Todd’s Blog

All covers, art and logos © DC Comics, Inc.

In 1987 logo designer Alex Jay began work on a series of Justice League logos for DC. Alex is not only an excellent designer, he’s a very good record keeper. I’m going to let him tell most of the story this time, with excerpts from his notes and logo sketches he’s graciously provided, interspersed with my comments. The JUSTICE LEAGUE relaunch of 1987 was so successful that it almost immediately spawned a spinoff, JUSTICE LEAGUE INTERNATIONAL, and that was the first one Alex was asked to do. Here’s Alex:

At 2 o’clock, Friday, April 17, 1987, I met with creative director Richard Bruning. He described the spin-off project, Justice League International and then provided a photocopy of a Justice League logo by Ed Hannigan and Todd Klein. He wanted the logo to keep the “stencil” look as well as the shield and stars. We  agreed to a date to show sketches and I began work.

A couple of my thumbnail sketches on the photocopy show angular letters to distinguish this logo from the current logo. I also made the “J” and “L” larger. One of the challenges was integrating the long word, International. With a larger “L” I was able to align “International” with the horizontal stroke.

On April 29, I faxed two sketches to Richard. In the top sketch the width of the letter’s outline separates the strokes, and the shield bleeds off the page. In the bottom sketch the strokes of each letter have a sliver of white space separating them, and the shield has an outline border. Two days later I met with Richard who liked the letters from the first sketch and the shield from the second sketch. He suggested rounding some of the angles to make the logo a bit more like the JL logo.

I faxed the revised logo on May 3 and it was approved. The finished logo was delivered on May 5.

Todd here. What I like best about this design is that, while it retains the stencilled effect, each letter reads well as a whole. A perfect example is the cover shown at the top of this post, where the dark purple fill almost masks the stencilling, and the letters read as solids, but still with perfect clarity. I also like the partly-rounded, partly squared forms. They have a very modern, yet strong feel. Having INTERNATIONAL much smaller and fitting inside the shield is a good idea for two reasons. First, it lessens the impact of such a long title, emphasizing the JUSTICE LEAGUE part, which is the selling point. Second, it keeps the small letters behind a solid background, so it won’t get lost in detailed cover art.

This look was so successful, DC decided to duplicate it on the main title in 1989, beginning with issue 26, above, where it stayed for some time. Meanwhile, in 1988 the popular franchise spun off again into JUSTICE LEAGUE EUROPE. Alex was called in for this as well. Here are his notes:

Editor Andy Helfer and I met on October 13, 1988 to discuss a couple of logo projects; one of them was Justice League Europe. Andy wanted to continue the stencil-look of Justice League International but somehow make “Europe” different.

Back at my studio, I made a thumbnail sketch of a slanted “Justice League” with “Europe” in script. I developed this thumbnail into a design that turned out to be close to the published logo. The most visible change was a bolder “Justice League” because the horizontal strokes were much wider.

This design was delivered to DC Cover Editor Keith Wilson on November 7. I got the go ahead to do the final art on “Justice League” but I was asked to change the “lightning” effect on “Europe” into a handwritten effect. On November 10 I showed the revision to Andy and he okayed it.

Using a pencil I wrote “Europe” on newsprint and then used a brush and black ink to write the word. I cut between the letters to adjust the spacing and applied white paint for minor touch-ups. A photostat was made of the lettering and I delivered it to Andy on November 11.

Here’s the logo as printed on the first issue. Making it all slanted helps set it apart from the earlier one, as Alex says. I’m not sure I like the amount of overlap of LEAGUE on EUROPE, but it does allow the latter word to be larger than it would be if it was in the clear. Note that in the final, the first E in LEAGUE is tucked in to the L, a change from the sketch. I also really like the heavy brush style of EUROPE, and think it’s a better choice than the electric version in the sketch. Creates good contrast in all ways. Alex’s technique for creating that brushed lettering is interesting, and we’ll see a work-in-progress image of another one later.

DC was not done expanding the Justice League franchise, and in 1990 launched another title, JUSTICE LEAGUE QUARTERLY that Alex was again tapped to design a logo for. Here are his notes:

On April 25, 1990 editor Andy Helfer and I met and discussed the new title, Justice League Quarterly. Following in the footsteps of Justice League International and Europe, Andy wanted similar stenciled letters plus “Justice League” had to be on one line with “Quarterly” below it.

Back at my studio I compressed the letters to fit “Justice League” on a line. “Quarterly” was designed to fit within the shield with room below it for the stars.

During our meeting on May 3 to review the design, Andy decided to change the shield to a spotlight. Back at the studio I used an ellipse template to create the spotlight and then drew the stars. Finished art was delivered on May 9. In the published comic, the stencil lines were removed from “Justice League” but remained in “Quarterly”.

Todd again, here’s the printed cover. I have to say I like this the least of Alex’s JL designs, and I think it’s mainly due to too much editorial meddling. Sorry, Andy Helfer, wherever you are these days. Alex’s original sketch is much better than this version with the oval and stars, which I don’t think reads as a “spotlight.” And removing the stencilling from JUSTICE LEAGUE may have made it a little easier to read, but makes the open letters more generic and less interesting, too.

That’s it for this post, but we’re not finished with Alex Jay — more next time!

All covers, art and logos © DC Comics, Inc.

By the end of 1983 the Justice League of America had been coming out monthly for 24 years, and well over 200 issues. While still fairly popular for a DC title, it had been eclipsed by newer team books featuring The New Teen Titans and the Legion of Super-Heroes. It was running out of steam, and new editor Alan Gold decided to shake things up by bringing in new, young heroes to replace some of the usual roster. He also thought a redesign of the long-running Ira Schnapp logo, above, was in order, and I was enlisted to do that. Everyone loved the old logo, we just wanted to spruce it up a little, and that’s what I attempted to do.

Most of the logos I hand lettered for DC and other companies remain with them, in a file drawer somewhere, but I did get a few back, and this is one. My working method at the time was to sketch out designs in pencil, then ink them with black markers. The marker sketches would be shown at DC for approval, and when a sketch was approved, I’d ink the final on Denril plastic vellum placed over the marker sketch. This was my “paper” of choice because it took very clean ink lines from my Castell TG-1 technical pens, and where ink needed to be removed, as on the sharp points at corners, it was easy to do that by scraping it off with an exacto knife. The Denril vellum was also very stable, unchanging in size and the way it took ink despite the air humidity level, unlike regular art paper. And also unlike art paper, this logo is as white today as the day I inked it 25 years ago. There was one drawback, though. Any oil from my fingers, hands or arms would sit on the surface and create ink-repelling areas, so I had to touch it carefully only by the edges, and shield my hand from it with a piece of white paper.

Stylistically, I made the first letter of each main word larger, and gave them small pointed serifs. Points are usually a plus in comics logos. The rest of the letters were my own version of block letters, following the Schnapp layout. Mine add downstrokes on the S, G and C with angled ends, and all the corners are sharply pointed. The letters are also more slanted than Schnapp’s, so that when the logo was used in the usual angled way, the letters would appear slightly italic, leaning to the right. My “of” was larger, open, and more angular. And I added a double border around the outside of the shield to help it stand out from the cover art. (A similar feature had already been added to the Schnapp logo, as seen above.)

It’s hard to be sure now, but the relatively thin outlines of the letters suggest to me that I thought the background would usually be filled in with black, as above, or with a dark color. Alternately, the background could be white and the letters made solid colors. I don’t have any evidence of showing that to the folks at DC, though, this is something I just did now.

The logo was okayed and paid for…the “AG” initials on the final are those of editor Alan Gold. But before it saw print, I was asked to do a heavier version of the letters so they could remain as outlines. I also have the original of that version:

Now the letters have much more weight and impact. Unfortunately, the spaces between the horizontal strokes of each E are now very thin, and would tend to disappear sometimes in print. I wish now I’d fixed that. The openings in the S and A are also too small. But, this was what they wanted, and it was combined with the previous shield and stars and “of” for the final printed version, which first appeared on issue 231:

On the whole I think it worked pretty well, though I would have preferred it with solid areas instead of all open like this. Using all outlines did have the advantage of offering more color options, which is probably why they chose it. This version stayed on the book for a few years until nearly the end of the run.

That end came early in 1987. The new young characters had not caught on with readers, and sales were in a downward slide. For a few issues the alternate Ira Schnapp logo reappeared, now with an open drop shadow…

…and the final issue had this giant logo as part of the cover art. There had been a tradition of giant logos like this being used occasionally for dramatic effect at DC, but I think this is the largest one ever.

The end of an era, but of course, a relaunch was already in the works. Writers Keith Giffen and J. M. DeMatteis brought a whole new approach to the idea of the Justice League, aided by fine realistic art by Kevin Maguire and Terry Austin. It mixed humor, soap opera relationships, and heroics in a way that was a big hit with fans, and revitalized the concept.

The logo was very different as well, and in researching this article, I asked a lot of my logo mavens who might have designed it. I finally got an answer from fellow logo designer Alex Jay. He worked on several Justice League logos following this one, and in that process had been sent a copy of the logo by Richard Bruning of DC:

As you can see, at the bottom it’s credited to “HANNIGAN/KLEIN, 11/86″. Man, was my face red! I had no memory of working on this at all, but checking my records, I was indeed paid for a “redesign” of the Justice League logo in 1986. Ed Hannigan is someone I worked with on staff at DC then. He did a lot of cover layouts and design work as well as complete cover art and occasionally interior art. He must have designed this logo, and I finished and inked it. It features very rounded stencilled letters that combine simple shapes to suggest what’s not actually there in some cases. The A and U are not really shaped like those letters, but still read correctly in context. Hannigan had a good design sense, and all the credit for this one goes to him. I also like the very simple shield behind only part of the logo, a nice contrast from what had gone before, and the row of graduated stars at the bottom. Here’s issue 3, where you can see the entire logo:

Looks good, though where the stencilled letters run over busy cover art at each end it gets a bit hard to read. But I think it was a fine successor to the Ira Schnapp original.

Next time, logo designer Alex Jay is in the spotlight!

All covers, art and logos © DC Comics, Inc.

My knowledge of the Justice League of America began with this DC house-ad, seen in some other DC comic I had in mid 1960, most likely. (Thanks to Robby Reed of Dial B-For-Blog, link in the left column, for the fine reproduction.) I remember the thrill I felt when I saw it and realized what it meant: all the best DC heroes together in one comic. What a great idea! I wouldn’t know until years later that it was actually a recycled idea. DC had pioneered it in the 1940s with The Justice Society of America appearing in ALL-STAR COMICS, with earlier versions of some of the same characters.

Even though comics were available in lots of places then, I lived in a rural area beyond walking distance to any stores that had them, and could only buy comics occasionally, when out with a parent at a drug store or newsstand, and when I could convince them to let me have the money. Hey, ten cents was a lot then! I was so taken with the JLA concept, though, that as soon as I could I subscribed, the first and only time I ever did that for a comic. This great ad designed by DC house-letterer Ira Schnapp helped fuel my fanboy flame, I’m sure. The logo he also designed appears twice, once in a large box, and again on the first issue cover. But it actually appeared first a few months earlier.

THE BRAVE AND THE BOLD was a tryout anthology title from DC, and the Justice League first appeared in three issues there, beginning with this one, #28, cover dated March, 1960. Ira Schnapp also designed the BRAVE AND BOLD banner and did all the other lettering on this cover, as he did for all DC covers at the time. His logos are known for their classic block letterforms, like the ones in this JLA logo, and also for his stylish script, as seen in the word “presents”, and somewhat in the lower-case “of” in the logo. The use of solid shapes within the words JUSTICE and AMERICA that could be held in a color, like this patriotic red white and blue scheme, gave the logo more color options to help it stand out from the crowd. The inner shapes are somewhat inconsistent, with the horizontal strokes of the S, E and A thinner than the rest, which suggests that may have been an after-thought. Or it may just be a necessity of the design, as Schnapp obviously wanted the letters to be as bold and heavy as possible.

The most interesting part of the design to me is the shield and stars. I think the shield is meant to suggest a policeman’s badge, playing into the idea of a group fighting for Justice, though of course they weren’t exactly a government-sanctioned organization. The stars add to the patriotic theme of America. I really loved this logo as a kid, and remember tracing it, probably ruining a few of those subscription copies that are now long gone anyway.

Schnapp tilted the logo, and that allowed it to fit well into the rest of the trade dress (all the type and stuff at the top). This must have been his plan all along, as the letters in the JLA logo are aligned vertically with the sides of the comic, giving them stability while the upward tilt adds visual interest. The same logo without the tilt wouldn’t have been as interesting, I think. Having the background solid black allowed it to stand out on most covers.

It still works fine on this fairly dark background on the first issue of the regular series, though without the BRAVE AND BOLD banner above, there’s now a triangular open space at the top. This would be filled with lettering on some issues. Here, the logo is just raised up a bit, and the price dropped in there.

On the rare occasion when it was on a black background, as here on issue 3, reversing the black to white worked fine. Various other color schemes evolved, too, for variety. On the whole, though, I think it was a very effective logo.

In 1966 this alternate version (also by Schnapp) started appearing, with the shield dropped, and the letters given black telescoping pointed to the lower left. The letters were now all open, with the inner shapes dropped from JUSTICE and LEAGUE. I don’t like it nearly as much as the original. The letters themselves aren’t all that interesting without the shield, which really gave it a nice visual tie-in to the theme of the book. But a much worse version showed up on one cover in 1968:

Obviously attempting to save space at the top and avoid having the large Superman figure cover too much of the logo, this one is really awful. Soon after, the original logo returned.

Here the color scheme is an odd one, with the background held in purple, but it still works much better with the shield for me.

In 1969 the company hit on this often-repeated composition, with the cover art in a nearly square box, the logo and trade dress in the clear above, and character heads running down the left side. Reflecting the imminent departure of Ira Schnapp after a long career with the company since its beginnings, the top line and balloons on this cover are by ace freelance letterer Gaspar Saladino, and are a good example of the style and flair he added to the somewhat stodgy design. He also did the cover lettering on the two previous covers above. Schnapp’s logo remained on the cover for many years, though, through the 1970s and early 80s, when I was asked to update it. We’ll begin with that next time.

© Shaun Tan.

This wordless graphic story fits in well with the current resurgence in interest in graphic novels at bookstores and online sellers, but in fact it is closer in feel to the work of artist Lynd Ward, whose wordless novels in pictures were an unexpected success in the early to mid 20th century.

Everything about this book is beautifully conceived and executed. The cover uses the faux “old, battered scrapbook” approach to great effect, and the title pages follow that theme equally well. The type on the covers, two title pages, and afterword is the only type in this entire book that is in readable English, though Tan has worked out an alphabet of his own made from pieces of type alphabets and other rarely used characters. Some can be seen in this picture:

Whether it can be translated or not I don’t know, but it adds to the theme of the book, which is essentially one of a “stranger in a strange land.” And what a strange land it is! The protagonist of THE ARRIVAL is an immigrant from a dark, foreboding country looking for work in another land far from his home. We follow his departure from a loving family, a sea voyage with other immigrants, a landing in a fantastically-ornate city harbor, his search for a place to live and a job. The wordless pages vary nicely from stunning full-page images as above, to pages with a few panels, and pages with many small panels, all telling the story in appropriate ways.

Here’s one of the latter. Adding to the strangeness of everything in this new land for the immigrants are fantasy elements like the creatures of all sorts that seem to attach themselves to people, something like the animal familiars in Philip Pullman’s “The Golden Compass,” though of course without language. On the book’s cover you can see the delightful critter that befriends the protagonist, and on this page a creature attached to a friend he makes.

There is much to enjoy is this book, and one could spend lots of time looking at each image, as they are full of great details and wonderful artistry. The work has been nominated for many awards, perhaps already won some, and no wonder. I can’t recommend it highly enough!

© DC Comics, Inc.

I don’t know that this is a review, exactly, just some thoughts. I generally don’t read these massive crossover books. The only one I really enjoyed was the original CRISIS ON INFINITE EARTHS. The others I’ve sampled since then haven’t appealed to me. I do like the writing of Grant Morrison and the art of J.G. Jones, though, so I thought I’d try this one.

First, the cover. An unusual and eye-grabbing design, and I approve of the fact that you can read the title from across a room, but I also feel the space devoted to the cover art is too small. Sure, it made some design sense to divide the space into thirds, but then the central space was cut further by the white area, UPC and prices and DC symbol, leaving only about 25% of the cover for art. The art itself is sort of a teaser, not bad, but is it really enough to grab readers? The hottest thing on the cover is the bright red on the outer thirds. Unless they’re going to do them all with red, that won’t last. And the font used for the title is bland and ordinary.

I liked the art inside quite a lot. Jones does a fine job, as always. The writing is almost all short set-ups, but kind of what I expected. If I were a younger reader emotionally invested in a lot of these characters, some of the inevitable deaths would probably shock me, but…I’ve seen it all before, you know? I mean, one of the characters in this story is The Green Man, one of the Alpha-Lanterns. He was created in the early 1980s by myself and Dave Gibbons in some Tales of the Green Lantern Corps backup stories. Then I used him as a main character in the OMEGA MEN issues I wrote. Later he was killed off in another big DC crossover event. But when Dave Gibbons was writing GREEN LANTERN CORPS recently, he brought Green Man back, with no explanation, just put him right in the book. I cheered. Fans didn’t seem to notice he’d ever been dead. So, remember…the only characters in comics who stay dead are the ones nobody wants to write about.

Some nice lettering styles by Rob Leigh. I like this one for Metron of the New Gods with Kirby dots behind the balloon border. The coloring by Alex Sinclair is very painterly and attractive. As for the plot, I can’t really focus on it, so I’m just along for the ride, enjoying the visuals and character bits here and there. Like I said, this isn’t really a review of the story. If you like this sort of thing, it’s well done.

Justice League, in six parts, beginning Sunday evening. Be there!

Photo © Mark Robinson, all rights reserved.

Yesterday I heard an unusual chip note coming from the back yard while I sat here at the computer working. A chip note is a short, sharp call made by birds who are alarmed or cautious. I went to look and saw a small bird next to our pond who was continuously bobbing his tail up and down. There are a few birds that do this, but not many. The one that came immediately to mind was a Spotted Sandpiper, which could show up here, but it looked too small for that. I ran to get my binoculars and had a look: it was the warbler called a Northern Waterthrush. He must have stopped for a drink at the pond. As I watched, he flew closer to a tree branch, had a look at me looking at him, and then was gone, not to be seen again. Wish I’d been able to get a picture. The one above I found online is a beauty.

I didn’t remember ever seeing one of these in our yard before, and checked the yard list. Sure enough, it was a new one to add, something that happens rarely in recent years. Northern Waterthrush, number 108. Last year I added Yellow-Crowned Night-Heron, as described HERE, and also Turkey. Still hoping the flock of wild Turkeys come back some time and that I can get a picture when they do. Before that, a single new entry in 2005: Mute Swan (flying over). One entry for 2002: Indigo Bunting. Those are the only entries on the yard list since 1998. Not that it really matters, but it’s fun to keep track.

Northern Waterthrush can possibly be found in northern New Jersey in the summer, but we only see them here during migration, so this one was probably an early southbound migrant, or possibly a young bird hatched this spring just exploring. It provided a nice nature break in my work day!

Some of you may recognize the title of the book above as a well-known science fiction film first released in 1955. The film is based on the novel, which I discovered this year in San Diego at Comic-Con, I hadn’t known of it before. I did know the author, though, as a favorite from my youth. More on that later. Note that I’m showing the title pages, as the cover is an ugly buckram library binding with no art.

Sadly, the book is long out of print, and apparently never released in paperback, so you aren’t likely to find it. It’s fascinating as a work of its time, but not great literature, or even great science fiction, so don’t feel too bad. I just read somewhere that the 1950s were epitomized by feelings of paranoia, and that certainly is a theme in this book. I’ll summarize, and if you’ve seen the movie, the beginning at least will be familiar.

Electrical engineer Cal Meacham is puzzled when an order of condensers for a radio project he’s building turn up very different from what he expected. The devices are tiny, but when tested far exceed the specs he wanted. He queries the shipper, and they send him an entire catalog of electrical parts that are equally far beyond anything known to then-current science. Cal orders the whole catalog, and soon finds they are a sort of puzzle, all pieces of some sort of machine, purpose unknown. He succeeds in building it, and it turns out to be a sort of wireless transmitter. He turns it on, and is contacted by a man who tells him he has passed an intelligence test, assembled something called an interociter, and is invited to join a team of top scientists at a secret factory to manufacture more of them.

Once there, Cal is soon involved with company psychologist Ruth Adams, and an old friend, fellow scientist Ole Swenberg. Eventually he meets the man in charge of the mysterious interociter factory, Mr. Jorgasnovara. Ruth has lots of strange theories about the operation, and she and Cal eventually discover that the machines they are building are being picked up late at night by some kind of space ship. They confront Jorgasnovara, and he reveals that they are making supplies for one side in a distant but massive war in space between two huge and powerful civilizations. The Llanna are portayed as the force for good, the Guarra as evil, intent on only destruction.

After a visit to the Llanna base on our moon for a full history of the situation, Cal agrees to take on running the interociter factory for the Llanna, and eventually other similar operations around our planet. But the plant is soon shut down by a labor dispute, and then all its manufacturing equipment is smashed in the night, in an act of sabotage. Cal and Ruth investigate, and Cal has a run-in with horrible aliens, and is badly hurt. Later, Mr. Jorgasnovara reveals his people have found out the enemy is now heading toward Earth, it’s in their path of destruction. Behind this and the sabotage is Cal’s old friend Ole, who is really an agent of the Guarra. Cal and Ruth confront Ole, and get themselves in and out of some trouble.

In the final section of the book, Cal and Ruth are taken by the Llanna to their homeworld, where they must make a case for saving and protecting Earth. This seems hopeless, but Cal eventually convinces the Llanna that humans have traits that can help them win the war: unpredictability for one. The Llanna depend on their war computers for all battle decisions, and Cal shows them how the Guarra know this, and can predict their every move. Earthmen can show them how to strike unexpectedly, and wage an unpredictable, and therefore more effective, war. As the book ends, Cal and Ruth are heading back toward Earth with an armada of Llanna to give this plan a try.

As you can see, if you remember the film, the latter soon veers off on it’s own path, but with some of the same themes. Several times in the book, Jones likens Earth to a small south-seas island, occupied by American forces in World War Two in a much larger struggle against Japan. The islanders can help in their own small way, but their fate is really out of their hands. Paranoia runs deep in the book, and there are echos of the Cold War, too. As for the finale, Robert Heinlein did it much better in his novel for young people, “Have Space Suit, Will Travel,” but this Jones novel isn’t bad, just not great.

When I was growing up, there weren’t many science fiction books aimed at younger readers. The Heinlein juveniles were by far the best. The “Lucky Starr” series by Paul French, a pseudonym of Isaac Asimov, was pretty good, too. And there was a third series published by the John C. Winston company, all with similar covers, often by one-time comics artist Alex Schomburg, and great science fiction endpapers by him, too. The spaceship and “science fiction” emblem on the spine drew me right away as a kid in the library, and I read all of them I could find. I’ve acquired at least half the line for my own library over the years, including three by Raymond F. Jones, which is why I knew his name. Here are the covers:

The second one, “Planet of Light” is a sequel to the first, “Son of the Stars,” and is my favorite of the three. It also features a family of Earthers on a distant planet who have to defend the right of Earth to join a galactic civilization. “Son of the Stars” is a story along the lines of the film “E-T”, except that the alien who is stranded on Earth looks like a human boy, and is taken in and befriended by an Earth family. “The Year Stardust Fell” tells of a comet tail that destroys all the machinery of Earth, turning it back to a very primitive civilization, a theme also explored in the “Changes” trilogy of writer Peter Dickinson. Again, these books are all long out of print, and now very hard to find, not to mention pretty expensive to buy. But if you should find any of them in a library (or used bookstore for a reasonable price), I’d certainly recommend giving them a try. Not great literature or even great science fiction, but good, thoughtful reading.

© DC Comics, Inc.

Frank Quitely’s Superman is visually…unusual. His face on issue 10, above, reminds me of Laurel & Hardy’s Stan Laurel. But there’s plenty of room for more on-model art in the other Superman titles. This one is matched by equally unusual and brilliant writing by Grant Morrison. He’s been given free rein to play with the Superman mythos without the restrictions of continuity, or what’s going on in the other titles. This has led to one of the most enjoyable super-hero comics I’ve read in a long time. Sadly, it looks like it’ll soon be over. I wasn’t aware that this was a finite series, but on the last page of issue 11 are the words, “TO BE CONCLUDED.” Too bad.

A good example of the fun both Quitely and Morrison are having is this page. It’s a situation as old as the character, one I remember well from most of the Fleisher Superman cartoons of the 1940s, and many issues of the book read in my youth: giant robot attacks Superman, Lois Lane in hand, as in “King Kong.” It would be a yawn if not for the great contrasts of the over-the-top art and the wry, minimal dialogue. “Don’t ask,” says Lois. Great stuff. Even the lettering for the robot is over-the-top. There are other nice touches in the lettering by Travis Lanham, like this creative one for Superman’s telepathic diary entries:

Love those round-cornered cubes as a thought-trail.

Digital inker and colorist Jamie Grant also does fine work that runs the gamut from the bright cotton-candy of the giant robot page above to the very dark but still wonderfully effective cover of issue 11, also above. And by digital inking, what he’s doing is creating finished art from Quitely’s pencils, not actually adding any real ink, but it all looks terrific.

I imagine there will be a nice harcover collecting this run in the near future, which will be a good addition to anyone’s comics library. Meanwhile, these issues are all a joy and highly recommended.

Image from Sports Illustrated online.

We live in such a blabbermouth society, and with such manipulative media, that it has become impossible for me to get the kind of enjoyment out of watching the Olympics on TV that I’d like to have. Unless one wears virtual blinders, shunning any media source, it’s impossible not to learn which Americans won which medals in their events very soon after they happen. I’d love to watch Michael Phelps in his swimming events without knowing in advance whether he won or not, but NBC schedules them after 10 PM, too late for me to see them live. And the moment I turn on the TV, the radio, or pick up the morning paper the next day, I know the results. My normal routine of putting on the TODAY show while I start my work day is spoiled by them beginning the broadcast with a list of all the American winners from the night before, and my usual NPR radio stations all blurt out this day’s results even before they get on TV.

The best time I’ve had at an athletic competition in recent memory was when Ellen and I attended the Skate America ice skating competition in Atlantic City a few years ago. We saw it all live, enjoyed the suspense of real competition, and we even got on TV ourselves in the background behind commentator Katherina Witt, which impressed our young niece and nephew!

Can’t work all day in a vacuum, I need some contact with the world, so there’s no help for it. But it’s very annoying.