Comments on: What's the comic-book font in American Splendor?

Question: What's the comic-book font in American Splendor?

signal — Tue, 22 Jun 2004 21:57:19 -0800

What's the comic-book font used in the movie American Splendor?

By: kirkaracha

kirkaracha — Tue, 22 Jun 2004 23:54:38 -0800

The billing block features a custom typeface that I designed specifically for this project - we wanted something that would fit into the comic book theme of the poster.

By: vacapinta

vacapinta — Wed, 23 Jun 2004 00:56:00 -0800

Huh? Isn't that based on the font used in the comic book itself? Here's an issue from 1978.

By: interrobang

interrobang — Wed, 23 Jun 2004 02:50:22 -0800

vacapinta, I'm not completely sure that he's asking about the "American Splendor" logo. There is lettering in the background of at least one of the posters for the movie, and it's unusually "roundy" (for lack of an official term) as comic book fonts go.

Signal: are you asking about the font used in the poster, the logo, or the movie? Did kirkaracha answer your question?

By: iconomy

iconomy — Wed, 23 Jun 2004 05:48:37 -0800

Wow thanks for that link, kirkaracha. What a wonderful body of work. I've already picked up a few tips I can use in my own ads and flyers here at work.

Are there any examples of this "roundy" font? My curiosity is piqued now.

By: mwhybark

mwhybark — Wed, 23 Jun 2004 06:14:00 -0800

While it's unlikely that the the font used in the movie itself comes from this page, Blambot offers a range of free dialogue fonts that reflect the style of the dialogue font seen in the movie (and in the blue panels behind Giamatti's head on the poster).

By: revgeorge

revgeorge — Wed, 23 Jun 2004 06:39:11 -0800

If you can get a clean image of the font you can try running it through WhatTheFont, but I wouldn't get my hopes up considering kirkaracha's answer.

By: signal

signal — Wed, 23 Jun 2004 08:36:14 -0800

I should have been much clearer, I mean the font used in the little comic-bookish "notes" that show up all through the movie, not the poster/comic books logo, IOW what mwhybark's talking about.
I am familiar with Blambot, but just really dug the fonts in the movie, man, and wondered if they were available.

By: Robot Johnny

Robot Johnny — Wed, 23 Jun 2004 08:38:02 -0800

In addtion to Blambot, I recommend Comicraft fonts, most of which are fantastic.

By: mwhybark

mwhybark — Sat, 10 Jul 2004 21:28:18 -0800

Signal, I just rewatched the film.

There are several fonts used, but the primary one looks like a hand-written all-caps serif, correct?

The font is at least based on one of three or four lettering styles that Robert Crumb has been using for the length of his whole career. However, the letters exhibit a great degree in variation, and so I'd guess that they either cribbed the lettering from various issues of Pekar's comic book directly, asked Crumb to letter it for them, or had a production artist create hand-titles based on Crumb's lettering.

Cursory Googling does not lead to a Crumb font.