This is 99% invisible. I'm Roman Mars.

If you've ever wondered what squirrels were good for besides being adorable,

wonder no longer.

These are lettering quills, the brushes I was talking about,

and they generally are squirrel hair.

That's Scott Thieson from New Bohemia Signs,

a world famous hand-painted sign shop in San Francisco.

And have pretty long, very thin handle so you can twirl them as you're painting like an O or an S.

Look at any movie made before 1983,

and you see hand-painted signs everywhere.

You would see like a certain type of an a or a certain type of an S being repeated in

all this different signage in certain neighborhoods and that was the first time for

me I realized there was actually a job that was a sign painter.

It's not as common a job these days, but sign painting is still thriving,

and according to some of the voices you'll meet today,

even undergoing a kind of renaissance.

But let's start with a cartoonist.

Not just any cartoonist, though, one of America's original underground cartoonists,

Justin Green.

My comic book, Pinkinky Brown meets the Holy Virgin Mary.

That's my best known work that I did as a young man.

I can't seem to shake a little bastard. I got to see Justin speak last year at this

...