This is the kind of thing only I would notice. In fact, it covers two of my many aberrant fields of interest. One is the way in which the influence of comic books has crept into mass culture. The other is the art of comic book lettering, a craft which has had many distinguished practitioners. My favorite may be the late Ben Oda who, for decades, held the world's record for the most pages of comic books lettered and probably also the trophy for lettering the most newspaper strips. (I believe John Costanza has since passed him in the comic book division.) Oda was the letterer for Simon and Kirby for many years and also for Harvey Kurtzman on the books he did for EC and for the early issues of Creepy and Eerie and for thousands of comics for Western Publishing and DC and for…
Well, you get the idea. The two pages above are pages from the very first issue of MAD, which was published in 1952. For the story titles in most of the stories that ran in the early, Kurtzman-edited comic book version of MAD, Oda used a distinctive style that he'd developed. He'd used it before in Kurtzman's war comics for EC, Frontline Combat and Two-Fisted Tales, and Harvey apparently liked it. For MAD, Oda made it a little looser but it was the same basic style, and he also did a slight variation on it for the cover logo. He later employed it on many other comic art projects he lettered over the years…and I'm not going to suggest he invented it. Odds are that he adapted it from something he's seen on a poster or in a calligraphy book or somewhere. But it became an integral part of his lettering repertoire and when I see it anywhere, I associate it with Ben, especially on the early MAD.
Above, we have a poster for a forthcoming movie called Racing Stripes, which I gather is about a zebra that runs horse races. I saw the poster go by on a bus yesterday and I instantly thought, "Ben Oda!" But I'm guessing it didn't come directly from someone who'd seen his work. Before I tell you where I think they got it from, here's a closer look at some of the lettering on one of the posters for this movie…
As you can see, the "A" and the "S" are a little different, but these are both variants that Ben sometimes used. It's represented both ways in a font set that has been designed and marketed by Richard Starkings over at Comicraft. Richard is the undisputed king of lettering comic books via computer and many of the styles he employs (and sometimes sells) are inspired by great hand lettering of the past. His "That's All, Folks" font conveys the essence of this particular style that Oda used so well. Here's a sample of the Comicraft version…
It's really a great font, and I'm guessing that it was used by whoever designed the key art for Racing Stripes…though I wish they'd chosen the "I" that doesn't have serifs on it instead of the one that's only supposed to only be used when the "I" stands alone and not as part of a word. At least, they got it right in Joe Pantoliano's name.
That's really all I have to say about this and I apologize if you read this far, thinking there was more to it than there is. I just thought it was neat that the penwork of Ben Oda inspired a computer font and is now, in turn, part of the ad campaign for a major motion picture. It's impressive enough when a comic book story becomes a movie…but for its lettering to make it to Hollywood is quite an achievement.