My team at Square Enix Manga & Books is hiring for a junior editorial position! If you have questions, feel free to ask~ jobsearch.createyourowncareer.com/PRH_US/job/A...

really incredible lettering work from @cornpunk.bsky.social in Baki, Vol. 1 💖

Gorgeous.

From conversations with manga artists: 1) Only about 10% of manga artists in Japan can earn a living 2) Most don't work a grueling schedule. That is Shonen Jump artists 3) With digital tools, assistants are becoming rarer. They have been replaced with software

Sometimes, letterering for manga means working in tandem with the Japanese SFX instead of rewriting them! In CLAMP Premium Collection Tokyo Babylon, Vol. 7, letterer @kernedout.bsky.social skillfully blends the English "ZWOOSH" text with it's Japanese counterpart for a seamless reading experience!

In Memoriam: Matt Haasch “Matt was warm, friendly, and endlessly positive, with an infectious energy.” Azuki’s @evanminto.com honors the memory of the @starfruitbooks.bsky.social founder www.azuki.co/news/2025/09...

Dope.

A strange thing about lettering manga is, the speech balloon/line count on average is almost always 1400. Lots of dialogue = less SFX. Lots of SFX = less dialogue. But for some odd reason it always comes to around 1400 lines of text. (Or maybe it's just the stuff I work on? 🤷‍♂️)

Our second #LettererAppreciationMonth feature comes from Level Up With the Gods, Vol. 1! Letterer @fog.mediocrity.ca skillfully enters in the English translation into every item in this pop-up that Yuwon's seeing—and on an angle too! #LettererAppreciationDay

Manga friends: I'm going to try to make some kind of memorial for Matt Haasch. If you have stories, photos, or any words of appreciation you want to share, please let me know. DMs are open. If there's anyone doing something similar already please also let me know and we can pool our efforts.

At the very top of Adobe Illustrator is this box: "Be an illustrator without doing any illustration work!" Why is Adobe so keen to do away with the very same people who use its products? Just fuck OFF with this shit, seriously.

Hey, comics friends! This is a great opportunity for an entry-level person looking to work on print editions of popular webtoons & English editions of manga, manhua, and more! jobsearch.createyourowncareer.com/PRH_US/job/N...

happy letterer appreciation day! if you’d like to follow more manga letterers here, I have a list for you: go.bsky.app/8XNn7Eu

Can't count the amount of lettering choices I made during the simul grind that I then went back and said "man what the fuck was I thinking" or just didn't have time to really consider That the bar is as high as it is, with the quality of work people are putting out, is astounding.

Some insight on why Kagurabachi simuls look different. ∙Simuls are lettered within 24 hours ∙Some letterers do 2-3 simuls (same day) ∙Chapters can arrive at random times ∙Corrections are done in-house, & text needs to be editable ∙It needs to be a font we have a license for

This was supposed to be lettered in InDesign using fonts. It wouldn't have worked. Hand-lettering isn't always practical and isn't always allowed, so kudos to the editors who let their letterers to break the rules.

Thanks @mangasplaining.bsky.social crew for the chance to translate this kickass manga and write a bit about what it means to me. A few excerpts are here, or read the whole thing plus an extraordinary afterword to his own work from Kaneko-sensei: mangasplaining.substack.com/p/search-and...

Going back to analogue.

We didn’t take home the W…but I’m still immensely proud of the Dragon and Chameleon team, and I couldn’t be happier for my colleagues who work on The Apothecary Diaries and The Otaku Love Connection! Thanks to the judges, voters, and organizers for another unforgettable American Manga Awards!

This pretty much sums up the entire manga industry.

I embedded with the creative team behind “Kagurabachi” to learn how manga are made at Weekly Shonen Jump, which is Japan’s - and the world’s - top manga magazine. You can read all about it in my feature for the New Yorker: www.newyorker.com/magazine/202...

The art of Kagurabachi exhibit featuring art by Takeru Hokazono is now up at @japansociety.org NYC! japansociety.org Drop by to see how the manga is made, plus 24 images that showcase this dynamic MangaPlus/Shonen Jump series! #kagurabachiNYC #animenyc2025

Wow! This one's gonna be huge. I wonder if the SFX will be replaced (haha).

youtu.be/19SspJ4R2-I The audio is pretty rough but I hope you enjoy me yapping about lettering for 45 minutes

It’s always great when a new manga publisher pops up, but you always gotta wonder sometimes where they get their ideas on manga lettering from and if they’re aware they committed a cardinal sin of lettering. Not to say established publishers don’t also have their quirks. Some do.

This week we reach the climax of Atsushi Kaneko's SEARCH AND DESTROY, and Hyaku's and Doro's secrets are revealed in this explosive 80 PAGE penultimate chapter! mangasplaining.substack.com/p/manga-sear...

Beyblade X volume 3! This was actually significantly more time consuming than the the previous volumes and volume 4. But I also pushed my craft harder, so I think some of my best stuff is in here. Let's talk about it!

Wayne Truman is a god! He is and always will be the gold standard for lettering imo.

Congratulations to the manga creators inducted into the Eisner Awards Hall of Fame at #SDCC2025 - Shigeru Mizuki (“Kitaro,” and upcoming “Yokai” from @dandq.bsky.social) and Junji Ito (“Uzumaki” & “Liminal Zone 2” from @viz.com ) www.comicsbeat.com/sdcc-25-anno...

Awards are cool, but don't worry if you never get one.

"There was something like life imprisonment tariff associated with illegal television broadcasting." And he did it anyway. What a legend 🐐 www.youtube.com/watch?v=RKAl...

for folks who didn’t know, ive spent hours and hours compiling 10+ years of my manga lettering knowledge and putting it up for free on my github 👇

Burn-out shouldn't even be a thing in 2025.

There are three sliders to adjust that affect the cost of a project: time, rate, and quality. The third slider can move downward due to a conscious choice or due to management negligence/magical thinking. In either case, Katrina is right—it's up to customers to demonstrate they care.

If you don't want this to become the norm: speak up. Fans, professionals, everyone, needs to report the issue to the company. Flood them on socials. Email them about the issue. Tag the Japanese author and publisher. Companies think audiences "don't care about quality". Show them that we do.

Tomato Soup's art uses very little in tones, instead they focus on grayscale with detailed line work. Sound effects are sparse in this rich world, but when they do occur I did my best to match their handwritten style. I don't want to spoil, but here's some examples.

Love to see STUDIO PROTEUS getting their flowers and going into the hall of fame. animenyc.com/american-man...

Congratulations and good luck to everyone! 🎉🤞

My newest font, Spicy Noodles 2 is available now for free 🌶️🌶️ It's the same Spicy Noodles you know and love, but with an updated design more glyph support. Find it here: ko-fi.com/s/1d57f7dbfb

Also today, the second volume of the Eisner-nominated SEARCH AND DESTROY by Atsushi Kaneko arrives in stores from @fantagraphics.bsky.social ! We included a special surprise that we haven't mentioned anywhere, we'll talk about it tomorrow to give y'all a chance to discover it on your own. :)

Over the weekend, I finished up my lettering on the final volume of Land of the Lustrous. Here's the final sound effect I did for it. I'm glad I could finish it out on an extra fancy one! It's been a fun endeavor to make SFX that are harmonious with Ichikawa's gorgeous avant-garde art style. 🧵

Whoah. Read the whole thread of these anti-manga/webtoon piracy illustrations shared by a pro webtoon artist from S. Korea. m.blog.naver.com/writeryd_01/... It replies to some of the most-frequently heard reasons why “fans” read scanlations. Here’s a taste:

Here's the full list of 2025 Screentoney Award winners! Thank you everyone for submitting awards and celebrating the extremely talented folks in this industry!

The Screentoney Award for "Lettering Power Couple" goes to @kernedout.bsky.social

Yay! 🥳🥳🥳🥳🥳🥳🥳 Dedicated to all the editors and proofreaders making my work presentable 🥂

Comics industry & retail folks: Last day to register to vote in the Eisners, btw. I would very much like to see an anti-fascist manga win an award in America in 2025. cci.tiny.us/2025Eisners

this is awesome

Hi! I hope you don't mind me popping in here, but I saw this post and wanted to say thank you for the very kind words! Fun fact: I've been doing all the sound effects in Ashita no Joe by hand, just like folks did in the 90s! (with a little computer help for fine-tuning, but the fx are all in ink)

Stoked cuz @fantagraphics.bsky.social sent us these photos of the recently-arrived SEARCH & DESTROY VOL 2 advances! Never more wished we could pop by Seattle...

Ohhhhh yeaaahhhhhhh here we goooo #Mushishi