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

Roxanne Starr was born in Paris, France and came to New York City at the age of two. Her career in art 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, but decided to take two years off to work as a traffic editor at The National Enquirer before graduating. Her first job out of school was as a graphic designer at a Madison Avenue ad agency.^[3]

Starting Out

In 1980, Roxanne Starr moved to Atlanta and worked as a freelancer in the graphic design field there.^[3] Finally in 1982, Starr used her eye for design to begin lettering comics as well.

When Roxanne Starr's comic book career started off, she hand-lettered. Utilizing her graphic design background, she was one of the first letterers to create fonts that imitated hand-lettering.^[2] There were several independent comic titles at the time that employed computer lettering, but none as high-profile as Flaming Carrot Comics, which Roxanne lettered. Creating her own fonts, she allowed for more exploration as to what could be done with a computer.

Soon after she started to work with Bob Burden on Flaming Carrot, the comic book was picked up and distributed nationally by Canadian-based publisher Aardvark-Vanaheim Comics^[4] (1984).^[1] After years of lettering Flaming Carrot Comics she became the publication's editor when it was picked up by Dark Horse Comics (1988).^[1]

The 1990s

By the early 1990s, her freelancer status in comics was no longer the only venue for the comic book industry in her life. The commercial magazines she worked for at her day job opened up more doors when she was given the job of art director. Notable among the comic book creators that she employed for both covers and interior editorial art were Dave Johnson, Craig Hamilton and Michael Zulli.

The comics’ boom of the 90’s was when Roxanne Starr did most of her professional lettering. She worked on lots of comics including Malibu Comics' Ultraverse imprint (1993–1995) and James D. Hudnall's ESPers (1996–1997). The majority her work was with Caliber Comics lettering Brian Michael Bendis' creator-owned Jinx (1997) and Alan Moore's anthology comic book series Negative Burn (1998).^[1]

NEGATIVE BURN played a key role in her relationships with comics in that Roxanne was able to orchestrate THE ALAN MOORE SONGBOOK, which brought together artists working in all comic book genres to illustrate songs which were written by Moore. FLAMING CARROT comics would be the longest series she contributed to. Also Marvel Comics Architect, Brian Michael Bendis, was teamed up by Negative Burn editor, Joe Pruett, with Roxanne for the lettering on his creator-owned series JINX. A little known fact is that the abandoned Alan Moore and Bill Sienkiewicz project Big Numbers (comics), which was picked up by Kevin Eastman’s company, Tundra Publishing, under the editorship of Paul Jenkins, had Roxanne assigned to re-letter the first two issues 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 Ms. Starr has only surfaced online, and only a handful of times. BIG NUMBERS is now lost numbers in that the series will never be completed.

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.^[5] This campaign had enough backing to create a Flaming Carrot website and store that Roxanne Starr helped design.^[6]

In 2015, Stable Enterprises Press released the first issue of Stable Enterprises, entitled Sexy Enterprises, an illustrated novel in comic form, written by Ms. 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 who Ms. Starr has worked with.^[7]

Awards

Many of the comic books Starr has worked on (like Negative Burn and Flaming Carrot Comics) were nominated or have won various industry awards, including the Harvey Award^[8] and the Eisner Award.^[8][9] Roxanne has also been nominated numerous times, but never won Comic Vine's Community Star award.

References