Superman Through the Ages! Forum

Superman Comic Books! => Superman! => Topic started by: JulianPerez on July 30, 2006, 04:37:07 AM



Title: Ben Oda freeware font!
Post by: JulianPerez on July 30, 2006, 04:37:07 AM
Superman would not have been Superman in the seventies without Ben Oda.

Ever wanted to write as neat and small as seventies-eighties Superman letterer and veteran Japanese-American comics creator Ben Oda, best known for creating the original MAD lettering?

Well, now you can with this freeware font:

http://www.geocities.com/odaballoon/

It feels weird to comment on something like lettering - this is the sort of thing an autistic person would judge comics on.

But Ben Oda's pleasant, correct penmanship was a delight to see all through the Superman stories of Cary Bates, Marty Pasko, and Marv Wolfman. His letters always had personality (his Ws and Ms had a distinctive shape, for instance) but at the same time, his letters had almost machine precision: take a ruler to one of his lines of text, you see they are all almost the same line and on the same height. He not only bolded, but made bigger several important words for added emphasis. And he occasionally used italics in extraordinary ways on certain words to give dialogue an incredible urgency.


Title: Re: Ben Oda freeware font!
Post by: Klar Ken T5477 on July 30, 2006, 07:51:22 AM
Thanks Julian - nothing like good word balloons to make my tooning seem positively inspired!

In fact now i feel like doing some tooning!
 :D


Title: Re: Ben Oda freeware font!
Post by: nightwing on July 31, 2006, 07:55:08 AM
Sweet! Much better than using that crummy "Comic" font that comes with Windows.

And I've even got enough symbols in there to "cuss" like Sarge Snorkel!


Title: Re: Ben Oda freeware font!
Post by: Super Monkey on July 31, 2006, 07:26:48 PM
great! I downloaded both!