After bouncing around at a few local colleges in upstate New York, Randy Gentile made the decision to move to New York City where he attended Pratt Institute. He landed an internship in the famous Marvel Bullpen and was able to turn that into a full-time gig in the now defunct Marvel in-house lettering department. He later transitioned to Chris Eliopoulos’ Virtual Calligraphy lettering studio.
With VC he lettered damn near every Marvel book at one time or another including Amazing Spider-Man, Fantastic Four, Incredible Hulk, Iron Man, Uncanny X-Men, Punisher, and Marville… wait, Marville?
Anyway, after 7 years of lettering Randy decided to make a go of it on his own without the aid of Chris “Obi-Wan” Eliopoulos. Since then he’s begun lettering for DC Comics where his work can be seen in funny books like Batman, Detective Comics, Gotham Underground, Teen Titans and Booster Gold.
Outside of his lettering work he self-publishes an autobiographical comic called NYComix and an uber-fast paced superhero strip called Randall. Both comics have been featured on Comic Geek Speak and Fanboy Radio.
When he’s not wallowing in lettering self-pity he spends his time in Brooklyn along with his lovely wife, Ereisa and their three cats Finnian, Don Fanucci and Olive.
SuperShow!
So I spent last weekend in beautiful sunny Reading, Pennsylvania. What's a New Yorker like me doing in Reading, PA?
I was pimping my comic wares at the first annual Comic Geek Speak Supershow! The previous year's show the gangs 300th episode and as the popularity of the show grew so was born the Supershow... a wonderful gathering of comic fans and artists at one of the most fun and exciting new cons to hit the oversaturated convention circuit in ages.
CGS began in 2005 by Bryan Deemer and Peter Rios. 500 plus episodes later and they're going stronger than ever. The Internet is full of comic podcasts but there's something special about CGS. And being a longtime listener and now friend of the show, I'd like to hip any readers of Font You! to the show. You won't find more diverse and interesting comic talk anywhere on the web. One episode will talk about Secret Invasion, the next about Final Crisis, another about Image Crisis and then they'll follow that up talking about a hand stapled mini comic they found at the MOCCA Comic Festival.
Bry, Peter and the gang genuinely love and care about the medium of comics in a way that is truly inspiring to me a comic creator rockin' self published auto bio comics in a world dominated by Wolverine books written by the writer of HBO's Entourage.
They talked to me about lettering on the show. Lettering. They've had Jim Lee and Ed Brubaker on the show but they still talk to the guy who lettered Marville and does web comics.
This should give you a good idea of the wide array of comic talk that you can find of CGS 3 times a week.
So please give CGS a chance... any comic fan will not be disappointed.
So what exactly pimpin' at the Supershow? Why a beautiful NYComix Trade Paperback. Complete with a glossy cover in its entire square bound glory. They'll be on sale real soon... I'll keep you posted.
You know what else rocks? 50-cent bins! Man, if comics were always 50 cents I wouldn't stop reading. I'll take a chance on a book for 50 cents that I never would at 3 dollars. 
Check out some of these books I picked up for almost nothing. Matt Wagner's Grendel: Behold the Devil is an 8-issue mini-series released by Dark Horse a few months back. I'd never read Grendel but it's been on my short list of To-Reads for ages. So, at 50 cents a pop I picked up the entire run and wow. How great is this book? Wagner's art and writing are top-notch. His writing is like Frank Miller with a li'l Alan Moore sprinkled in. Wagner's art is just as solid. Take a look at the series of double page spreads that opens issue 1. It's like a Quentin Tarantino comic.
Another little run of books I put together was the first 3 issues of Punisher War Journal by Matt Fraction and Ariel Olivetti. This series takes place during the Civil War event. (Which was like 3 events ago now.) Wow. All of a sudden we can measure continuity by "events". Now we're all Skrulled up in Secret Invasion. Before that was World War Hulk. WWH was preceded by Civil War and before that was House of M. Did I miss one?
Anyway Punisher War Journal was a weird one for me. Olivetti's art is treading that photo-referenced line for me. Maybe his art needs to be inked.... I may have a different opinion of it.
The story by Fraction was also a bit off for me. I could be a little too used to Garth Ennis' Punisher being that I lettered his MAX run for over 50 issues, but Fraction's Punisher seemed like a pissed off Spider-Man cracking wise. I dunno.... I've given 3 different Fraction series a try and I'm still waiting to be blown away.
So last Font You! you might remember me saying that I'm laying off the mainstream bestsellers for a while and instead turning the pages of a few fringe books that I've been meaning to try but haven't. Last week was a nice week at the shop for me as a result.
Of course The Goon #28 rocked. Skaar Son of Hulk #3... I'm loving this book and now that I look at it, it's Ron Garney pencils without inks. I think Garney is one of the most underrated super-hero artists working today, and with Paul Mounts coloring his pencils it looks fantastic. On top of all that, Bruce Guice pencils the second half of the book, you can't go wrong with this one folks. We're only 3 issues in so check it out.
I also picked up a Star Wars comic for the first time in a while, Star Wars: Clone Wars by Henry Gilroy and Scott Hepburn. I really dug this book and I'm on board for a while with this one. I've been meaning to read some more Star Wars comics and this may be the one. As a letterer, I hate to do this but the lettering by Michael Heisler was a bit wonky. Some odd balloon placement choices that covered up art unnecessarily a few balloon tails pointing to foreheads when simply butting it to the top of the panel would provide more than enough room. Just being a bit more conscious of negative space and butting balloons would straighten things right out for his work.
And finally, as I found the Robert Kirkman Manifesto inspiring, I jumped back on the Invincible bandwagon with issue 52. Damn, this book is fun. Fun, brain smashing action with heart... I'm back on board with this one.
So that's if for this week, folks... thanks for reading and I'm sorry about being late week. I've been lettering like a madman and my computer died. I'm writing this on a nice shiny new 24" iMac. I love it!
Font You!
Randy
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