Word balloons are the secret language of comics. They bridge the gap between the “he said, she said” of books with a graphic language unique to the medium. Unless you have resigned yourself to composing silent comics (a feat in and of itself), you will need to have a firm grasp on adding text to your panels to be a successful comic book creator. Here are a few hints, tricks and mistakes that I’ve seen during my years as a comic creator, and as editor of Young American Comics.
Hand Written Text
Unless you have immaculate handwriting, you’ve spent long hard years practicing your printing and you can flawlessly write in all caps without a wavering baseline, I recommend doing your text electronically. Yes, there is a warmth and naturalness to hand written text. Yes, it is immensely flexible to fit the mood and personality of your characters. However, handwritten text is often hard to read, which can be very distracing. Even if you think your handwriting is easy to read, after scanning, resizing, squeezing it into balloons and printing your text can become entirely illegible.
There ARE exceptions to this and you, as the artist, must make the choice based on what looks best for your comic. Look at the following example of Snakepit. The hand drawn text fits with the style of the comic. The same comic with electronic text seems awkward and out of place.
On the converse, here is a sample of The Mighty Offenders with the original electronic text and then again with handwritten text. Which looks better?
The only way to improve your lettering skills is years and years of dedication and practice. But considering how easy it is to add electronic text to your comics, why not spend that time actually making comics?
Electronic Text
Electronic text IS easy, but that doesn’t mean there isn’t a learning curve. Doing your text in a design program will not instantly solve all of your problems. In fact, it opens up a whole new set of problems: If you are unfamiliar with the design programs it is tempting to leave the presets and defaults as is and just start typing away. Both electronic and hand-written text have conventions within the comics medium that, while based on outdated reasons, still affect the way your story is read and perceived. Do you have to follow these rules? Of course not. But they are important things to consider, if you want to produce professional-quality comics.
USING ALL CAPITAL LETTERS FOR YOUR DIALOGUE is the accepted industry standard. This is held over from the days of low quality printing presses. The cheap paper stock caused the ink to spread, reducing lowercase letters into illegible blobs. Periods also got lost in the mix which is why so much Golden Age dialogue ended in !!!
Thankfully, printing presses have gotten better. Characters no longer need to exclaim everything!!! The ALL CAPS convention, however, remains the standard.
Choosing A Font
There are many FREE downloadable fonts available online, for Mac and PC platforms. Check out Blambot for a fine selection. Even though you are not using your own hand-writing, choose a font that looks like Hand Lettering. Here are some great examples. Notice how each one gives a different “feel” to the same drawing:
Click here for the full-sized image.
Some fonts are specially made for digital web comics, while others are best suited for printing. All of the text blocks are set as 8pt with 8.5 pt leading, but notice that these values vary slightly between fonts. Print out test pages to find out what works best for your font.
*downloaded from Blambot.
Leading
Leading is the space in between your lines of text. In the days of the printing press, actual strips of lead were used to leave space between lines. The higher the leading the further apart your lines of text will be. Standard comic book text leading is very tight and close together. The tighter your leading is, the smaller your text blocks will be. (Which means more of your wonderful artwork can be seen!) Loose leading lets a lot of white space show through, which, unless used for a specific effect, makes your text look airy and distracting.
Font Size
Your design program will probably default to 12 point type. (Points are a unit of size in the font world. The number of points tells you how big or small your text will be on the page. 6pt type for fine print, to 2000pt type for billboards.) Comic Book lettering is usually 7-9pt type, with leading being .5 greater than your font size (for example, 8pt type with 8.5pt leading.) Again, this lets plenty of your artwork show through while still being perfectly legible. If you find yourself using large text to cover up dull spots in your comic, you might want to re-evaluate your artwork.Filling The Baloon
Now that you have your text, font, font size, and leading all worked out, it’s time to get your text into the balloons. For general conversation between characters you should use an oval or a rounded corner rectangle with a one point stroke. Most of the time, the text should be centered and arranged in a diamond shape.
Take care not to crowd the text to the edge of the balloon, but also don’t give it TOO MUCH breathing room.
Practice until you find a balance that you like, and remember, the most important thing is that your balloons are consistant!
Large Blocks of Text
Before anything else, consider editing extremely large blocks of text. If you can’t pare down your text, then spread it out over two or more panels. The MAXIMUM any single text balloon should hold is 30-40 word, or two to three sentences. In most cases, blocks of text bigger than that can be daunting to the reader and look ugly on a page.
Use your balloons as punctuation, they signify a breath or a pause in conversation. They also dictate how your reader’s eye moves around the page.
Here is a great example of using word balloons to direct the reader’s eye from Brian Michael Bendis’s Comic “Jinx”. The combination of angled panels and the arching line of word balloons not only tells the reader which panel to look at next, but also leaves no doubt of which order the word balloons go in.
Click here for the full-sized image.
Balloon Conventions
There are certain conventions and “standards” that you just can’t get around. As comic readers, we are taught that certain lines indicate specific things, and this is extremely true when it comes to word balloons. Disregarding these rules will confuse your readers and make your dialogue hard to interpret.
Click here for the full-sized image.
While there are definitely variations and work-arounds, these are the standards. Use them to control your dialogue simply and efficiently. Other examples include text within square brackets to indicate translated text, and jagged balloons for the person on the other end of a telephone conversation.
Putting Them on the Page
The placement of your word bubbles will direct the reader’s eye in which way to read the page. There is one steadfast rule that can NOT be broken: On the Western Hemisphere, we read from top to bottom, from left to right. Your reader will ALWAYS read the top-left-most word bubble before any other bubble. Don’t make your readers “guess” which order to read the dialogue. Always make it clear by placing your word balloons carefully.
In the example below, I wrestled for a long time trying to get the balloons in the second and third panels to read correctly. It always seemed awkward to me to read UP in the “But every conceivable reality!” bubble.
Perhaps this would have been a better solution:
Hopefully these guidelines have given you some ideas on how to make your comics even better. This tutorial only skims the surface, but if you’d like to learn more about word bubbles or any other aspect of making great comics, the following books are all highly recommended:
