orzechowski: back to the death star

“Orze­chows­ki mod­eled his let­ter­ing on the Flash Gor­don news­pa­per strips of the 1930s. An­oth­er in­flu­ence was Robert Crumb’s Zap Comix: Orze­chows­ki rec­og­nized that Crumb’s ti­tle work was clear­ly de­rived from the brush tech­niques of that same era, the 1920s and 30s.” —Wiki
 

With a re­vis­it to 1977 hap­pen­ing this week with the re­lease of ROGUE ONE, I de­cid­ed to go through some of my stacks of books and take an­oth­er look at some of my Star Wars comics – which were the ONLY sto­ry-re­lat­ed tie ins we had back in the day. Com­ic books avail­able at small drug stores – or cig­ar shops – hand­drawn in­ter­pre­ta­tions of what the movie was sup­posed to look like, with in­ter­pre­ta­tive lettering.

One of the first times I re­al­ly be­came aware of hand let­ter­ing in com­ic books came with Mar­vel Comics’ 1977 Star Wars movie adap­ta­tion. From is­sue #2 thru #5, the let­ter­ing had this smooth, com­pact qual­i­ty to it. With cool ti­tles up top. 

Be­hind the scenes was let­ter­ing artist Tom Orze­chows­ki — work­ing for the Mighty Mar­vel Bullpen.
 

1977 Star Wars pan­els with let­ter­ing by Orze­chows­ki. Marvel’s adap­ta­tion of the first Star Wars film was print­ed and reprint­ed many times; these black and white shots come from a small pock­et-book-sized edition
 

Over the years I would fall in love with let­ter­ing work done by ‘Orz’ – the short­ened ver­sion of his name ap­peared in many cred­it box­es. One of the un­sung in­dus­try greats, his brush work has graced the pages of nu­mer­ous comics, and gave voice to the now vin­tage Un­can­ny X‑Men works of the 70s and 80s – and lat­er, Todd McFarlane’s Spawn.
 

 

star wars manga
Back in 1998, I ran across trans­lat­ed edi­tions of Hisao Tamaki’s man­ga ver­sion of Star Wars.
 

1998 Star Wars man­ga pan­els, trans­la­tion pub­lished by Dark Horse Comics
 

There are a few prob­lems that pop up when adapt­ing a man­ga com­ic for West­ern eyes. The first in­volves the flow of the art; tak­ing right-to-left (the Japan­ese stan­dard) and adapt­ing it for left-to-right. 

Some pub­lish­ers just avoid this – and write a nice in­tro ex­plain­ing things. Oth­ers will ‘flop’ the im­ages ‘mir­ror-like’ and hope it doesn’t cause too many problems.
 

 

When it comes to text, typ­i­cal­ly pub­lish­ers will go halfway, sub­sti­tut­ing com­put­er fonts for Japan­ese text – some­times sim­ply us­ing Hel­veti­ca for dialogue.

Since tra­di­tion­al man­ga also uses more than one lan­guage to tell a sto­ry, sound FX are a whole oth­er is­sue. The FX are a huge part of man­ga. But they ba­si­cal­ly don’t trans­late well into Eng­lish. Not in the dra­mat­ic sense that is the artist’s intent.

Un­less Orz gets his hands on them.
 

 

tie fight­ers go shreeeeeeeeeeeeeee!
Ac­cord­ing to Orz, who re­cent­ly found FLOMM and me on Face­book, “The Japan­ese SFX were still part of the art I re­ceived. It was my job to com­pose the Eng­lish sound ef­fects in such a way as to com­plete­ly cov­er the Japan­ese ver­sions.

“They weren’t in­clud­ed in the script; I was on my own for that part of the job. If they some­times read a lit­tle odd­ly, that was the rea­son. Also, due to the dead­lines, I could spend no more than 90 min­utes per page – it was about a book a month and I’ve lost track of how many months the project lasted).

“I was us­ing In­dia ink and/or Pe­likan White to cov­er over the Japan­ese ef­fects, which were still on the pho­to­stats. At the same time, I was mak­ing up the sound ef­fects to more or less match the shape of the Kan­ji and Katakana forms. Big fun, in a Zen sort of way. That speed of pro­duc­tion led to an en­er­getic look to the ef­fects, I have no doubt.”

So – in a jump back to my child­hood – I found my­self once again read­ing a Star Wars com­ic with Orze­chows­ki lettering. 

But in the time that passed, not only did Hisao Tama­ki take Star Wars to a whole new place, Orz let­tered and re­touched every­thing – in­clud­ing the FX – into an in­cred­i­ble tale of sight and sound.
 

 

Wish all man­ga could cross the ocean the same way.

(Orz did do oth­er mul­ti­ple man­ga re­works for now-de­funct Stu­dio Pro­teus, a list of ti­tles can be found on their Wiki page.)
 

 

state of com­ic book lettering
Over time, com­ic books have found dig­i­tal fonts quick­er and cheap­er than us­ing tra­di­tion­al ‘let­ter­ers.’ Dig­i­tal fonts have jumped in where brush­work and pens used to tread. And in my opin­ion, clas­sic Mar­vel Comics fea­tured some of the best let­ter­ing ever at­tempt­ed – and this ‘look’ is still part of the cur­rent MAR­VEL logo:
 

 

But to­day, with han­dlet­ter­ing once again ap­pre­ci­at­ed as an art form, Tom Orze­chows­ki is still do­ing his thing: 

“This is the crazy time of the year for me, work-wise. In the next four weeks I’ll be do­ing the sec­ond is­sue of Won­der Woman ’77 meets the Bion­ic Woman; maybe 40 pages of a video game his­to­ry book; a 56 page hu­mor al­bum called Sea Crea­tures; a new is­sue of Tales from the Crypt; Spawn; and a 28 page we­b­com­ic called Zana (eMet Comics).

“Oh, and a cou­ple of lo­gos too.”

Here’s an in­ter­view. And an­oth­er one.

And to get hooked on these now-vin­tage man­gas, start here.

Vad­er-n-Ben duke it out
 
 
 

—steve mehal­lo

Flom­mist Steve Mehal­lo is a graph­ic de­sign­er, il­lus­tra­tor, font de­sign­er, ed­u­ca­tor, food­ie and gad­fly. He is the cre­ator and founder of FLOMM!

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