BOMBA! 2021 ✦ CG,
ink, publisher-provided artwork ✦ manga lettering
Nine years after lettering Osamu Tezuka's "Barbara",
and six years after lettering a
biography of Osamu Tezuka, I was very lucky to be able to letter the God of
Manga's 1970 short story "Bomba!" Compared to those earlier projects, I felt
much more ready and able to go all out with all the tricks I've learned from
working in manga so far. One thing that makes this book very special to me
(aside from the obvious - working on one of my hero's books) was that I did all
the sound effects, special dialog, and miscellaneous things like signage and
books, by hand in ink. I'd been longing to do a project that way, and it being a
shorter book and the fact that I had just enough scheduling space
around this one, allowed me to take the chance on it. I've done a couple more
books that way since then, and I hope I get to do more and more hand-drawn work
as I go along.
It seems funny to talk about ink-based hand lettering
like it's something novel, but modern manga publishing doesn't always allow for non-digital SFX to be an option
(pay-to-time ratio or sometimes
just publisher's rules.). I
think this kind of look works a lot better with classic manga, that was all done
by hand in the first place. Font-based SFX can look a bit sterile, and that
tends to clash with vintage manga, in my humble opinion. Besides, maybe we all
need a little more analog in our life once in a while.
