It may have begun with the Word...

... but the Word would be nowhere without his little friends: the letters.

I'm looking into taking over the task of lettering for Spiketown, and am in the midst of researching the ins and outs of it. Being that my penmanship is of the "sucking" variety, I'm focusing mainly on digital lettering. Myke suggested that I try a product called "Comic Life" that came with his Mac. The problem is, I have no Mac. I mean, sure I could borrow my wife's iBook, but I don't think that she got Comic Life with her computer anyway. But all is not lost, there is a Windows beta available from the creator's website http://plasq.com/comiclife , so I'll have to check it out and see if it measures up.

Another product that I will be trying out is Comic Book Creator by Planetwide Media http://www.mycomicbookcreator.com/. I seem to recall seeing this for sale at London Drugs in the past, but I couldn't say for sure. They do have a downloadable trial version on their web page, so I'll have to give it a whirl.

Now if one of those or their ilk aren't adequate for our needs, then I may have to turn towards more traditional methods, i.e. using Adobe Illustrator or something similar. I'm thinking that this will involve a bit more of a steep learning curve, but the appear to be a few books out there to help me out. The ones that I have found so far are the following three:

Comic Book Lettering: The Comicraft Way
http://www.amazon.com/Comic-Book-Lettering-Comicraft-Way/dp/0974056731

DC Comics Guide to Coloring and Lettering Comics
http://www.amazon.com/DC-Comics-Guide-Coloring-Lettering/dp/0823010309/

Digital Prepress for Comic Books : The Definitive Desktop Production Guide http://www.amazon.com/Digital-Prepress-Comic-Books-Definitive/dp/0967542308/

If anyone has had any experiences, good or bad, with any of these books, feel free to share. I'm going to check to see if any of them are in stock at my local comic shop and give them a good once over to see if any or all of them are worth picking up.

I'll be back again later with my impressions of these products.