Typophile

Will Eisner translation

mili

I got a Will Eisner comic book (Invisible people) out from the local library. The book was translated into Finnish with lettering by Jussi Karjalainen. I got curious about the look of the original chapter names, if they looked like these. The font used in the cover was different to the pictures I found of the English version’s cover (there seem to be more than one, actually), the Finnish book had Benguiat in the cover.
Does anyone know if Eisner did the lettering himself, at least the headings?

Here are the Finnish ones:

‹ amazing typewriter art Wedge serif ›
Chris Lozos

I think he did, Mili.

ChrisL

Paul W Romaine

Mili, Eisner did his own lettering in his late graphic novels; he might have hired someone for text but, if so, it doesn’t show in books like Contract with God. I don’t know what he did with foreign language translations. His lettering in the old Spirit comic book supplements just before and after WWII is pretty amazing (the Spirit title is sometimes spelled out architecturally with a building, sometimes spelled out in sheets of a newspaper drifting up in the wind above an abandoned waterfront), and it was different for each biweekly issue. Although some of his work on The Spirit after the war was more like supervising artist-story writer, I’d bet that he specified most opening lay-outs; he had young artists like Jules Fieffer and Frank Frazetta working for him at various times.

Paul

mili

Thank you very much, Chris and Paul!

Do you think mr. Karjalainen managed to keep the spirit?

Paul W Romaine

Without comparing to the original, but remembering Eisner’s style, I’d say yes, especially in the first two examples.

-Paul

Captured from web.archive.org on 28 Dec 2007. view this capture