Comics: the mechanics of the medium

[TordelBack]

Good illustration, Jim. The style in the first balloon drives me crazy, probably because I'm mentally reading it as the second style. I'm not keen on either, TBH, but sometimes the latter works well to catch a very distinctive speech pattern, as Moore did in conjunction with... ellipses in... Swamp Thing. But not everyone is Swampy. Or Alan Moore.

[IndigoPrime]

All of the crap with bold text just makes me think everyone in the comic is doing a Shatner when speaking.

[Steven Denton]

In my opinion, key work bolding is useful for kids comics, or comics with a audience with a younger reading age. Bolding for emphasis can be used cleverly but it's mostly useful for a kind of Stan Lee, over dramatic voice. nothing inherently wrong with either of these.

As far as I am aware they are conventions from when comics were for kids. comics for an adult readership don't really need.

[JayzusB.Christ]

Good illustration, Jim. The style in the first balloon drives me crazy, probably because I'm mentally reading it as the second style.

Exactly why Nikolai Dante used to drive me mental in the early days.

'WHO hired you?'  'There's a FEW things I've been meaning to tell you.'

[The Legendary Shark]

I've just been editing a Dredd script, paring it down. It's really difficult to get rid of this altogether. I try not to use it over much but not using it at all just doesn't feel right. I guess it feels like the word equivalent of "swoosh" lines in the artwork - you don't need them on a swinging fist but, somehow, sometimes you have to admit they do look better.

In two minds about this. On the one hand I know bolding isn't necessary. On the other, sometimes it just feels right.

[JayzusB.Christ]

Forgot to say, thanks to everyone for the input - I never knew, for example, that there were two reasons for bolding words (though I still think both are often overused).

I love good, natural, flowing dialogue - John Wagner does it well, of course, but for my money the two best 2000ad stories ever for convincing dialogue were Halo Jones and Zenith. 

[Colin YNWA]

You wanna try Image's 'Sex'. The letter in that Rus Wooton uses different colour highlights to 'bold' words. Its incredibly irriating in whats an otherwise fantastic comic.

I have no idea if that's a regular thing for him, or a direction from the writer Joe Casey, but 26 issues in I've still not got used to it.

[Jim_Campbell]

You wanna try Image's 'Sex'. The letter in that Rus Wooton uses different colour highlights to 'bold' words. Its incredibly irriating in whats an otherwise fantastic comic.

I have no idea if that's a regular thing for him, or a direction from the writer Joe Casey, but 26 issues in I've still not got used to it.

Came from Casey. I know, because I remember Rus showing some samples from the first issue and a whole bunch of us basically went: "Rus! What the actual fuck?!"

Clearly, Casey thinks it's a thing, if he's still insisting on it after two years, but I thought it was an unnecessary attempt to reinvent the wheel when I first saw it, and I still do now.

Cheers

Jim

[Conceptulist]

You wanna try Image's 'Sex'. The letter in that Rus Wooton uses different colour highlights to 'bold' words. Its incredibly irriating in whats an otherwise fantastic comic.

I have no idea if that's a regular thing for him, or a direction from the writer Joe Casey, but 26 issues in I've still not got used to it.

Came from Casey. I know, because I remember Rus showing some samples from the first issue and a whole bunch of us basically went: "Rus! What the actual fuck?!"

This is brilliant stuff, the thread and the jokes.

[IndigoPrime]

There's a lot of weird lettering stuff out there, and it's only becoming more jarring as I notice it. I've been ploughing through my Marvel artwork, and some of the lettering within is atrocious, notably in one book where it switches from reasonable caps to an oddball and spidery sentence case. Elsewhere, one of the all-caps fonts looks like it was scratched on to the page with a fountain pen.

2000 AD, fortunately, seems largely immune to such craziness, although it does annoy me a bit that one of the letterers feels the need to spin a Q 90 degrees clockwise. Even on the characters Q evolved from, the tail never went left, only straight down. *grumble*

[Jim_Campbell]

There's a lot of weird lettering stuff out there, and it's only becoming more jarring as I notice it. I've been ploughing through my Marvel artwork, and some of the lettering within is atrocious

I have no idea what's going on with Marvel's lettering. For every book that manages to do something interesting (the Waid/Samnee Daredevil, for instance) there's a massive stack of them that look like absolute crap. There are books done by experienced, competent letterers like Joe Caramagna that still look like crap.

I believe Virtual Calligraphy made a fairly aggressive pitch to get the deal on all the Marvel books, and I've heard that means a crazy turnaround time — two books a day, I've heard unofficially. That may well all be bollocks, but if I was routinely lettering 44-48 pages a day, you wouldn't be seeing my best work,either.

Which is slightly depressing, but symptomatic of the fact that no one gives a shit about the lettering.

Cheers

Jim

[Bat King]

I really enjoy your explanations Jim, always very useful.

[JayzusB.Christ]

I haven't read any Marvel comics in years, but last time I read Punished comics they were using lower case rather than the usual capitals.

Now, I'm not sure why they use capitals in comics but it's what I've grown up with, and lower case just didn't feel right.