Comicon’s 5 Best Letterers Of 2021

Welcome to Comicon.com’s Best of the Year Awards, gathering the best comics and comics talent of the strange year that was 2021. This year we will be awarding in the following categories: Best Original Graphic Novels, Best Comic Series, Best Single Comic Issues, Best Writers, Best Artists, Best Cover Artists, Best Colorists, Best Letterers, Best Digital/Webcomics, and Most Progressive Comics.

Contributors to Comicon’s Best of the Year Awards this year include: Oliver MacNamee, Brendan M. Allen, Rachel Bellwoar, Scott Redmond, Benjamin Hall, Tito James, Tony Thornley, and Richard Bruton.

The following are Comicon’s 5 Best Letterers of 2021.

5. Taylor Esposito

Lettering is part of comics that doesn’t get the spotlight it deserves, with many not even knowing fully what letterers do in any given issue. That being said, when you see great lettering, it sticks with you, and you know it was great. Esposito definitely fits into that realm. From doing all the common work with dialogue bubbles and captions to all the extra work that makes those things pop (colors, emphasizers, themed caption boxes, etc.), it just stands out and sets a solid tone for any book. Cannot ever forget SFX because they help us ‘hear’ what is happening in these books, and Esposito brings it in that regard as well. Immersive is probably the best way to sum up their work, because it just draws you in alongside everything else the book has going on.

— Scott Redmond

4. Ed Dukeshire

Ed Dukeshire showed his consummate skills to the fore in Once and Future this year, managing to balance a great script from Kieron Gillen with the artwork of Dan Mora. What’s more, in giving the supernatural and undead characters their voices, he often gently contrasts the colours of their speech with the background colours that dominate. All the better to create a far more immersive reading experience.

— Olly MacNamee

3. Ferran Delgado

Letterers help set the tone of a book just as much as everyone else in the creative team, and Delgado is one of the best at it. Not just regarding regular dialogue that has its flares of personality and emphasizers. When a character yells we don’t just get bigger text, but the bubbles might change shape to be jagged and sharp or take on a red tinge like anger. In another issue, a prolonged chase in a helicopter sees all the dialogue bigger and louder-looking to fully indicate the characters are yelling over helicopter roar. These seem like small things, but they truly just make everything better and shows such intricate detailed care.

— Scott Redmond

2. Tom Napolitano

Shifting the styles of lettering within a story depending on who or what is talking — or what their captions look like — sets apart varying styles of lettering. Taking that skill and then shifting all of it to match any given art style, and sometimes shifting multiple times in the same issue, is next tier in lettering. That’s what Napolitano was able to showcase a lot this year, especially over in Catwoman where he worked alongside several different artists through the current run of the title. And it would be remiss to not mention the SFX work that is just as inspired, adding so much to the experience that these stories are meant to be each month.

— Scott Redmond

1. Aditya Bidikar

Aditya Bidikar continues to give voice to many a character with his careful consideration of each and the distinct voices which he captures in his expertly crafted font designs and colour choices. A great example of Bidikar’s craft can be found in DC Comics’ The Swamp Thing, with its vast array of disparate characters drawn from a variety of genres.

— Olly MacNamee