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Disclaimer: While the timing of this article seems fittingly close to Halloween, I genuinely just like horror-related stuff; I would just as soon have posted it on Christmas or Mother’s Day. With that being said…
I recently bought the complete Tales From The Crypt box set, and have since been reading through story after story, like a 10-year-old on a sugar high. Zombies, werewolves, murderous scandal and grave-robbing now fill my dreams.
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Many people are unaware that Tales From The Crypt was originally a comic book published in the 1950s by EC Comics. It wasn’t until decades later, in 1989, that the popular HBO television series was launched.
Until Fredrich Werham’s Seduction of the Innocent and the subsequent establishment of the Comics Code in 1954, horror and crime comics were huge in the United States. Tales From The Crypt was one of many such titles, like EC’s Vault of Horror and Haunt of Fear, to fly off of newsstands and into the sweaty little palms of pre-pubescent boys all over the country.
One of my favorite elements of Tales From The Crypt (not surprisingly) is the amazing, exclamation-point-laden, hand-rendered lettering. It isn’t especially unique that a horror comic would have sensationalist type styles, but I still find myself getting super-excited whenever I think a character is about to let a blood-curdling scream loose…comic book characters’ words always look way cooler when they are being attacked or otherwise terrified.
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Another unique chance for the creepy lettering styles to shine is on the title page for each story. Generally these pages have a large, horrific image with big title lettering to get you psyched up for the “yarn” which is about to unfold.
I can’t help but wonder how these sensational displays of lettering were affected, if at all, by the Comic Code’s assertion that “…words or symbols which have acquired undesirable meanings are forbidden”. I may just be reading too far into things, but it does seem to me that the lettering on story title pages became slightly subdued in Tales From The Crypt as the censorship pressures began to build.
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These kinds of comics have influenced many modern-day type designers in creating their own digital fonts. While working on the MyFonts site, I often search for things like horror and monster to test different functions. In doing so I’ve inadvertently become quite familiar with this genre of fonts.
One of the main problems in emulating hand-lettering with a digital font comes about when spelling out words, like HORROR, that have multiple occurrences of the same letter. If all the Rs are exactly the same, it will become obvious that a digital font was used. Most of the better examples of hand-lettering fonts retain some of their organic quality by including alternate versions of the same letter. This allows for more of the variation which occurs naturally in true hand-lettering.
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Some fonts, like Typodermic’s Croteau, take advantage of some of the more advanced features in the OpenType font format by offering a large amount of custom letter-pair ligatures. These allows an even broader range of variation, further helping to prevent obvious letterform repetition.
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While many foundries offer fonts similar in style to the lurid horror comic style of the ’50s, there are a few foundries that focus specifically on comic lettering. Comicraft and Blambot are excellent examples of font foundries who offer more than just one or two variations on this theme.
Below are a few samples of some of the fonts I’ve come across on MyFonts that I think speak the same or similar language to the Tales From The Crypt style of the ’50s.
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If you like these and want to see more, check out the album of related fonts I’ve put together at MyFonts. Also, check out this gallery of Classic Crime & Horror Covers (highly recommended!).
PS: Happy Friday the 13th!
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