I'm also a huge fan of Orzechowski, who seemed to letter every X-book with flair and creativity.

But I really liked the letterer on Simonson's Thor run. I want to say it was Workman (maybe Vince Workman?), but I don't have any issues at hand to say for sure. It was really great lettering, though, especially the sound effects. BARAKAKATHOOM!

Another interesting facet of the comic strip were the unique speech balloons that several characters were drawn with. One character, Deacon Mushrat, an educated muskrat, spoke in speech balloons with decorated Gothic style lettering. The village mortician, Sarcophagas Macabre, a vulture, had square, black-framed speech balloons with fine script lettering, resembling funeral announcements. P.T. Bridgeport, a bear and showman/promoter of questionable repute, spoke with speech balloons in highly decorated type, resembling 19th century circus posters.

Many of the other letterers listed here are pretty good, but I'm surprised that Artie Simek hasn't been mentioned in the comments yet. He was great - I've been reading through the Essential Spider-man collections recently, and you can really see a difference on the issues he lettered. Definitely a reason to love comics.

Bob Lappan is my favorite letterer. I can't think of anyone else whose work is as pleasing to my eye.

Just wondering, though...how far gone do you have to be, as a comics fan, to have a favorite letterer? Note that I implicate myself here as well.

John Costanza is an excellent letterer that others have mentioned already, and I always think of 'Swamp Thing' whenever I see his lettering (he was the letterer during Alan Moore's classic run.) Bob Lappan and Gaspar Saladino both deserve mad props for giving themselves that distinctive single moniker, elegantly lettered--"Gaspar" and "Lappan" both are brands among letterers. Bob Pinaha always has a distinctively "fun" style of lettering, which is probably just association with his Heckler run to me. Tom Orzechowski's run on X-Men deserves respect, as does John Workman's FF run--to this day, his lettering is intertwined with Byrne's art in my mind. Richard Starkings, as I understand it, deserves a lot of respect as a pioneer in computer lettering...

But you have to give props to today's pick, because Todd Klein's run on Sandman is absolutely magnificent. His use of different fonts to represent different characters really gives a sense of "hearing" people speak in the series, and he put a lot of effort into designing the font for each character and putting their personality right into the letters. (And there are a lot of them, too. ISTR hearing something like 78 different fonts over the 75 issues of the series, including a font for each member of the Endless.)

I never much followed letterers. I know Starkings but probably more for his ads and Hip Flask more than anything else. It really is a thankless job and the few that actually do something with it to make it special (instead of just putting words in boxes) can make a book 100 times better.

This leads me to one of MY favorite comic things. When diferent characters have their own baloon fonts or colors. Like Vision's green and yellow robot font (a progression from his old very computerized letters). I like when the baloon alone gives you an idea about what the character is like. Thats when comics are working on more than one level.

He did over 200 issues of the Uncanny X-men, and Spawn.

I don't know all his credits, but he's pretty damn good.

Andy

TODD KLEIN?!

I kid. Todd Klein rocks, (although it would be great if the letterers couple of days brought as much controversy as strips did.)

Richard Starkings is a prety obvious choice. His work on Conan alone is a reason to love comics. And Tom Orzechowski(sp?) was the first letterer I ever knew by name, so I'd vote for him too.