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Archive 1 |
I seem to remember that Marvel comics had a way of indicating that a character was speaking in a language other than English. Maybe there were brackets around the text of something like that. Anyone know what I'm talking about? ike9898 14:16, Apr 13, 2005 (UTC)
Here's the example illustration, the middle drawing being the manga style:
I don't read manga, so I don't know the conventions. But this illustration appears to mean that the speaker is off the right side of the frame. If that's so, then isn't the tail pointing away from the speaker? (After all, it is pointing into the bubble.) I think some rewording is necessary by someone who is familiar with manga. — Bkell 18:58, 27 August 2005 (UTC)
As far as I've seen, the inwards tail is actually used when an outwards tail would obstruct other balloons or art, and only rarely for off-panel speekers. It's common when a character on the far edge of a wide panel has a balloon on the other end. A more regular convention, at least in the manga I've read, for off-panel is an initial or sketch of a face to indicate who's talking, and no tail.
1.Gives too much weight to a style of speech balloon which is seemingly exclusively used in a single GN (certainly, if all the speech in the comic in question is like that, that's true, but not noteworthy. It's been used for donkey's years elsewhere to signify someone speaking from off-panel).
2.Speaking of which, the manga balloon is backwards in the picture.
3.Caption boxes "are usually connected to the edge of the panel"? Only artist I've ever seen that happen with is Walt Simonson's art, where he prefers to alter the edge of the panel shape, especially when working with John Workman, Jr.. The first box in a panel is usually placed near the corner of the panel, and that's about as close as I can get to that.
4.Oh, and thought balloons have become very rare in US comics in recent years, with thoughts (where used) now only used as first-person narrative caption boxes.
5."In a font similar to Comic Sans" - Kill It. I've never seen a single US or UK professional comic that uses any font even vaguely resembling CS, with fonts resembling specific hand letterers having become "standard" of late in US comics, apart from a few mixed-case experiments. 6.In general, the article seems to ignore the post-computer lettering explosion of the use of shapes, fonts and colours in speech balloons in US comics at least - and, indeed, the fact that since DC Comics completely ended the use of hand lettering a year or two back, with only a very few non- DCU fringe books excepted (the only one that leaps to mind offhand is Elric: The Making of a Sorceror), you'd stuggle to find hand-lettered comics in America any more. The article completely ignores this.
7.No references. 8.Neutrality - the whole thing in general seems skewed towards "independent" US comics, with manga and superhero comics only an afterthought, and UK comics not mentioned at all. - SoM 11:00, 15 September 2005 (UTC)
In the Fonts section it says that only a few comics use upper and lowercase fonts, but hasn't Marvel Comics used these for all its books in the recent years? -- Fritz S. ( Talk) 22:35, 2 January 2006 (UTC)
Oh, and I have ***NEVER*** seen a professional comic lettered with a font even vaguely resembling Comic Sans, as I said above. WTH put that back in? - SoM 19:42, 5 January 2006 (UTC)
I agree with SoM. Either comics are lettered by hand or, when lettered using computer fonts, the font chosen mimics traditional hand lettering. I would therefore propose to replace the sentence: "Either way...Comic Sans" by: "In most cases, computer fonts used to letter comics are chosen to resemble traditional hand lettering". There is a simple technical reason why lower case fonts are not used in comics: this fonts have letters with 'descents' (i.e. the part of the letter below the baseline like p, q, g...) that can collide with the 'ascents' (i.e. the part of the letter above the baseline like k, h, t). Using only capital letters avoids descents, avoids collisions and saves space by reducing the line height. Lower cases are more often used in older comics, in particular in comics from the 'belgian school' such as Tintin (not only in the English translation), Black and Mortimer and others. It is rarely now rarely used for the practical reasons given above. If the group agrees I can propose an edit of the article.-- Exether 23:18, 19 January 2006 (UTC)
The page seems to imply that the ellipsis originated in manga, which seems to be somewhat of a half-truth. At least I've seen it used a lot in old comics for musings without a clear stop, etc... I don't know if it means that the symbol has come to mean speechlessness in general, but even so, I doubt that it is an entirely Japanese innovation, even if the popularity of manga has caused it to be widespread in this particular fashion. Here's some other guy who has wondered about it. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Ellipsis#Ellipsis_in_Japanese. 惑乱 分からん 18:33, 28 February 2006 (UTC)
The use of multiple bubbles on one cell should be mentioned, when there is interaction between two characters. The order of reading them may be an important aspect to include. violet/riga (t) 00:25, 20 Nov 2004 (UTC)
Reading order is important, but not universal. Generally bubbles would be read left to right, top to bottom in western culture but even that is not consistant. Many odd shaped and oriented comic book panels can become convoluted even in the best of times.-- RedKnight 23:56, 19 March 2006 (UTC)
Actually I am not sure about if the examples of balloon-less american adventure strips I've given are general for adventure comics or not. In the case of Tarzan, at least, I guess it's because it is a literary adaptation. Most of these were created in the late 30's, when I guess the "premises and syntax" of the comics medium were already quite mature...
AFAIK, calling Yellow Kid "the world's first reoccurring comic strip" is disputed, it was a pioneering example of the medium, but mostly it was a cartoon. Also, the british comic, or (often, anyway) illustrated story "Ally Sloper" featured a reoccurring main character several decades earlier.
This example is also displayed in many Classics Illustrated issues which are generally adaptations of classic pieces of literature such as Hamlet, Invanhoe, etc. I am not sure as to why they are used.-- RedKnight 23:59, 19 March 2006 (UTC)
I also think that the idea that Comic Sans is an industry-standard is ridiculous and should be taken off the page ASAP. At this site [1] there are several freeware fonts that resemble the industry standards. The problem is, I don't know what their commercial or "real" families/names are. For instance:
Sample images could probably easily be found/created to demonstrate, but I'm not really sure how to proceed here. Suggestions? Any professionals know the the official font families? -- SevereTireDamage 10:18, 3 June 2006 (UTC)
I don't know this information added about Mayan art. Given the sources Waffle Man has given, I'd say that it looks more like a children's picture book than a character with a speech balloon. I can't see any connection between the speaker and the text, for instance, which I think is a basic criterion for a speech balloon. I won't remove it for now, but I leave it up for discussion here... 惑乱 分からん 11:52, 31 May 2006 (UTC)
I agree. The source is down, but the Wayback machine page doesn't seem to include any Mayan comics. - Chris 88.109.35.133 07:07, 11 September 2007 (UTC)
This article needs the B-Class checklist filled in to remain a B-Class article for the Comics WikiProject. If the checklist is not filled in by 7th August this article will be re-assessed as C-Class. The checklist should be filled out referencing the guidance given at Wikipedia:Version 1.0 Editorial Team/Assessment/B-Class criteria. For further details please contact the Comics WikiProject. Comics-awb ( talk) 17:31, 31 July 2008 (UTC)
I think the claim that thought balloons are disappering is too far-reaching, and the claim mainly seems to be valid for US/UK adventure comics. 惑乱 Wakuran ( talk) 16:47, 14 September 2008 (UTC)
As this B-Class article has yet to receive a review, it has been rated as C-Class. If you disagree and would like to request an assesment, please visit Wikipedia:WikiProject_Comics/Assessment#Requesting_an_assessment and list the article. Hiding T 14:31, 24 February 2009 (UTC)
Maybe this could start turning into a laundry list, but the Belgian series "Bidouille et Violette" (by Bernard Hislaire) apparently uses word balloons in a consistent manner to depict the characters' different personalities. I have the albums somewhere in my collection, but my French is rather rusty. 惑乱 Wakuran ( talk) 00:04, 26 May 2009 (UTC)
I removed this broken link. Likely it's still there somewhere on the site, but if I can't be bothered to go looking for it then neither will most readers. ;) — Tamfang ( talk) 19:44, 21 February 2010 (UTC)
Currently there is an article at Thought bubble. Change into redirect to Speech_balloon#Thought_bubbles ? -- EarthFurst ( talk) 08:40, 30 July 2010 (UTC)
An early use of speech balloon from 1493, can be found on the Lambiek Comiclopedia.
Early Dutch Comics (in english) and Nederlandse Stripgeschiedenis, Strips voor 1850 (in dutch)
It come from a letter written by the count of Meurs. The document is kept by the library of Zutphen, a city in the province of Gelderland in the Netherlands.
-- Vincent Simar ( talk) 20:49, 27 December 2012 (UTC)
Funny, I've always seen it as representing a glow. Fuzzy animals are typically outlined by much shorter spikes. — Tamfang ( talk) 18:58, 29 June 2011 (UTC)
I have no idea what this refers to, any chance of a picture replacing a thousand words of description? 58.7.199.67 ( talk) 21:11, 11 May 2013 (UTC)
There still seems to exist some confusion about which word to use (bubble, balloon etc), throughout the article, different words are used in the main title and in different sections of the article. Which word should be agreed on? Which word does the pros, (such as Scott McCloud and Will Eisner use?
I've change one of the intro lines to read "the balloon that conveys subjective thoughts is often referred to as a thought bubble", since everywhere else in the article the thought balloon is referred to as a "thought bubble", and that's my experience as its common usage. 58.7.199.67 ( talk) 21:10, 11 May 2013 (UTC)
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Cheers.— cyberbot II Talk to my owner:Online 13:54, 9 January 2016 (UTC)
In this 1904 book on cartooning, the speech balloon is considered a novel enough technique that it needed explaining. Is this useful information? DS ( talk) 15:14, 10 May 2016 (UTC)
I've seen some funnies where the balloons contain (only) images summarizing the subject of the speech. I'd add that in the relevant place but can't recall an example. — Tamfang 00:07, 21 October 2007 (UTC)
Thought of an example, in Girl Genius: since Dupree's jaw was broken, she "speaks" in pictures. — Tamfang ( talk) 19:14, 9 July 2008 (UTC)
You should mention the wordless balloon, that contains only a black smudge, indicating that the character is grumbling, or thinks that somebody is a jerk. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 96.239.87.245 ( talk) 04:56, 11 August 2016 (UTC)
No mention of using symbols as swear words? Like: !#$#$&
Also, what about using different font (gothic, runes, hyeroglyphs) to convey different language like in Asterix? Svarði2 ( talk) 23:46, 11 February 2021 (UTC)
Possible term to include in the article....have you ever seen this term used?
If you go into a Microsoft application such as Word and look on the Drawing toolbar under Autoshapes, there is a category of shapes named Callouts. What we are calling a thought bubble, Word calls a cloud callout.
I couldn't find any listings for this term in One Look (seaches many dictionaries simultaneously). http://www.onelook.com/ ike9898 15:39, Nov 22, 2004 (UTC)
Why can't I access the archives from the talk page? Is that a Microsoft Edge thing, or is there some error in the script programming? 惑乱 Wakuran ( talk) 15:30, 28 March 2022 (UTC)
![]() | This is an archive of past discussions. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current talk page. |
Archive 1 |
I seem to remember that Marvel comics had a way of indicating that a character was speaking in a language other than English. Maybe there were brackets around the text of something like that. Anyone know what I'm talking about? ike9898 14:16, Apr 13, 2005 (UTC)
Here's the example illustration, the middle drawing being the manga style:
I don't read manga, so I don't know the conventions. But this illustration appears to mean that the speaker is off the right side of the frame. If that's so, then isn't the tail pointing away from the speaker? (After all, it is pointing into the bubble.) I think some rewording is necessary by someone who is familiar with manga. — Bkell 18:58, 27 August 2005 (UTC)
As far as I've seen, the inwards tail is actually used when an outwards tail would obstruct other balloons or art, and only rarely for off-panel speekers. It's common when a character on the far edge of a wide panel has a balloon on the other end. A more regular convention, at least in the manga I've read, for off-panel is an initial or sketch of a face to indicate who's talking, and no tail.
1.Gives too much weight to a style of speech balloon which is seemingly exclusively used in a single GN (certainly, if all the speech in the comic in question is like that, that's true, but not noteworthy. It's been used for donkey's years elsewhere to signify someone speaking from off-panel).
2.Speaking of which, the manga balloon is backwards in the picture.
3.Caption boxes "are usually connected to the edge of the panel"? Only artist I've ever seen that happen with is Walt Simonson's art, where he prefers to alter the edge of the panel shape, especially when working with John Workman, Jr.. The first box in a panel is usually placed near the corner of the panel, and that's about as close as I can get to that.
4.Oh, and thought balloons have become very rare in US comics in recent years, with thoughts (where used) now only used as first-person narrative caption boxes.
5."In a font similar to Comic Sans" - Kill It. I've never seen a single US or UK professional comic that uses any font even vaguely resembling CS, with fonts resembling specific hand letterers having become "standard" of late in US comics, apart from a few mixed-case experiments. 6.In general, the article seems to ignore the post-computer lettering explosion of the use of shapes, fonts and colours in speech balloons in US comics at least - and, indeed, the fact that since DC Comics completely ended the use of hand lettering a year or two back, with only a very few non- DCU fringe books excepted (the only one that leaps to mind offhand is Elric: The Making of a Sorceror), you'd stuggle to find hand-lettered comics in America any more. The article completely ignores this.
7.No references. 8.Neutrality - the whole thing in general seems skewed towards "independent" US comics, with manga and superhero comics only an afterthought, and UK comics not mentioned at all. - SoM 11:00, 15 September 2005 (UTC)
In the Fonts section it says that only a few comics use upper and lowercase fonts, but hasn't Marvel Comics used these for all its books in the recent years? -- Fritz S. ( Talk) 22:35, 2 January 2006 (UTC)
Oh, and I have ***NEVER*** seen a professional comic lettered with a font even vaguely resembling Comic Sans, as I said above. WTH put that back in? - SoM 19:42, 5 January 2006 (UTC)
I agree with SoM. Either comics are lettered by hand or, when lettered using computer fonts, the font chosen mimics traditional hand lettering. I would therefore propose to replace the sentence: "Either way...Comic Sans" by: "In most cases, computer fonts used to letter comics are chosen to resemble traditional hand lettering". There is a simple technical reason why lower case fonts are not used in comics: this fonts have letters with 'descents' (i.e. the part of the letter below the baseline like p, q, g...) that can collide with the 'ascents' (i.e. the part of the letter above the baseline like k, h, t). Using only capital letters avoids descents, avoids collisions and saves space by reducing the line height. Lower cases are more often used in older comics, in particular in comics from the 'belgian school' such as Tintin (not only in the English translation), Black and Mortimer and others. It is rarely now rarely used for the practical reasons given above. If the group agrees I can propose an edit of the article.-- Exether 23:18, 19 January 2006 (UTC)
The page seems to imply that the ellipsis originated in manga, which seems to be somewhat of a half-truth. At least I've seen it used a lot in old comics for musings without a clear stop, etc... I don't know if it means that the symbol has come to mean speechlessness in general, but even so, I doubt that it is an entirely Japanese innovation, even if the popularity of manga has caused it to be widespread in this particular fashion. Here's some other guy who has wondered about it. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Ellipsis#Ellipsis_in_Japanese. 惑乱 分からん 18:33, 28 February 2006 (UTC)
The use of multiple bubbles on one cell should be mentioned, when there is interaction between two characters. The order of reading them may be an important aspect to include. violet/riga (t) 00:25, 20 Nov 2004 (UTC)
Reading order is important, but not universal. Generally bubbles would be read left to right, top to bottom in western culture but even that is not consistant. Many odd shaped and oriented comic book panels can become convoluted even in the best of times.-- RedKnight 23:56, 19 March 2006 (UTC)
Actually I am not sure about if the examples of balloon-less american adventure strips I've given are general for adventure comics or not. In the case of Tarzan, at least, I guess it's because it is a literary adaptation. Most of these were created in the late 30's, when I guess the "premises and syntax" of the comics medium were already quite mature...
AFAIK, calling Yellow Kid "the world's first reoccurring comic strip" is disputed, it was a pioneering example of the medium, but mostly it was a cartoon. Also, the british comic, or (often, anyway) illustrated story "Ally Sloper" featured a reoccurring main character several decades earlier.
This example is also displayed in many Classics Illustrated issues which are generally adaptations of classic pieces of literature such as Hamlet, Invanhoe, etc. I am not sure as to why they are used.-- RedKnight 23:59, 19 March 2006 (UTC)
I also think that the idea that Comic Sans is an industry-standard is ridiculous and should be taken off the page ASAP. At this site [1] there are several freeware fonts that resemble the industry standards. The problem is, I don't know what their commercial or "real" families/names are. For instance:
Sample images could probably easily be found/created to demonstrate, but I'm not really sure how to proceed here. Suggestions? Any professionals know the the official font families? -- SevereTireDamage 10:18, 3 June 2006 (UTC)
I don't know this information added about Mayan art. Given the sources Waffle Man has given, I'd say that it looks more like a children's picture book than a character with a speech balloon. I can't see any connection between the speaker and the text, for instance, which I think is a basic criterion for a speech balloon. I won't remove it for now, but I leave it up for discussion here... 惑乱 分からん 11:52, 31 May 2006 (UTC)
I agree. The source is down, but the Wayback machine page doesn't seem to include any Mayan comics. - Chris 88.109.35.133 07:07, 11 September 2007 (UTC)
This article needs the B-Class checklist filled in to remain a B-Class article for the Comics WikiProject. If the checklist is not filled in by 7th August this article will be re-assessed as C-Class. The checklist should be filled out referencing the guidance given at Wikipedia:Version 1.0 Editorial Team/Assessment/B-Class criteria. For further details please contact the Comics WikiProject. Comics-awb ( talk) 17:31, 31 July 2008 (UTC)
I think the claim that thought balloons are disappering is too far-reaching, and the claim mainly seems to be valid for US/UK adventure comics. 惑乱 Wakuran ( talk) 16:47, 14 September 2008 (UTC)
As this B-Class article has yet to receive a review, it has been rated as C-Class. If you disagree and would like to request an assesment, please visit Wikipedia:WikiProject_Comics/Assessment#Requesting_an_assessment and list the article. Hiding T 14:31, 24 February 2009 (UTC)
Maybe this could start turning into a laundry list, but the Belgian series "Bidouille et Violette" (by Bernard Hislaire) apparently uses word balloons in a consistent manner to depict the characters' different personalities. I have the albums somewhere in my collection, but my French is rather rusty. 惑乱 Wakuran ( talk) 00:04, 26 May 2009 (UTC)
I removed this broken link. Likely it's still there somewhere on the site, but if I can't be bothered to go looking for it then neither will most readers. ;) — Tamfang ( talk) 19:44, 21 February 2010 (UTC)
Currently there is an article at Thought bubble. Change into redirect to Speech_balloon#Thought_bubbles ? -- EarthFurst ( talk) 08:40, 30 July 2010 (UTC)
An early use of speech balloon from 1493, can be found on the Lambiek Comiclopedia.
Early Dutch Comics (in english) and Nederlandse Stripgeschiedenis, Strips voor 1850 (in dutch)
It come from a letter written by the count of Meurs. The document is kept by the library of Zutphen, a city in the province of Gelderland in the Netherlands.
-- Vincent Simar ( talk) 20:49, 27 December 2012 (UTC)
Funny, I've always seen it as representing a glow. Fuzzy animals are typically outlined by much shorter spikes. — Tamfang ( talk) 18:58, 29 June 2011 (UTC)
I have no idea what this refers to, any chance of a picture replacing a thousand words of description? 58.7.199.67 ( talk) 21:11, 11 May 2013 (UTC)
There still seems to exist some confusion about which word to use (bubble, balloon etc), throughout the article, different words are used in the main title and in different sections of the article. Which word should be agreed on? Which word does the pros, (such as Scott McCloud and Will Eisner use?
I've change one of the intro lines to read "the balloon that conveys subjective thoughts is often referred to as a thought bubble", since everywhere else in the article the thought balloon is referred to as a "thought bubble", and that's my experience as its common usage. 58.7.199.67 ( talk) 21:10, 11 May 2013 (UTC)
Hello fellow Wikipedians,
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Cheers.— cyberbot II Talk to my owner:Online 13:54, 9 January 2016 (UTC)
In this 1904 book on cartooning, the speech balloon is considered a novel enough technique that it needed explaining. Is this useful information? DS ( talk) 15:14, 10 May 2016 (UTC)
I've seen some funnies where the balloons contain (only) images summarizing the subject of the speech. I'd add that in the relevant place but can't recall an example. — Tamfang 00:07, 21 October 2007 (UTC)
Thought of an example, in Girl Genius: since Dupree's jaw was broken, she "speaks" in pictures. — Tamfang ( talk) 19:14, 9 July 2008 (UTC)
You should mention the wordless balloon, that contains only a black smudge, indicating that the character is grumbling, or thinks that somebody is a jerk. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 96.239.87.245 ( talk) 04:56, 11 August 2016 (UTC)
No mention of using symbols as swear words? Like: !#$#$&
Also, what about using different font (gothic, runes, hyeroglyphs) to convey different language like in Asterix? Svarði2 ( talk) 23:46, 11 February 2021 (UTC)
Possible term to include in the article....have you ever seen this term used?
If you go into a Microsoft application such as Word and look on the Drawing toolbar under Autoshapes, there is a category of shapes named Callouts. What we are calling a thought bubble, Word calls a cloud callout.
I couldn't find any listings for this term in One Look (seaches many dictionaries simultaneously). http://www.onelook.com/ ike9898 15:39, Nov 22, 2004 (UTC)
Why can't I access the archives from the talk page? Is that a Microsoft Edge thing, or is there some error in the script programming? 惑乱 Wakuran ( talk) 15:30, 28 March 2022 (UTC)