shapes all over a page of rough pencil art (I letter at this early stage to allow adjustments in the art if there is not enough room for the lettering). Then I copy and paste lettering into pre-styled lettering blocks (while I use my balloon shapes and tails on nearly every project – I will set caption and balloon type styles for each new project – this includes the font, point size, leading, any distortion and the paragraph style including drop caps if needed). The lettering blocks get dropped into place over the balloon shapes and the balloons and lettering are fine-tuned to fit to each other and the comic art while also leading the reader's eye across the page in the correct order. I don't add the balloon tails until I have final color art in place. And I use the MERGE ITEM command in Quark to combine the tails and balloons. At this point I will also pull levels of the art in front of lettering balloons and captions as needed to place lettering elements at the correct subjective depth in the art. And I accomplish that by duplicating the art item box and then creating a custom shape that trims away everything not needed.I know this is too short an explanation to really get it across unless you are already familiar with basic production techniques. So I will definitely aim to create a new how-to lettering video soon.

    • MARK WHEATLEY says:

      BTW – I checked out FontExplorer X by Linotype on your suggestion. And apparently only the MAC version is available. The PC version has been removed from the site. So I'll have to remember to look again in the future. Because it does sound like a useful utility.

  6. Marc Alan Fishman says:

    Well, I got exactly what you meant Mark, and I greatly appreciate you sharing with the class. :)

  7. MARK WHEATLEY says:

    Nice little mention of LONE JUSTICE today on Make It So Marketing's Comics And Pop Culture Blog.