Prog 2299 - Street Justice!

[Jim_Campbell]

Jaegir... In nit-picking mode I think there's a word missing from the first panel of the final page - I'm never sure when that happens if the word has been missing in the script and the letterer has to replicate the script, mistakes and all.

Unfortunately, I think you're right — Rigellian Hotshots all round. :-( I'll have to make sure that I fix that for the inevitable TPB.

To answer your question, though: with very few exceptions, letterers literally copy and paste the text from the script onto the lettering document, although we should be picking up on obvious typos that may have slipped past the editing process.

I did a process video* of lettering a page a couple of years back, which you can see here. Every time you see the palettes and stuff vanish in Illustrator, it's because I've clicked onto the Word document with the script on my second monitor to copy a new chunk of text. Note that bolds/italics don't copy over so those have to be applied manually, per the script (I'm not making those choices myself, usually, although some writers are OK with it).

*It's supposed to be 1080p, but YouTube appears to have compressed the living daylights out of it...

[Blue Cactus]

Interesting, thanks Jim. Hope you get through the Rigellian Hotshot relatively unscathed. You're a very busy droid so it's bound to happen now and then!

[Funt Solo]

In order of most to least thrilling:

Tharg's 3rillers: The Crawly Man
Uh-oh - best thing in the prog is this pagan horror that upends expectations. Can you think of another prog where the best thing in it was the Future Shock? I know we're at the tail ends before a jump-on, but still. Not to take anything away from Crawly - it deserves the top spot, and had serious competition. Sets up for a sequel quite nicely as well.

Jaegir - Ferox
Atmosphere (toxic, naturally) in spades moves this along so well that we're not even fazed by Colonel Kovert waltzing in and holding court.

Judge Dredd  - Sentientoid's Big Idea
A weak third act given some of the powerful comedy of the first two episodes. It does have that feel of "now I get to move my toys around on the board" that modern Dredd can't seem to avoid, with a stable of writers who each have their set of personalized miniatures. So, it opens with a character from a previous adventure and closes with foreshadowing of the next. That's okay, but it's no Starborn Thing.

Dexter: Bulletopia, Chapter Eleven - The End of the Pier Show
Very much join-the-dots to move from Malice in Plunderland (actually quite good for modern SinDex) to whatever's happening next. The AI-in-Fony thing is a good hook, though. I'd like to see a different artist tackle the strip.

Skip Tracer - Valhalla
Abrahamic death-cult propaganda about a jolly afterlife shoe-horned into a badly told space opera. I've done it the service of actually reading it, but I had no idea what the space-donut at the end was, or why the Cube was crashing into it - or who the Cnutsociation were at war with or why. The little manga person reminded me, for some reason, of Escape From Bisleyland, which was also pants. And this is me being restrained. Catch yourself on, Tharg.