Richard Starkings
Encyclopedia
Richard Starkings is a British
United Kingdom
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...
font
Font
In typography, a font is traditionally defined as a quantity of sorts composing a complete character set of a single size and style of a particular typeface...
designer and comic book
Comic book
A comic book or comicbook is a magazine made up of comics, narrative artwork in the form of separate panels that represent individual scenes, often accompanied by dialog as well as including...
letterer
Letterer
A letterer is a member of a team of comic book creators responsible for drawing the comic book's text. The letterer's use of typefaces, calligraphy, letter size, and layout all contribute to the impact of the comic. The letterer crafts the comic's "display lettering": the story title lettering and...
, editor
Editing
Editing is the process of selecting and preparing written, visual, audible, and film media used to convey information through the processes of correction, condensation, organization, and other modifications performed with an intention of producing a correct, consistent, accurate, and complete...
and writer
Writer
A writer is a person who produces literature, such as novels, short stories, plays, screenplays, poetry, or other literary art. Skilled writers are able to use language to portray ideas and images....
. He was one of the early pioneers of computer
Computer
A computer is a programmable machine designed to sequentially and automatically carry out a sequence of arithmetic or logical operations. The particular sequence of operations can be changed readily, allowing the computer to solve more than one kind of problem...
based comic book lettering and as a result is one of the most prolific creators in that industry.
Career
Starkings' lettering style was originally inspired by British comic strip letterers Bill Nuttall and Tom FrameTom Frame
Tom Frame was a British comics letterer. He created dialogue for the majority of the Judge Dredd strips, as well as other stories including over 300 stories in 2000 AD and Transformers....
. Starkings' UK
United Kingdom
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...
career began with lettering jobs in 2000 ADs Future Shocks
Future Shocks
Future Shocks is the name given to a long running series of short strips in the weekly comic 2000 AD in 1977. The name originates in a book titled Future Shock, written by Alvin Toffler, published in 1970.-Publishing history:...
and various strips in Warrior. From there he moved to Marvel UK
Marvel UK
Marvel UK was an imprint of Marvel Comics formed in 1972 to reprint US produced stories for the British weekly comic market, though it later did produce original material by British creators such as Alan Moore, John Wagner, Dave Gibbons, Steve Dillon and Grant Morrison.Panini Comics obtained the...
where he lettered Zoids in Spider-Man
Spider-Man
Spider-Man is a fictional Marvel Comics superhero. The character was created by writer-editor Stan Lee and writer-artist Steve Ditko. He first appeared in Amazing Fantasy #15...
Weekly and Transformers
The Transformers (Marvel Comics)
The Transformers was an 80-issue American comic book series published by Marvel Comics telling the story of the Transformers. Originally scheduled as a four issue mini-series, it spawned a mythology that would inform other versions of the saga...
before becoming an editor for the company in the late 1980s. However by the beginning of the 1990s he devoted himself exclusively to lettering, finding work in the much larger comic book industry in the United States
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
.
In 1992 Starkings founded Comicraft
Comicraft
Comicraft is a company which provides graphic design and lettering services to various companies.-History:The company was founded by Richard Starkings in 1992. Starkings had been working for Marvel UK for five years, but left London for New York, circa 1990...
, a studio which trains and employs letterers and designers and provides "Unique Design and Fine Lettering" services for comic books from many different publishers. In the mid-1990s Comicraft, online as comicbookfonts.com began to sell their Font designs as software applications through their Active Images
Active Images
Active Images is a publisher of fonts and comic books based in the United States.Founded by Richard Starkings the company publishes fonts which are used by their commercial comic book lettering division Comicraft and comic books featuring the character Hip Flask....
publishing company.
Hip Flask
Originally Starkings had intended that the advertisements for these fonts would feature MarvelMarvel Comics
Marvel Worldwide, Inc., commonly referred to as Marvel Comics and formerly Marvel Publishing, Inc. and Marvel Comics Group, is an American company that publishes comic books and related media...
and DC Comics
DC Comics
DC Comics, Inc. is one of the largest and most successful companies operating in the market for American comic books and related media. It is the publishing unit of DC Entertainment a company of Warner Bros. Entertainment, which itself is owned by Time Warner...
' characters, however when he failed to receive the authorisation to do that, Starkings created his own character to illustrate the ads - Hip Flask
Hip Flask (comics)
Hieronymous "Hip" Flask is a fictional anthropomorphic hippopotamus who appears in comic books published by Active Images and Image Comics. He was created by Richard Starkings.-Overview:...
an anthropomorphic hippopotamus
Hippopotamus
The hippopotamus , or hippo, from the ancient Greek for "river horse" , is a large, mostly herbivorous mammal in sub-Saharan Africa, and one of only two extant species in the family Hippopotamidae After the elephant and rhinoceros, the hippopotamus is the third largest land mammal and the heaviest...
"Information Agent". Hip Flask has since graduated to his own series of one-shot comic books, published by Active Images. Starkings plotted the first two issues with artist Ladrönn and enlisted the assistance of Joe Casey
Joe Casey
Joe Casey is an American comic book writer. He has worked on titles such as Wildcats 3.0, Uncanny X-Men, The Intimates, Adventures of Superman, and G.I. Joe: America's Elite, among others.-Biography:...
to co-script. Mystery City and all subsequent issues are plotted and scripted by Starkings. In 2006 Image Comics launched an ongoing prequel series to Hip Flask, Elephantmen
Elephantmen
Elephantmen is an American ongoing monthly comic book published by Image Comics and written by Richard Starkings with art by Moritat and a number of other artists...
, written by Starkings and illustrated by Justin Norman, Tom Scioli
Tom Scioli
Thomas Scioli is an American comic book artist and writer best known for working in a style similar to Jack Kirby.-Biography:Scioli's epic sci-fi/fantasy series The Myth of 8-Opus won a 1999 Xeric Grant and attracted mild industry attention, earning him a small part illustrating the Fantastic Four:...
, Henry Flint
Henry Flint
Henry Flint is a British comic book artist who has worked mainly for British sci-fi comic 2000AD.-Biography:Flint has established a cult following for his hyper-detailed and wildly inventive work on series such as Judge Dredd, Zombo,,ABC Warriors, Shakara, Low Life and Aliens.A recent project was...
, Chris Bachalo
Chris Bachalo
Chris Bachalo is an American comic book illustrator known for his quirky, cartoon-like style. He became well known for stints on DC Comics’ Shade, the Changing Man and Neil Gaiman's two Death series...
and Chris Burnham
Chris Burnham
Chris Burnham is a comic book artist best known for his work on Batman, Inc. with Grant Morrison, as well as the creator-owned books such as Officer Downe and Nixon's Pals he's done for Image...
.
In 2001 the character's similarities with an Australia
Australia
Australia , officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a country in the Southern Hemisphere comprising the mainland of the Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous smaller islands in the Indian and Pacific Oceans. It is the world's sixth-largest country by total area...
n comic book character called Hairbutt (a bumbling anthropomorphic hippopotamus private detective) led Hairbutt co-creator Bodine Amerikah and Darren Close of OzComics to accuse Hip Flask creator Starkings of plagiarism
Plagiarism
Plagiarism is defined in dictionaries as the "wrongful appropriation," "close imitation," or "purloining and publication" of another author's "language, thoughts, ideas, or expressions," and the representation of them as one's own original work, but the notion remains problematic with nebulous...
. Starkings replied that he created Hip Flash without any knowledge of Hairbutt, and that their similarities were a bizarre coincidence.
External links
- Blog
- 2004 interview with MCAD students
- Comic world news interview
- Starking's tips for new letterers
- Interview with Futureal Studio
- comiXology.com's podcast with Richard Starkings on Elephantmen #11 and War Toys