Drawing Manga :: Part 1: Roundtable Discussion of American Comics

One of my fave places to browse for comic fonts and tips is ComicBookFonts.com. There is a great article in their Balloon Tales section titled Roundtable: Thinking About Thought Balloons, and Other Abandoned Storytelling Techniques. For anyone who wants to get a good idea of the status of comic book design and hear what the pros have to say about it, this is a must-read. Some of the highlights:

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. . . Comics try to imitate movies to such a degree that we end up doing second-rate movies in our comics instead of first-rate comics. We abandon useful storytelling tools just because they aren't cinematic enough.

. . . Context is part of storytelling.

. . . I once had an editor who told me i couldn't use thought balloons because they didn't have them in movies. I tried pointing out that the images in movies, well, moved. Were not static. Different medium. Then the defense was that I couldn't use them because some writers—not me, of course—used them badly. So any technique that is used badly can no longer be used? The editor just stopped listening.

. . . each medium has its own storytelling methods. I'm not really clear as to why so many mainstream comics editors are uninterested in using the ones that work for comics, but I also take heart in the fact that, like every other hip trend, this too shall pass.

. . . [Editor Jim Shooter] used to say that if he made a big noise, a giant word didn't appear in mid-air, so they were unrealistic and dumb. It was pointed out to him that when he talked, bubbles with the words in didn't appear over his head, either, but he didn't seem to think that was the same thing. He did, however, think that word balloons should be separated from the art as much as possible—jam 'em up into the corner, even if it meant an overlong tail. He didn't like them floating in the middle of the art. Me, I thought that the graphic combination of words and pictures was the point.

. . . I think that too often, the bulk of comics creators all race off in the same direction, following the latest trend. I don't think editors should be chivvying the others along, too, making sure they all limit themselves in the same way. I like captionless comics, I like first-person narrative, I like third-person omniscient, third-person directed, shifting third-person directed, thought balloons, minimal captions, multiple first-person narrative tracks and more. I want to have it all available, and use what tells the story best.

. . . I feel too many people as they grow up are embarrassed by the comic book conventions. It's as if by changing them they make them more mature. Well, put a guy in a Superman or Spider-Man costume and no matter how many or few captions you have it is by nature a little juvenile. You can do stories that are well written and touch on adult themes but the essence is still wish fulfillment fantasy. And there's nothing wrong with that. But to be embarrassed by the specifics that make comics unique is ludicrous. There is nothing wrong with captions, thought balloons or even sound effects if the story calls for them. But then I think the majority of the people who make the decisions about such stuff are, as I say, probably embarrassed by the entire medium.

. . . I prefer to be allowed my full tool bag and not be denied something because of someone else's THEORY. When Bob Layton over at Valiant restricted use of thought balloons, I asked him if he was willing to have me pick some of his brushes at random and tell him he couldn't use them anymore. That didn't work, either.

. . . Distancing the reader isn't the way to appeal to young readers. I don't see anything wrong with a book aimed at 20-year-old readers having that distance; I think it's a terrible idea for a book aimed at 10-year-olds. Which may be a contributoring reason—as this sort of thing has taken hold over the last twenty-plus years—as to why there are so few books that successfully reach 10-year-olds.

. . . thought balloons are very useful but, like everything, you should do them for the right reasons. When Spider-Man did it back in the 60s it was to show the difference between his physical actions and what was going through his mind at the time, the dichotomy is what made the character interesting. On the other hand, I never used them with Dracula because I purposely didn't want you to know what was in his thoughts. I wanted his actions to fight against what he said. I think having thought balloons lets you inside your character but they have to be done for the right reason, not to give info that could be done another way. Since we all have running commentaries inside our minds as we go about our daily lives, they are actually more a reflection of reality. Removing them simply because they're reminiscent of kiddy comics is simply a case of throwing the baby out with the bathwater.

. . . Many old, retired techniques are worth mining now for new possibilities. . . I wouldn't want to see all these old practices come back wholesale in old forms, but maybe it's time we recovered them to demonstrate not only what can be done right with them but to demonstrate that comics as a form AREN'T film, despite interconnections and similarities. I think we needed that period where comics became infected with film techniques, but now it's time to go another step forward, now that we as a medium have had a few years to step back from them, it's time to reapproach them with a fresh eye and figure out how to use them better and more creatively.

. . . I suddenly feel like doing a story told entirely in telepathy, so no one uses a single speech balloon... One of the great values of thought balloons is to establish and explore the dichotomy between what people say and what they think. If the story demands naturalistic presentation, then thought balloons are probably not the most appropriate technique.

. . . I will give no ground on sound effects, though. They remain a dramatic tool for which there is no alternative in a soundless medium. They also help combat pretentiousness, since there's no escaping the slight silliness of spelling out noises in vowels and consonants. These tools are like stage conventions that have no parallel in everyday life—like flying in new scenery or shifting the predominant color of lighting to reflect changes of mood—but have proven their value in propelling a story forward while audiences willingly suspend disbelief.

. . . But most important is that the font should be readable—particularly to those of us plagued by the twin afflictions of aging, nearsighted, bifocal-corrected eyes which are reading things while on a bouncing, moving bus.

. . . It's personal taste—I don't much like multiple exclamation points, but that's not an argument that they can't work. Stan used the hell out of that key on his typewriter. It's just individual preference, not stumping for a rule. I took all the exclamation points off the FX in the Conan spin-off Len Wein and I are co-writing, but that was largely because it's a spin-off of a book I'm writing, one that uses my approach. Were I editing rather than co-writing, I'd leave 'em in—or were I co-writing a spin-off of a book Len was writing, I'd do it his way. As long as it works, it works. That's what really matters.

. . . My philosophy on SFX is that a few go a long way. You definitely need SFX when an off-panel action, like someone shooting a gun, is affecting what's happening on panel; with, say, a prominent BLAM! it's just a picture of someone gripping their chest and falling with a pained or shocked expression. The SFX is essential to understanding the scene. On the other hand, when the Howling Commandos are all charging forward firing machine guns, you don't want to start filling up the panel with a BUDDA for every shot being fired because that's just clutter and diminishes the overall effect, and only having one or two BUDDAs is underkill, so unless you're going for overkill it's arguably best to leave them out entirely. Too many people like to make up new sound effects—was it Len Wein who once had a thunder/lighting effect that went KRAKADOOM!?—and those can be distracting. I used to think familiar SFX like BLAM! were unimaginative, but now I think they're really more unobtrusive, when used sparingly. We know BLAM! represents a gunshot, and used properly it and similar SFX can ratchet up the tension in a scene because the reader doesn't really perceive them as a separate element; they blend in, like good coloring or lettering.

. . . Sound effects are a major part of manga. In the course of my English language rewriting of manga for Viz, I've encountered some doozy Japanese sound effects that I've had to "Americanize" —Gaba, Doga, Kachi, Gusha gusha, Jyaki—and I'm happy to say that several times I have been able to use "Krakadoom!"

. . . Just because you can do something, doesn't mean you SHOULD do something.

. . . Individual stylistic evolution... good. General stylistic evolution... bad.

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Lots of hightlights but the article was exceptional. Things like this, where you get a bunch of masters together and let them have at it about their craft and its conventions, always excite me.