Best program for lettering

I would suggest GIMP but I never actually used it myself so I can't say how it performs for this specific tasks.

Another choice would be Manga Studio. At $50 a pop, it might seem a bit overkill for just lettering alone. But it's something I personally have experience on. I can say it's up for the task.

Hope that help!

While it may take a little more time, I suggest using your own lettering. Write out the letters A-Z in a variety of slightly different styles, then scan them and put the page into Photoshop to play around with. Clean up the letters from your originals, add a few shadows, etc. Having your own font, based on your own - or the artist's - writing style really helps sell the individuality and adds a lot of character to a page. There are a number of free fonts on the internet, but (where possible) I try to avoid relying on them too much. There's something too regular and mechanical about a lot of free fonts.

So CS isn't an option, eh? I'm not a fan of Gimp's typeface tools but it'll do the job. Photoshop Elements is only around $100 and from my understanding has the typeface functionality you're looking for. If you're on a mac, Pixelmator is only $30 at the moment and it does a great job, and handles psd files better than Gimp as I understand.

If you are set on going the free route, you might like to try Inkscape, which has more sophisticated font tools than gimp. For example, you'll have the option to edit font paths much as you would with a program like CS Illustrator.

Isn't it great to have so many options?

I have the 'Comic Life' program and though I've only used the lettering system to make joke pictures of my friends and such, it seems pretty easy and straightforward. I'm not sure how it would look on actual comic pages though.