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Serious question, did digital coloring kill the letterer's art? I compared a 1987 issue to a 2022 one
I pulled out my copy of a 1987 X-Men issue and sat it next to a 2022 run I grabbed at a shop in Queens, and the difference in the lettering punched me in the face. Back then, the letters had weight, little ink blobs at the ends of strokes, and the balloons hugged the art in a way that felt hand-made. Now everything is a clean digital font dropped on top, and the balloons float in dead space like they were added after the art was done. I get that digital saves time and money, and I'm not saying every old letterer was a genius. But when a whole page of dialogue is set in the same stiff font with no tilt or size change for shouts, the emotion of a scene just drains out. I counted 14 balloons in one fight scene from the old issue and every single one had a different shape based on who was talking. In the new one, all 14 were the exact same oval. Am I just being a grumpy old fan, or do other people actually miss when lettering was treated like part of the art and not just text? I'd love to hear from anyone who letters comics now about whether they get any room to play with this stuff.
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