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.
Grumpy Old Man
Surfing around the comic sites today looking for something interesting and I come across one of my biggest pet peeves... Female versions of male superheroes.
How about the eight billion Spider-Females? Right now the big one is the Jessica Drew Spider-Woman that Brian Michael Bendis has brought back as a member of the New Avengers a big way, although now she's a Skrull thus injecting even more confusion into her already baffling history.
This Spider-Woman has nothing to do with Peter Parker but if you're looking for that just turn to Spider-Girl, the lone survivor of the MC2 Universe… an alternate ending future Marvel Universe. A universe whose very existence causes even the most hardened fanboy so scratch his head. The universe spun out of a What If? storyline and somehow has managed to stay alive despite countless threats of cancellation. At this point I think the book is Marvel's Milton from Office Space... I lettered Spider-Girl for a long time and in its defense, it's a fun book with an old-school feel. 
What other Spider-Females have been given a shot in the Marvel Universe… Oh, Araña... Another Spider-Character not related to Spider-Man. Instead Araña is a member of the mystical Spider Society. She's got a spider shaped tattoo that gives her powers and yadda yadda yadda she doesn't have her own book anymore.
You've got the Julia Carpenter Spider-Woman as well... Only she wears a version of the Black Spider-Man costume. And don't forget She-Venom! Ugh.
Marvel has clearly tapped the female Spider-Man well a few times so how about the company's other Big-Time character Wolverine?
Enter X23, a female clone of Wolverine who pops 2 claws out of each hand instead of 3. 
DC certainly isn't a stranger to female incarnations of male heroes... Where do we start with the Batgirls and Bat-Women?
Betty Kane kicked it off back in 1961 and as far as I can tell is no longer in existence. The first Batgirl you likely think of is Barbara Gordon. The daughter of Commissioner Gordon is shot through the spinal cord by the Joker in The Killing Joke, thus becoming the wheelchair bound Oracle.
We also have Helena Bertinelli who took over after Gordon and is now known as the Huntress.
Then there's Cassandra Cain, the most recent Batgirl. This is a series I used to read quite often mainly for the fantastic art of Damion Scott.
Naturally DC has its Supergirls and Superwoman some related to the Son of Krypton and others not. With these characters you've got the Earth 2 and Earth 3's and just a veritable sticky web of confusing continuity. A web I'm not even considering delving into.
So who's next on the list? A female Black Panther! She-Panther? Who knows, but maybe I'm a cranky fanboy but when will the Big 2 grasp that this stuff never works, readers don't care and if this is an effort to make their books more appealing to girls, adding huge breasts and long hair to male characters isn't going to achieve that goal.
Until the powers-that-be realizes this, superhero comics will be a perennial Boys Club.
Oh! I forgot She-Thing!
Thanks for reading...
Font You!
-Randy
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