Phil Christie

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...

Shear and utter madness!

KA-SHING of two wrestlers kicking each other

DMF DMF DMF, DM DM DM, and “OOOH!l from wrestlers grappling

Dude with a bruised cheeck and bloody nose going “HYOU!!!”

Ripped guy jumping up to kick someone in the face with the SFX “BA-SHOOM”

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!

Glad you’re doing good and taking it slow. Heal up soon!!

Call me anytime.

In Memoriam: Matt Haasch – Azuki

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.

Damn! That's crazy, haha.
I guess it really is a pattern (and not just me), then.

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.

Horrible news. Never met Matt in person, but he was always seemed like such a great guy 😢

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

Tell your partner thanks! 😊

And thank you for such thoughtful comments. It's not always in my power to change things, but I love hearing new perspectives, so I really appreciate it.

These pages are from the upcoming volume 5, out in November 😀

Yeah, those are all fair points. Making things like this work in English is definitely a tough judgement call 😭

I agree lol. Japanese always looks incredible 🔥🔥🔥

Haha, thanks Zack.

Getting the scale right without squishing letters was the hardest part, but hopefully when the re-lettered version comes out in November it’ll look way better.

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.

All that said, I re-lettered this page (by hand) for the GN. Hopefully, it'll be a bit closer to the original.

Ngl though, that kanji looks so damn sick, it's not easy to compete.

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...

Not often you get to letter how you feel, eh?

Manga speech balloon with the text "Help Meeee!!!" written in ink.

Going back to analogue.

2025 Nominee for Best New Manga: Dragon and Chameleon by Ryo Ishiyama Editor: Edward Hong, Translator: Kevin Yuan, Letterer: Phil Christie, Cover Designer: Phil Balsman Published by Square Enix Manga & Books

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!