Lettering, the Invisible Art

iFanboy had a recent podcast on letterers, colorists, and inkers, talking about how these three jobs in the making of comics are often overlooked by fans who seem to concentrate on the writers and artists. I was reminded of their comments on lettering when I came across this passage in my recent reading.

from All-Star Comics, No. 4, March-April 1941, page C. (Click for a novel-sized version)

You could make a case for the first panel, where there's an effort to hide the government official talking to the Justice Society, but that last panel, where the balloon even hides The Flash, makes no sense. This is supposed to be a comic, not a novel, and the point is not to *hide* the characters with words. Older comics were full of this sort of thing, as they still hadn't quite come to reconcile how many words were necessary to get across a story that also contained pictures. There's a lot of unnecessary telling being done in both dialogue and narrative balloons.

The actual content of the text is a product of the war period. In hindsight, however, the logic seems a bit circular ("America is a land of freedom, so we must stop free speech!" as opposed to revealing the lies behind the speech itself).