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Speech balloon
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Speech balloons (also speech bubbles, dialogue balloons, or word balloons) are a graphic convention used most commonly in comic books, strips, and cartoons to allow words (and much less often, pictures) to be understood as representing the speech or thoughts of a given character in the comic. There is often a formal distinction between the balloon that indicates thoughts and the one that indicates words spoken aloud: the bubble that conveys subjective thoughts is often referred to as a thought balloon.
History
One of the earliest antecedents to the modern speech bubble were the “speech scrolls”, wispy lines that connected first person speech to the mouths of the speakers in Mesoamerican art.
In Western graphic art, labels that reveal what a pictured figure is saying have appeared since at least the 13th century. Word balloons began appearing in 18th century printed broadsides and political cartoons from the American Revolution often used them. With the development of the comics industry in the 20th century, the appearance of speech balloons has become increasingly standardized, though the formal conventions that have evolved in different cultures (USA as opposed to Japan, for example), can be quite distinct.
The Yellow Kid is generally credited as the first true comic strip character. His words initially appeared on his yellow shirt but word balloons very much like those in use today were added almost immediately, as early as 1896. By the start of the 20th century the use of word balloons was ubiquitous, and since that time only a very few comic strips and comic books have relied on captions, notably Hal Foster's Prince Valiant and the early Tarzan comic strip. For many years, word balloons were less common in Europe than in the USA, or were used together with captions. One example is the Dutch cartoonist Marten Toonder's comics about Tom Puss and Oliver B. Bumble, where the literary captions are printed out below the strip and almost take up as much space as the drawings, so that the strip fills twice the space of most newspaper strips. A similar example from England is Rupert the Bear.
Popular formsSpeech bubblesThe most common is the speech bubble. It comes in two forms for two circumstances: An in-panel character and an off-panel character. An in-panel character (one who is fully or mostly visible in the panel of the strip of comic that the reader is viewing) uses a bubble with a pointer, called a tail, directed towards the speaker.
When one character has multiple balloons within a panel, often only the balloon nearest to the speaker's head has a tail, and the others are connected to it in sequence by narrow bands. This style is often used in Mad Magazine, due to its often dialogue-based humor.
An off-panel character (the comic book equivalent of being "off screen") has several options, some of them rather unconventional. The first is a standard speech bubble with a tail pointing toward the speaker's position. The second option, which originated in manga, has the tail pointing into the bubble, instead of out. (This tail is still pointing towards the speaker.) The third option replaces the tail with a sort of bottleneck that connects with the side of the panel. It can be seen in the works of graphic novelist Marjane Satrapi (author of Persepolis).
In American comics, a bubble without a tail means that the speaker is not merely outside the reader's field of view but invisible to the viewpoint character, often as an unspecified member of a crowd.
Characters distant (in space or time) from the scene of the panel can still speak, in squared bubbles without a tail; this usage, equivalent to voice-over in film, is not uncommon in American comics for dramatic contrast. In contrast to captions, the corners of such balloons never coincide with those of the panel; for further distinction they often have a double outline, a different background color, or quotation marks.
Thought bubblesThought bubbles come in two forms: the chain thought bubble and the "fuzzy" bubble.
The chain thought bubble is the almost universal symbol for thinking in cartoons. It consists of a large, cloud-like bubble containing the text of the thought, which is connected to the area next to a character by a chain of increasingly smaller circular bubbles.
Often animal characters like Snoopy and Garfield "talk" using thought bubbles.
In Manga, the method of depicting thought is different. Instead of a cloud, the thought is encircled in a shiny halo.
Another, less conventional thought bubble has emerged: the "fuzzy" thought bubble. Used in manga (by such artists as Ken Akamatsu), the fuzzy bubble is roughly circular in shape (generally), but the edge of the bubble is not a line but a collection of spikes close to each other, creating the impression of fuzziness. Fuzzy thought bubbles do not use tails, and are placed in the area of the character who is thinking. This has the advantage of reflecting the TV equivalent effect: something said with an echo.
Writers and artists can refuse to use thought bubbles, expressing the action through spoken dialogue and drawing; they are sometimes seen as an inefficient method of expressing thought because they are attached directly to the head of the thinker, unlike methods such as caption boxes, which can be used both as an expression of thought and narration while existing in an entirely different panel from the character thinking. An example is Alan Moore and David Lloyd's V for Vendetta, wherein during one chapter, a monologue expressed in captions serves not only to express the thoughts of a character but also the mood, status and actions of three others.
In recent years the thought bubbles have been phasing out in favor of internal monologue rendered in the aforementioned caption method.
Other formsThe shape of a speech balloon can be used to convey further information. Common ones include the following:
- Scream bubbles indicate a character is screaming or shouting, usually with a jagged outline or a thicker line which can be colored. Their lettering is usually larger or bolder than normal.
- Broadcast bubbles (also known as radio bubbles) may have a jagged tail like the conventional drawing of a lightning flash and either a squared-off or jagged outline. Letters are sometimes italicised without also being bold. Broadcast bubbles indicate that the speaker is communicating through an electronic device, such as a radio or television, or is robotic.
- Whisper bubbles are usually portrayed with a dashed (dotted) outline, smaller font or gray lettering, which indicates the tone is softer as most speech is printed in black. They indicate that the speaker is whispering.
- Icicle bubbles have jagged "icicles" on the lower edge, representing "cold" hostility. Similarly the speech balloons of monsters may have an outline that suggests dripping blood or slime.
- Colored bubbles convey the emotion that goes with the speech, such as red for anger or green for envy. This style is not used very often in modern comics.
CaptionsCaptions are generally used for narration purposes. They are generally square and connected to the edge of the panel. Often they are also colored to indicate the difference between them and the bubbles used by the characters, which are almost always white. Captions have become commonplace in modern comics, replacing the old style thought bubbles.
Artist-specific variationsSome characters and strips use highly unconventional methods of communication. Perhaps the most notable is the Yellow Kid, an early American comic strip. His (but not the other characters') words would appear on his large, smock-like shirt.
Also noteworthy are the many variations on the form created by Dave Sim for his comic Cerebus the Aardvark. Depending on the shape, size, and position of the bubble, as well as the texture and shape of the letters within it, Sim could convey large amounts of information about the speaker. This included separate bubbles for different states of mind (drunkenness, etc), for echoes, and a special class of bubbles for one single floating apparition.
An early pioneer in experimenting with many different types of speech balloons and lettering for different types of speech was Walt Kelly, in his Pogo strip.
In the famous French comic series Asterix, Goscinny and Uderzo use bubbles without tails to indicate a distant or unseen speaker. They also have had fun experimenting with many different types of lettering to suit characters with distinct nationalities, thus meaning they speak a different language that Asterix may not understand, but the readers can. So Goths spoke in a blackletter font, Greek had a more angular font than normal (though always understood by the characters, so it's more of an accent than a language), Norse used "Nørdic åccents", Egyptian was in faux hieroglyphs (depictive illustrations and rebuses) etc. Another original experiment with speech bubbles was exclusive to one album, Asterix and the Roman Agent. The agent in question was a vile manipulator who could create dissension amongst any group of people with a single innocent-sounding comment. His victims start quarreling and ultimately fighting each other while speaking in green-colored speech bubbles, which symbolize darnel.
Font variation is a common tactic in comics. The Sandman series, written by Neil Gaiman, features many characters whose speech bubbles are written with a font that is exclusive to them. Some examples: the main character, the gloomy Dream speaks in wavy-edged bubbles, completely black, with similarly wavy white lettering. His sister, the scatterbrained and whimsical Delirium speaks in bubbles in a many-colored explosive background with uneven lettering, and the irreverent raven Matthew speaks in a shaky angular kind of bubble with scratchy lettering. Other characters, such as John Dee, have special shapes of bubbles for their own.
In MAD Magazine, in the recurring "Monroe" comic strip, certain words are written larger or in unusual fonts for emphasis.
In manga, there is a tendency to include the speech necessary for the storyline in balloons, while small scribbles outside the balloons add side comments, often used for irony or to show that they're said in a much smaller voice. Satsuki Yotsuba in the manga series Negima is notable because she speaks almost entirely in side scribble.
Graphic symbols in speech bubblesSpeech bubbles are used not only to include a character's words, but also emotions, voice inflections and unspecified language.
Foreign languagesIn many comic books, words that would be foreign to the narration but are displayed in translation for the reader are surrounded by angle brackets or chevrons ( <Like this> ), e.g., in the ElfQuest series, whenever any character speaks Human.
Gilbert Hernandez' series about Palomar is written in English, but supposed to take place mainly in a Hispanic country. Thus, what's supposed to be representations of Spanish speech is written without brackets, but occasional actual English speech is written within brackets, to indicate that it is unintelligible to the main Hispanophone characters in the series.
Other comic books use a different font or balloon style to the same end.
Some comics will have the actual foreign language in the speech balloon, with the translation as a footnote. It's much used in Asterix with Romans citing Latin sayings.
The big ZIt is a convention in American comics that the sound of a snore can be reduced to a single letter Z. Thus a speech bubble with this letter standing all alone (again, drawn by hand rather than a font type) means the character is sleeping in most humorous comics. This can be seen, for instance, in Charles Schulz's Peanuts comic strips.
Being such a long-based resource, the Z-bubble doesn't even imply that the character is snoring anymore, but just sleeping. Jim Davis has based some jokes starring Garfield upon this technique. For example, in one strip, Garfield is unable to sleep because his Z-bubble is pointing in the wrong direction. When he grabs the bubble's tail to make it point at himself, he falls asleep.
Originally, the resemblance between the 'z' sound and that of a snore seemed exclusive to the English language, but the spread of American comics has made it a frequent feature in other countries.
In manga, though, the usual symbol for sleep is a big bubble coming out of the character's nose.
OrderIn order for comic strip and graphic novel dialogue to make sense, it has to be read in order. Thus, conventions have evolved in the order in which the communication bubbles are read. The individual bubbles are read in the order of the language. For example, in English, the bubbles are read from left to right in a panel, while in Japanese, it is the other way around. Sometimes the bubbles are "stacked", with two characters having multiple bubbles, one above the other. Such stacks are read from the top down. Poor use of speech balloons can unintentionally make the proper reading order ambiguous, confusing the reader.
LetteringTraditionally, a cartoonist or occupational letterer would draw in all the individual letters in the balloons and sound effects by hand. A modern alternative, used by most comics today and universal in English-translated manga, is to letter with computer programs. The fonts used usually emulate the style of hand-lettering.
Traditionally, most mainstream comic books are lettered entirely in upper-case, with a few exceptions:
- Name particles such as de and von, and the "c" in a surname of Scottish or Irish origin starting with Mc
- To indicate a frightened or quiet manner of speech
- An interjection such as "er", "um", etc.
In a few comics, notably The Adventures of Tintin, uppercase and lowercase are used as in ordinary writing. Since the mid-1980s, mixed case lettering has gradually become more widely used in mainstream books.
Recently, Marvel Comics experimented with mixed case lettering in all its books. Most mainstream titles have since returned to traditional all upper-case lettering but titles specifically marketed to younger readers or a more manga audience such as the Marvel Adventures line, Runaways and Spider-Man Loves Mary Jane have retained mixed case lettering.
In many comics, although the lettering is entirely in capital letters, serif versions of "I" are used exclusively where a capital I would appear in normal print text, and a sanserif (i.e., a simple vertical line) is used in all other places. This reduces confusion with the number one, and also serves to indicate when the personal pronoun "I" is meant. This lettering convention can be seen in computer fonts such as Blambot's "DigitalStrip.ttf" and "AnimeAce.ttf" fonts, which make no other distinction between lower- and uppercase letters.
Computer-generated speech balloonsMany digital artists generate speech balloons with general-purpose illustration software. Products like Comic Book Creator for Microsoft Windows, Comic Life for Mac OS X, and the cross-platform application Balloonist target the non-professional end of the market.
TXTual Healing is a street art performance that involves strategically projecting interactive speech bubbles onto the facade of a building, as if they are coming out of the doors and windows. Using a computer paired with a cell phone, people in the street can generate their own content for the bubbles by sending in an SMS message.
See also
External links- A depiction of speech scrolls.
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- A guide on drawing speech bubbles and avoiding common mistakes in webcomics.
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