Comicraft

Comicraft is a company which provides graphic design and professional lettering services to the various major comic book companies including Marvel Comics and Titan Books.

The company was founded by Richard Starkings in 1992, many of the company's fonts designed by Starkings, and was the pioneer of computer-lettering comics that has made traditional hand lettering largely obsolete.

Starkings was credited as a letterer on the entire Generation 2 comic run, though never alone. At first it was "Starkings w/ Gaushell," then "Starkings w/ O'Neil," then finally "Starkings Comicraft." Almost a decade later, the company returned to work on the 3H convention exclusive Universe comic series.

The Generation 2 lettering was perhaps the most distinctive and complex in Transformers comic history. Exploiting the new ability to use a font instead of a hand-letterer, the comic was populated with hard-edged typefaces that fit the robotic subject matter and would've been very difficult to achieve by hand. The titles further pushed the envelope: Two fonts were laid upon each other to create a new mashup-typeface. And the polygonal speech-bubbles contained a decorative element, with little colored shapes running down the left-hand side. Triangles indicated a Decepticon speaking, squares an Autobot, and trapezoids a Dinobot.