Born on October 26, 1962, Jack Morelli — full name John Morelli — is an American comic book letterer, writer, and logo designer whose career spans more than four decades and over a thousand individual issues. He entered the industry as a staff letterer at Marvel during the 1980s, where colleagues gave him the nickname "Squid," a nod to a previous stint working on a fishing boat. His lettering hand proved influential enough that artist and writer John Byrne used it as the basis for his own personal computer font.
Captain America #354 (1989)
At Marvel, Morelli also moved into editorial and writing, contributing to titles such as *Warlock and the Infinity Watch*. His most notable scripting credit came with a 1998 *Peter Parker* annual featuring Elektra, in which he introduced the supervillain Silencer. Later, his most sustained body of work came at Archie Comics, where titles including *Archie*, *Betty and Veronica*, and *Afterlife with Archie* kept him consistently busy. That last series earned him the 2015 Harvey Award for Best Letterer.
Captain America #359 (1989)
Beyond comics, Morelli co-authored *Heroes of the Negro Leagues* (2007) with Mark Chiarello, a history of Black baseball published by Abrams that Amazon.com ranked as the second-best sports book of that year. He has also done work for DC Comics, and his lettering and logo design contributions remain a quiet but durable thread running through a substantial portion of mainstream American comics publishing.
