Augie DeBlieck Jr. does a column on comics over at Comic Book Resources — which is safe to visit now, by the way. They got rid of the most annoying pop-up ad in the history of the Internet. Augie's column is here and he also has a weblog you can reach here. Anyway, Augie writes to me to say…
One minor correction: Computer lettering is largely done with Adobe Illustrator, and not Photoshop. Illustrator is a vector-based graphics program and does a much better job with resizing and moving letters around as need be. (Larry Young at AiT/PlanetLar uses Quark, but that's due to his publishing background. If it works for him, who's to argue?)
The more contentious debate these days isn't between computer and hand-lettering, but between mixed-case and all-caps lettering. Marvel's reasons for adopting it are rather spotty, but they've thrown their lot behind mixed-case completely. The results are mixed, to say the least In a few cases, mixed-case lettering has worked. (Understanding Comics and From Hell come to mind.) But across the board at Marvel, or even DC? Perish the thought.
He's right about the software, and I should add that some PC users report good results with another vector illustration program called Xara-X, which is good for a lot of things. Almost all the graphics you see on this website were built in Xara-X. Augie is also right about the debate between mixed-case and all caps. I don't know why upper-and-lower case lettering looks so wrong on most comic art but it does.