Do You Speak Comics? Part 2: Balloons and Bubbles

Last time, we talked about the basic building blocks of comics. Now we’re back to delve in a little further on the language of cartooning. While there are many wordless comics out there, the magic of comics so often comes from the juxtaposition of text and image.

You may remember from our last “Do You Speak Comics?” post (or perhaps you already knew) that the shapes that house dialogue in comics are called word balloons (or sometimes speech bubbles).

Word balloons can come in a variety of shapes, from round to square and everything in between. We’ll talk about some of those shapes a little later.

To save space and to create more attractive composition, cartoonists often “anchor” the word balloons to the border of the comic panel, like this:

If you’re interested in learning to make comics, it’s important that an anchored balloon fully overlap the border of the panel. If the balloon just brushes up against the panel border, we call this a tangent, which can be distracting to the reader:

When a character is thinking, but their words aren’t spoken aloud, cartoonists communicate that by using a thought bubble which is most frequently a “cloud” shape pointing to the thinker by a series of disconnected dots.

The cloud shape can vary, and some cartoonists prefer to use a more regular shape, but the disconnected dots always signify that the character is thinking, not speaking.

Those disconnected dots– or any shape that points to the thinker or speaker in a comic– is called a tail:

It’s very important for tails to point toward the character who is speaking or thinking, with as clear a connection as possible. Tails on word balloons should point toward the speaker’s mouth; tails on thought bubbles can point toward the thinker’s head.

The shape of the tail can also add context to a word balloon. Like we already saw, the tail of a thought bubble is disconnected, while the tail of a speech bubble is connected. Many cartoonists use a “bent” shape tail to communicate that the speech is coming from an electronic device, such as a phone, television, or radio:

Notice that the above word balloon is rectangular. An angular-shaped balloon can give the text inside it an “electronic” feel. Some cartoonists like to add to that by changing their lettering style to a more boxy style to enhance the “electronic” look. Other shapes or treatments can help communicate differences in how the characters are speaking. For example, a spiky balloon can be used to communicate shouting or yelling, while a broken- or dotted- line balloon can indicate a whisper:

Some cartoonists choose to keep their balloons a more consistent shape and depict a change in volume through the size of the lettering inside the balloon instead. It’s typically important that all speech in a comic be the same size, as frequent changes in size can confuse or distract readers, but a shout or whisper can be shown by enlarging or shrinking the text, respectively:

There are so many ways to vary word balloons and the text inside them to communicate different things to readers. Pay attention to the different shapes and sizes of the word balloons your favorite cartoonists use, as well as the ways they vary lettering to communicate meaning in their characters’ words!