A Small Thing, But Mine Own

Possibly the most trivial thing ever, but something that struck me the other night.

Here's a panel from X-Men 13 (or X-Women, or XX-Men if you want to play 'I Know Chromosomes')

Notice anything about it? How about this one:

Still not got it? This one's the giveaway:

Look at the lettering; in particular, look at the letter 'I'. Look specifically at the letter 'I' in the words 'I' and 'IT'S' or 'SIM'.  Do you see it now? What the letterer has done is to differentiate between 'I' used as a pronoun and 'I' as part of a larger wordform by using bilateral serifs in the former. It's very clever,  almost subliminal, guiding the reader towards a closer identification with the character who's speaking and also reinforcing the character by strengthening his or her self-image. In this comic, this is the work of "VC's Joe Caramagna" who I presume is Joe Caramagna working as part of the VC studio.

This bilateral serif / sans serif is also used by other VC staff: here's a panel from All-New Doop 1, lettered by "VC's Clayton Cowles":

The problem is, though, that once you've noticed this, you can't help but to also notice things like this:

See how jarring that serif is on the 'I' in 'IT', especially as there are only three examples of the letter in what is a pretty verbose panel? And again:

This one's even more of a jolt given the frequency of the letter; it subtracts something from the assonance of the dialogue. 

Yes, this is an astonishingly trivial thing to notice in a comic-book. It may be Marvel house style, it may be used only by the VC letterers. I guarantee, however, you'll be looking for the same thing in the next comic you read.