'den not 'don

The beautiful and assured lettering on view in the above Curt Swan Jimmy Olsen page is by Pat Gorden. That's right, I wrote "Pat Gorden" and not "Pat Gordon."

I reported previously how the identity of this mystery letter had vexed me and others for years. In his note to me on the matter, Mike Tiefenbacher spelled Laura Sprang's pseudonym with an unusual "en" suffix, but just about every other reference was spelling the name in the more common manner as "Gordon." I wrote back to Mike and told him of my conundrum, that I had gone with the majority and spelled the name as "Gordon" in my article but that I would change it to "Gorden" if he was certain.

Mike wrote back that he was pretty sure that that was the information given to him by letterer Milt Snappin back in 1984, but the matter could be resolved in a definite way by looking at the introduction by Joe Desris in the books that reprinted the Batman newspaper strips (Mike didn't have his copies within reach at that moment).

Well, wouldn't you know, the Hayfamzone Library had a tome of Superman newspaper reprints, but no Batman. I went ahead and ordered a Batman book on ebay and waited for it to arrive. And waited. I wrote the seller asking about the delay and he said, whoops, he'll put it in the mail now. When the book did finally arrive, I found the Joe Desris introduction to contain no mention of Pat Gorden/Gordon; the book I got was the one of Batman Sunday strips and what I was looking for must have been in the book of Batman daily strips.

Enough of this comedy of errors. Mike T. was pretty sure about the spelling and I did find one online resource that agrees, so from this point forward that great letterer will be referred to in The Hayfamzone Blog as Pat Gorden.