Rob Leigh

[00:01:08]: No, it’s me. Okay, so — hey everybody, how’s it going? Happy Tuesday. I’m so excited about tonight. Okay, so tonight you may know him from Superman, Green Lantern, The Flash, Justice League, Doomsday Clock, Batman: Earth One, or Batman and the Three Jokers. He’s also lettered for Mad Magazine and SpongeBob SquarePants. He is the winner of a Wizard Fan Award and a Harvey Award nominee. This year he was also nominated for the Nerd Initiative Annual Cheersie Awards for his work at Ghost Machine on Geiger, Hyde Street, Redcoat, Rook Exodus, The Rockefellers, Hornsby & Halo, Sister Neighborhood: A Hyde Street Story, It Happened on Hyde Street, and Devour. And his book that he worked on with the Snips, A Bad Buzz Day, was one of the honor books in the children’s fiction category from the American Library Association. He is also a graduate and past faculty member of the Kubert School. I’m so excited, I’m getting this all messed up, but welcome back for the third time on Splash Pages — our favorite outdoor woodsman and Santa Claus impersonator, Mr. Rob Leigh.

Rob Leigh [00:02:33]: Yeah, hey, hey there, boys and girls. Good to see you.

Drew Mollo [00:02:38]: Spell it out. Oh, thank you. A little lettering humor.

Rob Leigh [00:02:45]: Oh yeah, I thought you were killing me to say something.

Kari [00:02:46]: Bad lettering.

Drew Mollo [00:02:48]: Hey, they can’t all be winners, okay?

Rob Leigh [00:02:51]: No curveballs.

Drew Mollo [00:02:53]: You know what’s funny? I was literally thinking about that SNL skit — the Five-Timers Club. We’ve had such people. I was like, we got the three-timers. Before you know it, I was like, no, Splash Pages is not paying for jackets. The best we can do is maybe give you a mock gold chip. Three times. There you go.

Rob Leigh [00:03:15]: And three-timer is better than being a two-timer.

Kari [00:03:19]: Absolutely. Well, we love having you on at this time of year. It seems like this past week I keep seeing it pop up — like, we had Rob Leigh, and we had Rob Leigh. Guess who we’re having? We’re having Rob Leigh.

Rob Leigh [00:03:33]: Oh, him again.

Kari [00:03:35]: So yay! So excited to have you back, sir.

Drew Mollo [00:03:38]: Yes, Kari is the most excited here. We’re all very excited, but.

[WILDLIFE PHOTOGRAPHY SEGMENT — 00:03:44–00:09:37]

Rob Leigh [00:03:44]: Kari is.

Kari [00:03:54]: We have all these other people on, and I’m like, so how do you talk to your letterer? When you’re drawing these pages, how much room do you make for your letterer? Yeah, how do you do that? I’m like, I need my letterer back.

Rob Leigh [00:04:06]: Yeah, I’d like to be part of those conversations.

Drew Mollo [00:04:09]: Rob, I have to say — her studying your work, she’s now such a lettering snob.

MJ [00:04:15]: Yeah, she is.

Drew Mollo [00:04:17]: Like, what was it? We had Chris Eliopoulos on last year, and I mean, Chris is the nicest, sweetest, good man. But Kari is literally peppering him with questions like, yeah, so what kind of fonts do you use? Where do you put them on the page? How do you figure out the style? And I’m like, Kari, this is an interview, not an interrogation. Breathe.

Rob Leigh [00:04:42]: I was just having this conversation this weekend. I belong to a wildlife and nature photography club, and I was talking to one of the women in my club — she knows nothing about comics — and she was asking what makes a good letterer. And I said, you probably wouldn’t tell the difference between a poor letterer and an outstanding letterer because it really is, to an outsider, an endeavor of nuance and subtlety. The insiders know what makes them look good and what works against them. But the average person probably couldn’t tell.

Leo [00:05:26]: I want to hear more about this wildlife photography.

Drew Mollo [00:05:35]: Of course he would.

Kari [00:05:35]: We do a lot of that — no, our guests outside of their profession, absolutely.

Leo [00:05:43]: In all seriousness — what’s the most unique animal you’ve taken a picture of?

Rob Leigh [00:05:51]: I love photographing bears when I get the chance, when they’re around. I have my comic book Instagram page, Rob Leigh Comics, but if you go to Rob Leigh Outdoors, you’ll see some of my wildlife and nature photography there.

Drew Mollo [00:06:09]: I like how you mention that, like you’re just like, I like photographing bears, you know, just happen to see one.

Rob Leigh [00:06:18]: Too close to them.

Drew Mollo [00:06:20]: Yeah. Hey Yogi.

Kari [00:06:22]: Hey.

Rob Leigh [00:06:22]: Okay, Boo-Boo. Last week I’ve been doing a lot of owl photography and going down to Barnegat Lighthouse for the migrating sea ducks — hopping around the jetty in subfreezing weather.

Leo [00:06:47]: Where we moved to is very animal-friendly. We had two giant turkey vultures on our deck — it was like negative 2 and they had their wings fully out, sunning themselves. Awesome stuff.

Kari [00:07:03]: Yeah, Leo’s put up some great pictures. I’m going to slightly derail for a second. I saw one of the nicest things on our subreddit for my town. Somebody had gone out to one of the lakes — I’m in Lincoln, Nebraska — and we have a bunch of bald eagles that have been hanging out at the frozen lakes lately. Somebody had gone down to get some pictures and they got great bald eagle shots, but then they wrote: “To whoever was out there ice skating with your dog — I swear to God I’m not creeping on you, but I thought it was such a beautiful moment between you and your dog that I got some pictures. If you’d like them, call and verify that this was you. Here’s a picture of the eagle to show that I wasn’t creeping.” I thought that was kind of cool. Have you caught any moments you weren’t planning on photographing?

Rob Leigh [00:08:12]: I’m sure I have. I’ve gone bird hunting and then, if I got my limit, I’ll take my camera out. On my Instagram you’ll see me photographing another guy’s dog at the moment he was going after a pheasant. You just have to be ready. Sometimes you’ll see a bird of prey with something — with lunch.

[Kari tells the donkey-biting-her-Ghost-Machine-shirt story — 00:08:37–00:09:37. Fun but tangential. Good for social/behind-the-scenes.]

[PRE-SHOW STORIES — 00:09:37–00:22:08]

Drew Mollo [00:09:37]: I have a random story I learned about our guest. I was reading an old interview about a year ago. Can you confirm — did you indeed break your shoulder in 1975 pretending to be the Human Torch?

Rob Leigh [00:10:01]: Guilty.

Drew Mollo [00:10:04]: Okay, I just — yeah.

Rob Leigh [00:10:06]: We had a big jungle gym in my backyard. I think 6th grade had just started that week. Mom called my brother and me back in the house, and I asked for 5 more minutes, which she granted me and regrets to this day. I tried to jump from one side to the other, and I made it, but I didn’t stick the landing, and I snapped my arm behind my back. Six months in a sling. Good times.

Drew Mollo [00:10:35]: Flame on!

Rob Leigh [00:10:41]: Yeah, I shouted. It wasn’t “flame on” — it might have been the first time I was allowed to pop out some four-letter words.

Drew Mollo [00:10:49]: Oh yeah, if you were injured that way — that’s the perfect time. It’s like the scene when Ralphie loses it and he’s just uttering curses, beating up Scott Farkus.

Rob Leigh [00:11:02]: I thought I tore my arm off.

Kari [00:11:15]: Is it your dominant arm?

Rob Leigh [00:11:18]: No, it was my left hand. My right arm grabbed the bar, my left arm just missed, and as I fell I put it out and I snapped it at the shoulder. Then the stars came out.

MJ [00:11:33]: Wow.

Kari [00:11:35]: We’re very happy it wasn’t the one you used predominantly — otherwise we wouldn’t have all of your lettering, perhaps.

Rob Leigh [00:11:42]: I remember it was hard for me to draw at the time because I needed my left hand to hold the page as I was drawing, so I had to work around that. It was the year I remember getting Son of Origins for Christmas — from Marvel Comics. Wanted to draw that, you know. It seems a lot of people who got into this field — it started with being sick and being bedridden for a while, and they really started plowing into comic books.

Kari [00:12:12]: Well, there is something to that.

Rob Leigh [00:12:15]: Because gymnastics certainly wasn’t in my future.

[Kari tangent about her own injury and reading 30 books at grandmother’s house — 00:12:23–00:12:50]

[GHOST MACHINE — MAIN SEGMENT — 00:12:50–00:30:30]

Kari [00:12:50]: Now we’re going to jump into Ghost Machine. I saw on the Ghost Machine subreddit — I just joined the Discord, I didn’t realize it was there. Everybody’s kind of going crazy because there have been some delays here and there on books. Here’s the thing, guys — wouldn’t you rather have the best comic you can possibly get than something turned in a week or two before it was ready? The creators are working on so many things. Rob, you were working on so many books at once. I don’t know how you keep them straight. But, guys — Hyde Street number 10 is one of the best books you’re going to read this year. I can’t tell you anything else about it other than it is amazing.

Drew Mollo [00:14:30]: Kari, is there a question?

Kari [00:14:41]: The question was — I know things have been running behind a little bit, but it isn’t for lack of work. It’s because you guys are all trying to put out the best stuff you possibly can.

Rob Leigh [00:14:56]: Yeah. In this book in particular, I think Francis — Francis Portela — really found an extra gear. He’s been doing wonderful work interspersed between Ivan’s stories, but he really blasted out a great issue. He’s gone up in my estimation another level, and he was already a top-tier talent. He’s really settled in and leaned into this. It’s a real pretty book, and it’s another great Geoff Johns story.

Drew Mollo [00:15:35]: All of Geoff’s stuff has just been absolutely phenomenal. Geiger, Redcoat — he is just firing on all cylinders.

Rob Leigh [00:15:50]: I don’t know how he’s able to switch gears the way he does. You talk about me as a letterer doing it, but he starts with a blank page and finds all these different voices. It’s truly incredible.

Drew Mollo [00:16:04]: And I think Redcoat has just become my favorite of the Ghost Machine books. I love Hyde Street — I know that’s Kari’s number one. Redcoat, just the history, man. Especially the Johnny Appleseed story was one of my favorites. I share a birthday with him — 9/26 — supposedly his birthday.

MJ [00:16:59]: Good choice.

Drew Mollo [00:17:01]: Yeah, this or the Free Willy stand-in. I was like, we’re going with the man who didn’t believe in shoes.

MJ [00:17:09]: My birthday is the same as Dr. Seuss’s!

Drew Mollo [00:17:15]: Yeah, there you go.

MJ [00:17:16]: You know how tired I am with my gran constantly trying to give me green eggs and bloody ham. I don’t even like ham.

Kari [00:17:28]: I have everybody jealous because I’m Halloween. I was born to it. I had no choice.

Drew Mollo [00:17:44]: And, just concluding my question, Rob — congratulations to you guys. Redcoat is going to be adapted into a film.

Rob Leigh [00:18:00]: I mean, yeah — we’re all stoked about that, obviously.

Drew Mollo [00:18:04]: Everything Ghost Machine would be a fantastic movie or just the best TV series.

MJ [00:18:16]: I would love to see Hyde Street done like they did Sandman — those effects and everything. I would love to see that with Hyde Street.

Drew Mollo [00:18:31]: You’ll probably get your wish at some point, whether it’s a movie, a TV series, a streaming series. People in that area of the industry seem to be very excited about our properties. We haven’t quite been here 2 years yet and we’re already getting adaptations — it’s wonderful.

Drew Mollo [00:18:53]: It’s funny — I see it and I think of what Mark Millar does with his stuff. Even before the first book is out, they’ve agreed to a movie deal, proceeds split between him and his collaborator. And then I think, well, look how much Kick-Ass made. It’s not that crazy — it’s pretty smart. We’re just seeing a rise of adaptations of comics. They just announced Sex Criminals is going to be a show. They just announced Ecstasy on 1600 Penn is going to be a movie. This is the time of adaptations. And I’m surprised more people don’t cosplay Ghost Machine characters. I’ve seen Redcoats at conventions. If someone does cosplay Pranky — I don’t know if I’d be grateful or terrified.

Rob Leigh [00:20:00]: Yeah, if I’m walking down the convention hall and I see a little Pranky coming my way, I might about-face.

Drew Mollo [00:20:06]: Yeah — turn around and run.

Kari [00:20:10]: You know who needs to do it? Clint Howard. He terrifies me. Ice Cream Man — done. He’d be a fun grown-up Pranky.

Rob Leigh [00:20:25]: I can’t fool a kid anymore.

[Kari asks about “Danny” — confirmed by Rob as “Danny”; Kari thanks Danny for materials sent to the show. Danny appears to be a Ghost Machine PR/communications contact.]

Drew Mollo [00:20:52]: And thank you for confirming — I had to verify with you instead of just taking Pete Tomasi at his word. You know, he’s a bit of a trickster.

Drew Mollo [00:21:00]: You can’t believe a thing Pete says. He used to be an editor at one point — he edited one of my favorite DC series in the ’90s, Hitman. And I actually had him sign the book. But I got to see Pete at New York Comic-Con, and he was so chill. He had his sunglasses on for the selfie — he was so exhausted. So I just have a selfie of Pete Tomasi with sunglasses. That’s a cool guy.

Rob Leigh [00:22:08]: Yeah, he’s good people. In fact, he was the one who facilitated Geoff and me working together for the first time. I was still inking back then. Geoff was co-writing JSA with David Goyer. It was an all-hands-on-deck inking assignment, so I got a few of those pages to work on.

[KUBERT SCHOOL / NETWORKING — 00:22:31–00:25:15]

Drew Mollo

[00:22:31]: I was rereading some of your background in more depth, and I love that you were a student at the Kubert School in Jersey, and then years later, you’re teaching there. Full circle. And you had this wonderful story — you said something like, you learned as much from the people you sat next to as you did from the people teaching in front of you.

Rob Leigh [00:23:26]: Yeah, because you’re pushing each other — or even not outwardly doing it, but you’re seeing somebody else’s work, and everybody kind of grows at different rates. All of a sudden you’ll see somebody have a breakthrough, and it kind of lights a fire under your behind to step up your game. And this is what I used to tell my students — stay in touch with the people you’re in school with. And don’t be an ass either, because I’ve gotten work through classmates. I’ve helped get classmates work. It’s all networking. It’s not calculated to be so, but it’s a great way to move through the industry, to get your foot in the door. After the first couple years in the business, I don’t think I ever needed to go out to try to get work. It always seemed to come because you do work for somebody. And if you’re as good as your word and you have some talent, people want to work with people that are not going to screw them over, people that they like. And as time goes by, people tend to migrate through different companies — sometimes within comics, and sometimes I’m dealing with people I used to work with in comics who now work in children’s books. You never know. So it pays to be nice, and it doesn’t cost you anything.

Leo [00:25:15]: I totally agree. For the last 20 years, that’s how every job I’ve gotten is through networking. It all comes down to your attitude. People remember you being nice and helping somebody out. It’s critical. But I was going to bring up — speaking of working with other talent — Ghost Machine, the amount of talent and the quality of books, it was very reminiscent, especially since you’re on year two, of a very early Image. How is the energy at Ghost Machine? Is there talk of expanding or bringing in new talent?

Rob Leigh [00:26:09]: We’re pretty conservative in that approach. It’s more a matter of if we see a need to fill in a piece, then we’ll go after that. But we’re not willy-nilly looking just to keep growing without purpose, without a plan. We move at our own pace; we gather the pieces as we see fit. And a lot of that’s to Geoff’s credit. He’s very wise in that regard.

[GHOST MACHINE CREATIVE UNIVERSE / INTERCONNECTED BOOKS — 00:26:46–00:30:30]

Kari [00:26:46]: I love how everything ties together. Rereading to catch up, I’m seeing Hyde Street characters — I think it was Sisterhood and Pranky walking through somewhere in Hornsby & Halo — everybody’s interconnected. And the Northern are coming out. Half of this show is going to be me going, oh my God, I was so happy.

Drew Mollo [00:27:23]: If it wasn’t you, it would be me. So — and if not me, it’d be MJ. And if not any of us, well, then it’d just be a show with Leo.

Kari [00:27:30]: Oh, real quick, Drew — I threw this up on the Ghost Machine Comics subreddit that we were going to do this, and asked if anybody had questions. Somebody mentioned: “Not a question, but you should tell him Hornsby & Halo number 13 was probably his best work yet. He really stood out on that one.”

Rob Leigh [00:27:59]: Oh, well, thank you very much.

Kari [00:28:00]: I wanted to pass that along.

Rob Leigh [00:28:09]: You know, that’s the fun thing about our projects — so many of them are so different from one another. So I get to use little different corners of my brain to work on different assignments.

Drew Mollo [00:28:21]: It’s like you guys are a comic book Breakfast Club. A little bit of everybody in the same space. One of my favorite things was the Rockefellers Halloween cover where the family are all dressed as Ghost Machine characters. I was done. Especially because Grandpa was Pranky.

Rob Leigh [00:28:53]: Well, that’s us having fun with it. Everybody likes to be part of everybody else’s, you know.

Drew Mollo [00:29:04]: It was so cute. You got the brother as Geiger, the dad’s X-Ray, the mom’s Redcoat, Pranky, and then —

MJ [00:29:28]: Roland is Mr. X-Ray.

Rob Leigh [00:29:29]: How about Barney?

Drew Mollo [00:29:31]: Yeah, I didn’t notice that until just now.

Kari [00:29:35]: Mark McKeever has 98% of all the covers produced. I am so proud.

Rob Leigh [00:30:02]: I have them all and I’ve hardly even tried.

Drew Mollo [00:30:05]: It’s like you guys are a variety pack where no one gets left out. Something for everybody at Ghost Machine.

Rob Leigh [00:30:28]: Sure. It’s a buffet, right? You don’t have to eat everything at the buffet, but sample it, and hopefully you like most of it. There’s something for everybody.

[LETTERING CRAFT — SOUND EFFECTS & PLACEMENT — 00:30:38–00:37:01]

Drew Mollo [00:30:38]: Me and Kari had this kind of competition about how many pages we could come back with where we’d say, oh yeah, I love what Rob did here. And I swear — the way you do the O’s in your BOOMs, to frame things, how it’s always slightly tilted, like at some point of being in 3D. Like wearing 3D glasses, watching the BOOM come at your face.

Rob Leigh [00:31:32]: [Rob and Kari look at sample pages sent by Danny; show panel views on stream — discussion of Ghost Machine logo and lettering samples]

[Merchandise plug — Kari promotes Ghost Machine shirts; Rob confirms the quality of the dad hats — 00:31:32–00:32:09]

Drew Mollo [00:32:17]: Do you sound-bubble your own life? You make a sound and it just appears out of nowhere — BAM, BOOM, OW.

Rob Leigh [00:32:33]: My wife says when I eat I make noises, but I don’t pay attention.

MJ [00:32:40]: The transparency of some of these letters — it’s so cool.

Kari [00:32:43]: I love how you’ve been so patient with me over the years when I ask questions. Like I’ve wanted to know: how did you get this laid over that so neatly and transparently? It’s added another layer. And I feel like on my comic journey — as I’ve been learning more about the process — maybe I’m not the only one who needed to know about that.

Rob Leigh [00:33:50]: Well, that’s how you learn, right? You dissect stuff that you like.

Kari

[00:33:53]: And like when I first interviewed you, I loved how you bookmarked Joker’s head with the BLAM, BLAM, BLAM. You always have this motion with the way you do everything — you’re adding to the reading. The motion in your stuff lets us see how the sound follows, which makes us imagine how things are going on the page. We can see the picture but you give it the motion. And most people wouldn’t notice an average letterer versus a good one. But you are an amazing one because you give us all of that motion. How did you in particular learn to do all of that?

Rob Leigh [00:35:07]: Well, I think mostly it’s a matter of staying involved in the page and wanting to contribute to the storytelling. You have these tools. I’m working digitally, so the letters are pliable — I can pull and squash them like silly putty. So why not do it? But do it in a way that either conforms with the shape of the sound, how the sound is moving across the panel, or to help it point out an important element in the page, or to help it move to the next panel. I never liked when sound effects just — the little BOOM — it almost looked like it was rubber-stamped on the page. I want to make it look like it was part of the art, part of something that the artist intended on doing. You have these tools — why not use them? Not to get in the way of the art and the story, but to enhance it and support it.

Drew Mollo [00:36:11]: And that’s another great thing about your style — it is a part of the page. It’s really easy to crowd a panel with speech bubbles, action details, and then any sound effect would just be claustrophobic. But everything, like you said, it flows. It’s kind of like in movies when you have a composer doing the music — it brings out a new level. Kudos to you on taking the work even higher.

Rob Leigh [00:37:01]: Thank you.

[AUDIENCE QUESTION — ORIGINAL ART COLLECTION — 00:37:03–00:38:19]

Kari [00:37:03]: Audience question: Rob, you have to marvel at the art you receive from the talents you letter. Do you have some original art in your collection?

Rob Leigh [00:37:17]: I have a Gary Frank piece from when we were working on Doomsday Clock. But I don’t have that much original art — I’m looking around. I’ve got some stuff on the walls. I have some old comic strip art, but not too much. I have a couple of drawers full of my old art returns, my old inks and stuff. I don’t have a substantial art collection, as you might think.

[DOOMSDAY CLOCK — DAVE GIBBONS FONT / STYLE — 00:37:47–00:39:33]

Drew Mollo

[00:37:47]: And it’s interesting you bring up Doomsday Clock — when you were working on that, you were kind of mimicking that Watchmen, Dave Gibbons kind of style. How do you find the balance where it’s not “hi, I’m an imitation Gibbons” — I’m me but I’m paying homage?

Rob Leigh [00:38:19]: Well, we were shooting to look somewhat like Watchmen, so my balloon shapes were based on Dave’s work, right? I used the Dave Gibbons font — Comicraft makes it. I actually had some guy track me down while I was working on that, and I got a message on Facebook one day. I guess he liked the book, but he said: “I hate, hate, hate, hate the font that you chose.” So I just said, I’m going to give you the same advice that Mr. Spado gave me, my coach in Little League when I was 8 years old and I took a fastball to the, um — walk it off.

Leo [00:39:06]: Wow, nice.

Rob Leigh [00:39:13]: We were going for that look, so we wanted to emulate that. We weren’t trying to fool anybody that Dave was working on it. But it was important for that project to be more Dave than more Rob, and I was fine with that. That’s what the project called for.

[HAND LETTERING / DIGITAL TRANSITION / FONTS — 00:39:33–00:42:13]

Kari [00:39:33]: I personally use the Adam Warren Pro font for my birthday cards. But you know—

Rob Leigh [00:39:46]: Lettering is not like hand lettering. I can be schizophrenic — I can be anybody.

Kari [00:39:54]: But we’re all going to letter it differently.

Rob Leigh [00:39:56]: Even if we’re given the same font, we’re going to letter it differently, right?

Kari [00:40:00]: That was something I wanted to bring up again for people who haven’t caught some of our earlier episodes — we actually had someone on who was like, nobody hand letters anymore. Nobody does any hand lettering. People haven’t hand lettered for 20 years. And it was like—

Rob Leigh [00:40:22]: There are a few people out there.

Kari [00:40:24]: Yeah — Art Baltazar, he technically does it on a computer, but he’s drawing his own lettering. And when original art was brought up, I have my first page I ever got — it’s a Phil Hester piece, and it has the lettering like glued onto it. A cutout word balloon stuck to the page — from way back when.

Rob Leigh [00:40:54]: One of the production managers. I used to hand that out for overtime at night to the guys — and women — in the production department. Take a few pages to paste up tonight for some OT.

Kari [00:41:07]: Wow. So what was it like when you were actually doing hand lettering?

Rob Leigh [00:41:15]: I didn’t do too much hand lettering. I did have a page rate for doing it, but that was back when I was working in production — they were in a bind. I had to mimic somebody else’s, whoever the regular letterer was — just do a few pages. But I never worked as a hand letterer as a career path. I went from production art, inking, and then directly into digital lettering. Although I love — it was one of my favorite classes in school. I was taught the traditional way to letter, which was great. Even though I don’t do that now, I can still draw from that in terms of how I want it to look. You still kind of want it to look like it was done the hand-lettered way.

[MAD MAGAZINE — 00:42:13–00:52:05]

Kari [00:42:13]: So when you were back at Mad Magazine — that was digital back then?

Rob Leigh [00:42:20]: Yeah — that was when we had started the in-house lettering department at DC. And as you probably know, MAD was part of the DC family.

Kari [00:42:34]: Can you pull those up? [to Leo — Rob had sent MAD magazine page images featuring “Monroe,” a recurring character]

Leo [00:42:39]: Were they in the folder?

Kari [00:42:43]: Yep.

Rob Leigh [00:42:43]: Yes, I had sent them to Kari. [Images of Monroe feature pages shared on stream]

Rob Leigh

[00:43:05]: MAD was part of the DC family, but they were autonomous as well. We shared some services, but they had their own editorial staff, their own production department. We were at 1700 Broadway — across the street from the old Letterman studio — and they were on the same floor that I was on. When we started this digital lettering department, we were trying to get the MAD Magazine account, at least for some things. Comicraft had been working on this particular feature up until that point. My boss and his boss thought it would be a nice feather in our cap if we could sell MAD on us doing some work for them. So I worked up some pages and they were happy enough. I wound up doing that feature for about 6 or 7 years until it ran its course — and I guess the magazine folded for a while. It’s relaunched since then. I always loved working with those guys. I loved Mad Magazine as a kid, so it was a nice little feather in my cap personally to be able to check that off — to have been part of their storied history. I liked working with Sam Viviano, Ryan Flanders, and then later Doug Thompson. And it was a good experience.

Kari [00:44:39]: Mad Magazine was technically the first comic I ever read. At the ice cream parlor in my really small town, which was also a pharmacy, they had a little stand on the back of the booth where you could look at different magazines. Most of them were like Women’s Wear Daily for the ladies in town, but they had Mad Magazine. I’d sit there and flip through it while my mom ate donuts. My dad collected it. I always got a kick out of reading Mad — all the little marginalia and Spy vs. Spy and everything going on was really fun. And this guy Monroe — he’s like the biggest geek.

Rob Leigh [00:45:52]: Yeah, he’s just a big loser.

Kari [00:45:56]: Yeah — Monroe could win a million dollars and then it’d turn out he was catfished, and the car broke down, and everything would be wrong from Monroe’s life. But he’s drawn really cool.

Rob Leigh [00:46:35]: So the page we’re looking at now — that’s when Bill Wray was illustrating it, and then later Tom Fowler was the artist. When Bill was on it, this was the style Comicraft had kind of established — that in addition to your regular word balloon, there’d be other call-out words that were almost like miniature titles. This was a 4-page feature. There were a lot of balloons, and it would take me all day to do the 4 pages. But it was a great training — my brain had to personalize each one of these little callouts. It was a lot of work. But it kind of helped my design sense, and it helped me when I was doing a lot of titles for DC later on.

It was brutal early on because we had a quota — I think 13 pages a day minimum. And so I would do these 4. After a couple months of doing this, my supervisor — Nick Napolitano, he’s now a VP at DC, he was also a classmate of mine — he said, I’m going to do next month’s. I said, okay, you’re the boss. He did. Then the month after, he said: “It’s all yours.” He realized why it took as long as it did. But when Tom Fowler became the artist, we changed the style and weren’t doing as many of the really miniature titles. So I moved a little quicker at that point.

Leo [00:48:36]: Sorry if you mentioned — when did you start with MAD?

Rob Leigh [00:48:42]: I went back to DC on staff in 2003. I think I was there from 2003 to 2006. It was right around 2003 or 2004 that I started this feature with the guys from MAD. And I kept it — I want to say until 2009, maybe a little bit later than that. But I always liked those guys. They were just fun people to work with.

Kari [00:49:16]: It’s really hard to find credits for those contributions. The “usual gang of idiots.”

Rob Leigh [00:50:00]: I don’t think I even got credit for it in the magazine, which is fine — until like the last issue, when Sam wanted to make sure I got in there.

Kari [00:50:16]: What was it like being one of the usual gang of idiots? You don’t get so much credit.

Rob Leigh [00:50:37]: Anybody who’s a contributor to MAD is part of the usual gang of idiots.

Kari [00:50:43]: Do you have like a club — like, you can always say you were part of it?

Rob Leigh [00:51:05]: I do have a nice little memento. When one of the women in the MAD offices — the art director back then was Jonathan Schneider — she was going to a wedding and brought my book. She got all the MAD artists who were there to sign it for me. I think Jack Davis, Berg, Bob Clark — all these guys. That’s a nice little memento from my time there.

Kari [00:51:43]: I want to do that. I have like 50 years of MAD, and I’m like, how do I track down who all these different people were?

Rob Leigh [00:52:05]: So many of these guys are gone now. Like Al Jaffee. I got to work with him on a SpongeBob project — we did a fold-in. We couldn’t call it a fold-in, but it was a fold-in.

[GHOST MACHINE — IMPRINT ORIGINS / GROWING PAINS — 00:52:27–00:54:00]

Kari [00:52:27]: Going from a company hire to an actual company owner — what growing pain lessons have you and the rest of the Ghost Machine team learned in running an imprint?

Rob Leigh

[00:52:54]: I can’t say that I’m learning more about the business side of what goes on behind the art. But I just felt comfortable from the beginning working with these people. Most of us had worked on mutual projects for years, so it was new, but it was also very familiar. It was a very seamless transition.

Kari [00:53:27]: I love that you guys have been all friends too — like you were saying, making the network so that you’re all together on things.

Rob Leigh [00:53:38]: Yeah, there’s a lot of behind-the-scenes chatter. Obviously the fans wouldn’t see our own little chats with one another. Sometimes it’s about the art, sometimes it’s about business, but sometimes it’s just ball-busting and having fun with each other and enjoying the relationships that we have.

[BOLD TEXT / LETTERING CRAFT — 00:54:00–00:58:21]

Kari

[00:54:00]: I have some questions about strange things with lettering. Sometimes when I’m reading different comics, there are bold words that just don’t really make sense where they’re bolded. Do you find that particular authors just tend to write that way? And do you ever question their style, or do you just immediately follow through with what they say?

Rob Leigh [00:54:52]: If they put bolds in, I tend to stay with what they’ve done. But I’ll also add my own if I see that it makes the balloon more readable, if it draws the reader to something they should be paying attention to, or if it’s enhancing the acting. People don’t act in a monotone — there are inflections. And so you want to portray that. That’s why we do it. We also do it oftentimes the first time a character is introduced — they’ll name-check that and pop that name just to let the reader know: this is a new character, pay attention.

Kari [00:55:39]: Okay.

Rob Leigh [00:55:39]: And some writers don’t like bolds at all. But to me it reads very flat. I don’t know why you wouldn’t put some emphasis in, put some acting into your word balloons.

Kari [00:55:51]: That makes more sense to me now. I notice it especially because we do live reads and Drew tends to copy the text so we can do them. There’ll be bold words where I’m just like — oh, because you’re drawing attention to something on the screen when you’re doing it live. That makes a lot more sense when it’s written rather than read aloud.

Rob Leigh [00:56:27]: I just think it’s a way of simulating speech. We do change inflection when we’re speaking. I’ve had writers say, “Can I put the bolds in after, because I have to see it first before I know where the bolds are?” And I’m thinking — how can that be so? Because I’m hearing it in my head as I’m reading it. Why aren’t you doing that as the writer?

MJ [00:57:04]: Why can’t you do the same thing?

Rob Leigh [00:57:08]: But that was the way he worked, so—

Kari [00:57:12]: Yeah, it has to be a movie and not an audible, I guess.

Rob Leigh [00:57:39]: And sometimes I get it wrong too. I’ll add a bold and then get notes back saying, take that out and put this word bold instead, which is fine. But yeah — Geoff and Peter and Maital and Brad — they’re not precious and possessive with their scripts. So I feel like I’m not stepping on toes if I add something, and they’re always welcome to say back it off a little bit. We’re all working for the same goal.

[FONT SELECTION PHILOSOPHY — 00:58:21–01:00:15]

Leo

[00:58:21]: Each book has its own tone and attitude. What goes into your font choosing for the attitude of the book?

Rob Leigh [00:58:35]: So fortunately, for what we’re doing, we’re going to have one — or sometimes two — artists. Like with Hyde, we’ll have Ivan and Francis switching off. But for the most part, we have a solitary artist on a book, so I’m looking for something that’s going to really marry with their art. And then I want to think: what’s the amount of copy going in there?

Now, Rook is a copy-heavy book, so I needed to choose something that’s a little more condensed in type in order to fit everything in. I also saw Rook as a classic comic strip — like a modern-day Prince Valiant or Tarzan. So I wanted something that paid a little bit of tribute to those great illustrated adventure strips of those days. But like Hornsby & Halo — I want to play with Peter’s art. His is a little bit more playful to me. He’s our pure cartoonist — very economical in his work. So I want to do that with the fonts I chose.

Kari [00:59:58]: Rook is very —

Leo [01:00:03]: Yeah, you definitely do a great job. It gives its own feel for each book.

[AUDIENCE QUESTION — PLACEMENT / PROBLEM SOLVING — 01:00:15–01:04:27]

Kari

[01:00:15]: Another question from the audience: Rob, can it be hard to place your lettering over the art? Have you covered more than you wanted to? Do the artists leave space for your work?

Rob Leigh [01:00:33]: That’s a great question. As I’ve been doing this longer, placement is vital to telling a strong story, to helping a story. Yeah — sometimes in the past, I’ve been squeezing 10 pounds of shit into a 5-pound sack. But I don’t find that with our books. Sometimes there are challenging panels, but I have enough little tricks that I can make it work. Sometimes I’ll break up a balloon. Sometimes I’ll shift one to another panel if it makes sense. Sound effects — I don’t think you always have to read them letter by letter. So I don’t mind cutting off a sound effect using a panel border to prune it, where you’re seeing just enough to know what it means but it’s out of the way because there’s more important stuff going on. But yeah — I have little tricks that I can do to cheat things to make them work. So far I have not been painted into a corner that I can recall.

Leo [01:02:24]: There was one — I can’t remember the book, but it was recent — where the dog was doing a howl and it was a small panel, but you followed the “AROOO” around the panel and it just fit perfectly. But you knew as the artist drew it, he didn’t leave any room for you whatsoever.

Drew Mollo [01:02:47]: [Drew makes a joke about Leo keeping saying “draw” — hearing it as “Drew”]

Rob Leigh [01:03:03]: But this is one of the fun things about lettering — it’s problem solving. And I love solving these little puzzles.

Kari [01:03:09]: We’ve referenced before — the letterer is kind of the bass player of the band. You lead people through, you got the rhythm, you keep it going, while everybody else has their solos and their big splash pages. You keep things melodic and flowing, keep the rhythm going. And this is kind of your bass solo right there — you get the CHOOM over everything, but it’s not hiding anything. It’s there, and the whole panel feels like it’s coming through that word. But you’re completely letting the artist put their full art on.

Rob Leigh [01:04:06]: Yeah, it’s not random. There’s a lot of deliberate thought that goes into that. How can I use this to give that sense of sound and how big the sound is — but I can also use it to zero in on that central vehicle.

[ROOK ARACHNID ISSUE — 01:04:27–01:07:00]

Kari [01:04:27]: We’ve got a lot of different pages, and I left out one — the arachnid issue. I left it out so Leo couldn’t pull it up.

Rob Leigh [01:05:01]: Thank you.

Kari [01:05:02]: Because it gave me the heebie-jeebies. With everything you’ve lettered — have you ever had to letter something where it was really hard for you to look at the page?

Rob Leigh [01:06:29]: I don’t think so. I think I’ve been okay with it. I might have been a little itchy working on that issue.

MJ [01:06:35]: A little itchy.

Rob Leigh [01:06:39]: Might have checked the covers before I climbed into bed, but yeah. No, no, no.

[GHOST MACHINE MERCH — 01:07:00–01:08:12 — [SPONSOR/PROMO: Ghost Machine merch plug by Kari; Rob confirms quality of dad hats]]

[THE SNIPS — CHILDREN’S BOOK / ALA AWARD — 01:08:12–01:12:00]

Leo

[01:08:12]: Kari, you had this in the folder. I wanted to make sure we covered this.

Kari [01:08:25]: Oh yes — this is the Snips that you just got.

Rob Leigh [01:08:29]: Right.

Kari [01:08:29]: Tell us about this.

Rob Leigh [01:08:32]: Yeah, so this goes back to my earlier point about networking. I worked with this artist — a man by the name of Raúl the Third. Raúl and I first worked together on SpongeBob. Our editor on SpongeBob was a guy by the name of Chris Duffy. Chris Duffy I knew from years ago when he was one of the Superman editors. After he left DC, he went on to work as the editor on SpongeBob. And now he’s with Union Square Kids, or Union Square Young Readers. So I’ve done work for them. But this was for another imprint — this is Little Brown Ink, Hachette Publishing’s children’s line. Raúl got this job — I guess he pitched it as writer and artist — and then asked the editor and art director if they could bring me on as the letterer. Which I gladly did. I try to do one or two of these children’s books a year. It’s a nice change of pace and it helps me see comics in a different way. And I think it later reflects into my conventional comics.

I got a phone call a week or two ago, and I saw the caller ID: American Library Association. I just thought it was somebody hitting me up for money. So I screened for a while. Then they said they wanted to talk to me about some awards. I said, all right, I’ll pick it up. And yeah — we got recognized with a roundtable within the American Library Association. This is the first year they’re doing these awards. So we got an honor mention in this, and we’re very proud of that.

Drew Mollo [01:10:37]: Oh, it’s absolutely well done.

Rob Leigh [01:10:40]: And the second volume just dropped last week — Snips and Enter the Wig Master. Available at Amazon or where fine books are sold.

Kari [01:10:51]: The first book is The Snips: A Bad Buzz Day, and currently it’s on sale for 48% off on Amazon for the hardback edition, and like 33% off if you’re a Kindle person.

Rob Leigh [01:11:16]: Yeah, support your artists.

[WRITER COLLABORATION / GHOST MACHINE CREATIVE PROCESS — 01:11:20–01:13:11]

Kari [01:11:20]: Another audience question: How involved are you with the dialogue of the characters, and have you requested changes from the writers to heighten the storytelling?

Rob Leigh [01:11:32]: Yeah — I don’t get carried away, but I’ll put suggestions in the margins of my proofs if I see something. Maybe this could be worded a little bit better. Not too many. But I put them in there and the writers usually take my suggestions — sometimes not, which is fine. That’s part of being a team. We don’t all just stick in our lane. I’m getting advice from the writer, from the artist, from the colorist, and vice versa. In fact, with Ghost Machine, I get to work with our colorist, Brad Anderson, and we’re always talking about what we can do. I’m able to do more things with Ghost Machine than I could with other companies because I was just working over black and whites. But to the question — yeah, our writers are pretty cool about input. In fact, Geoff loves collaboration and invites it. Which really makes you feel comfortable when you’re working — you can have some input, and they’re always welcome to say, back it off a little bit. We’re all working for the same goal.

[REDCOAT MOVIE / ADAPTATION STATUS — 01:12:55–01:14:15]

Kari

[01:12:55]: Before we start wrapping things up — what can you tell us about the Redcoat movie with Atlas, or the movie solicitation, or whatever stage it’s at right now?

Rob Leigh [01:13:11]: It’s in the early stages, but all signs seem to be trending positively, as they say. We look forward to that. We fanboy out and say who we’d like to cast, but I’m not heavily involved in that. I’m not taking any meetings with the producers or with that group. But we’re all very excited about it — not just those of us who work on Redcoat, but throughout the Ghost Machine company. We’re very proud of it, as we are of all our projects. And we know they’re all going to see life in video games, movies, TV, or what have you. But first and foremost, we are a comic book company. So we love the idea of movies, but we are comic book people.

[MAD GHOST vs GHOST MACHINE NAME — 01:14:40–01:15:18]

Kari [01:14:40]: Great question from the live audience: Why the imprint name change from Mad Ghost to Ghost Machine?

Rob Leigh [01:14:54]: Mad Ghost was Jeff’s — Geoff’s. That was his personal imprint, and that’s where we first — I think Junkyard Joe was a Mad Ghost project. In some ways it was a proof of concept for what would then become Ghost Machine. But that was Geoff’s personal baby.

[WORKLOAD / BOOKS — 01:15:18–01:17:17]

Leo

[01:15:18]: How many books are you currently working on yourself? What’s your workload right now?

Rob Leigh [01:15:24]: Well, everything that we do, I do. So that’s Geiger, Rook — trying to think in order — Redcoat—

Kari [01:15:41]: Seven and the Extras, Hyde—

Rob Leigh [01:15:45]: And then we have First Ghost. I think I’ve got 7 or 8 books going on. My days get kind of blurry because I usually work on 3 different projects in a day. I’m working on this job, then pages are up for this, so I’ll switch gears and go to that. It’s a constant state of flux over here, plus moving the cats out of the way.

Kari [01:16:13]: Do you have a favorite baby — maybe not even a book but a character — like, I just really love this one?

Drew Mollo [01:16:26]: Like, Kari, we talked about this.

Kari [01:16:30]: We did have the thing with Rook. I forgot to bring it up — I love that Rook is such a text-heavy book and you are — because it kind of recaps pretty much every issue, like, “In case you missed it, we came here, we did this, I am Rook.” And it gets to where it’s filling a lot, but you do pretty good with it.

Rob Leigh [01:16:58]: Yeah, they’re pros. They know what they’re doing.

Rob Leigh [01:17:03]: They all scratch different itches.

Kari [01:17:05]: You don’t have a favorite little character — like, I just love drawing this one particular thing?

Rob Leigh [01:17:17]: Yeah, I mean — Pranky’s fun, you know. He’s just so insane, that little shit.

Kari [01:17:25]: I knew it.

Rob Leigh [01:17:25]: Reminds me of people in my life.

Rob Leigh [01:17:29]: Simon — I mean, Simon’s a gas. They’re all great.

[FIRST GHOST RELEASE DATE — 01:17:34–01:17:53]

Kari [01:17:34]: Is there a First Ghost release date?

Rob Leigh [01:17:37]: That I don’t know — I’m not being coy. I’m not sure. That’s a Danny thing. I’m letters. I’m in my lane.

[WRAP — HOBBIES / CABIN / OUTDOORS — 01:18:12–01:20:00]

Leo [01:18:12]: MJ, any questions before we wrap up?

MJ [01:18:15]: I’m good. You guys pretty much covered everything I was going to ask.

Kari [01:18:19]: Hey — follow the subreddit and follow the Discord too to get extra stuff.

Leo [01:18:25]: Yeah, and Danny, keep us in mind — we’re adding to our website, so we’re going to be putting some news up there afterwards.

Leo [01:18:37]: So Rob — we talked about your wildlife photography and your hunting. What else do you do? Any other hobbies?

Rob Leigh [01:18:58]: I don’t think I’m a collector. I mean, I see some of my old GI Joes over there from the ’60s and early ’70s, but no — I’m at that point in my life where you don’t keep adding. You look to divest yourself of certain things. But I have a little cabin that I’m working on, that I’m building up in the North Country — it’s off-grid. I’ll be tapping some maple trees next month, making some syrup.

Leo [01:19:34]: Oh wow, oh nice.

Rob Leigh [01:19:36]: Do some kayaking up there when the ice is gone.

Kari [01:19:41]: You like a true outdoors? I’m always amazed by you. You’re just like, I’m gonna be making some maple syrup. You know, I took some pictures of some bears, and then I was lettering 3 comics today, and then—

Drew Mollo [01:19:57]: Then I took a nap.

Kari [01:20:00]: Then I took out my hatchet and started making a log cabin. It was fabulous.

MJ [01:20:05]: I used to hunt and fish a lot, but when it comes to the maple trees, the most I do is go to the sugar house.

[CLOSING / SOCIAL MEDIA / NEXT GUEST — 01:20:18–01:24:29]

Leo [01:20:18]: We’ll wrap things up. Rob, where do you like people interacting with you on social media?

Rob Leigh [01:20:25]: Instagram — Rob Leigh Comics. That’s the best place.

Leo [01:20:32]: Awesome. Well, I want to thank everybody for watching this fine evening. For more information on Rob, definitely check the show notes. Check out Ghost Machine — they’re doing some awesome stuff. We read everything they put out. If you’re not reading Ghost Machine, go to your local LCS and request some.

Kari [01:20:59]: I had so much fun tonight, if you couldn’t tell. If you want to find me, go to Kari Sanders over on Facebook. I write things — I’m published in a couple of Lovecraftian novellas and horror anthology or two. Go look at my stuff, read my things, it’ll be fun.

MJ [01:21:59]: I can be found on Instagram at TheCheeryGoth. I’ll be starting work on commissions for my cosplay things and some personal builds I’ll be posting soon.

Drew Mollo [01:22:29]: Thank you so much for joining. And thank you, Rob. If you liked what you saw, please make sure to follow Rob — he could always use more comments on any of his bear photos. Also like and subscribe to Splash Pages. And now it’s a new month, which means I can tell you: tomorrow, AK, we will have creator extraordinaire Mr. John Timms joining us. We’re going to be talking about Aquaman, Harley Quinn, Bizarro, and whatever else. It’s gonna be awesome. And there’s another guest coming this Saturday — stay tuned.

Leo [01:24:18]: Okay, with that, we’ll catch you later.

Kari [01:24:20]: Bye-bye, everybody. Thank you so much.

Drew Mollo [01:24:23]: Bye-bye, Ghost Machine.

Kari [01:24:24]: Subscribe.

— End of transcript — EP151, Rob Leigh, February 3, 2026