The
typography involved in comic books is hard to standardize or
identify, but some conventions of the genre do exist. These
conventions are often in place in order to emphasis certain emotions
for a reader who might not be familiar with more subtly visual
language. They also exist to streamline and standardize the visuals
of a comic book, making it nicer to look at and once again more easy
to understand for the reader. Letterers for comic books do
create visuals differences based on the lettering they are using, and
the standard for emphasizing a word is italicized bold
type. Do to a small amount of space to work with, a letterer for a
comic book has to use the space around the type, or sometimes use an
entirely different font, to convey a certain mood.
Above
we can see a multitude of ways that a letterer could influence how a
reader understands the comic book. The main text, “Wolverine is a
jerk!!” is purposely set in a large display font to separate it
from the main font so the reader understands just how angry Molly is.
However, they can't place the display font on the image itself,
because then it wouldn't be clear who is saying it, or where the
sound comes from, so the type has to go in a speech bubble. A speech
bubble is specifically created to provide white space that emphasizes
the dialogue of a comic book and separates it from the illustration
for easy readability. Because Molly is yelling, a smooth bubble would
look out of place and reflect the mood of the dialogue poorly
compared to a burst bubble.
Below,
and less important to the narrative is the “joke” dialogue, set
in the standard font for this comic book. Because of the length of
the joke and the delivery it is also set in an alternative white
space. By joining the balloons the joke is set up as the funniest
part first, and the joke that requires secondary knowledge of the
subject second, set so that each sentence has it own section of the
joint balloon. Alternative space is also set aside for non-dialogue
text.
There
are other options for using the space around the text to emphasize
the way it reads. Often small text in a large speech bubble is used
to create a whispered or muttered effect to the dialogue. Backstory,
times, and internal monologues are all often set in square caption
spaces so as not to be confused for dialogue. They are further
differentiated between different styles within the type. Thoughts are
almost always italicized, while times and dates are almost never.
There are a number of other interesting lettering rules for comic
books that differ greatly from standard rules. The use of double
punctuation such as “?!” is completely acceptable, and use of
double dashes is acceptable while en or em dashes are not.
Places To Get Fonts for Comic Books:
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