Roxanne Starr

Roxanne Starr is an American graphic designer and comic book letterer^[1] who was one of the original pioneers to bring computerized comic book fonts to the industry.^[2]

Biography

Early life and education

Roxanne Starr was born in Paris, France, and came to New York City at the age of two. Her art career started when she was only fourteen, when she took a summer job as a colorist for a textile design company. She later graduated from the City College of New York with a degree in art. She took graphic design at the School of Visual Arts, taking two years off to work as a traffic editor at The National Enquirer. Her first job out of school was as a graphic designer at a Madison Avenue ad agency.^[3]

Flaming Carrot Comics

In 1980, Starr moved to Atlanta and worked as a freelancer in the graphic design field there.^[3] She began lettering comics in 1982, initially with Bob Burden's Flaming Carrot Comics.

At first, Starr hand-lettered, eventually creating fonts that imitated hand-lettering.^[2] By creating her own fonts, she allowed for more exploration as to what could be done with a computer. There were several independent comic titles at the time that employed computer lettering, but none as high-profile as Flaming Carrot.

In 1984, soon after Starr started working on Flaming Carrot, the book was picked up by Canadian-based publisher Aardvark-Vanaheim.^[1][4] Four years later, Starr became Flaming Carrot's editor when it was picked up by Dark Horse Comics.^[1]

The 1990s

By the early 1990s, Starr was freelancing as a comic book letterer while working a day job in the commercial magazine industry. As a commercial art director, she gave cover and interior editorial art assignments to comics artists like Dave Johnson, Craig Hamilton, and Michael Zulli.

In the early 1990s, Starr was assigned by editor Paul Jenkins to re-letter the first two issues of Alan Moore and Bill Sienkiewicz's ultimately unfinished project Big Numbers — which was to be picked up by Tundra Publishing — and continue on as the project letterer of the remaining issues. Big Numbers would halt with only two issues released commercially; the third issue, which was lettered by Starr, has surfaced online only a handful of times. Big Numbers is now "Lost Numbers," in that the series will never be completed.^[5]

Starr did most of her professional lettering during the comics’ boom of the 1990s. In addition to Flaming Carrot Comics, titles she worked on included books published by Malibu Comics' Ultraverse imprint (1993–1995) and James D. Hudnall's ESPers (1996–1997). The majority of her work was with Caliber Comics, lettering Brian Michael Bendis' creator-owned Jinx (1997) and Joe Pruett's anthology comic book series Negative Burn (1998).^[1] Starr lettered a number of "The Alan Moore Songbook" stories in Negative Burn — stories written by Moore and illustrated by a diverse collection of artists.

Currently

Starr currently lives in Atlanta, Georgia, and still works with Bob Burden on his various creator-owned projects,^[1] including his 2012 Flaming Carrot Kickstarter campaign which raised $42,048.^[6] This campaign had enough backing to create a Flaming Carrot website and store that Roxanne Starr helped design.

In 2015, Stable Enterprises Press released the first issue of Stable Enterprises, entitled "Sexy Enterprises," an illustrated novel written by Starr, with art by Timothy Paul. "Sexy Enterprises" is the first chapter of the pseudo-autobiographical parody novel about the comics industry and the many freelance artists with whom Starr has worked.^[7]

References