InsaneJournal

What is with comics, and their frenetic use of emphasis? Let's find out!
Books for March

Fussell, Sandy - White Crane
Gaiman, Neil - Odd and the Frost Giants
Landy, Derek - Skulduggery Pleasant
L'Engle, Madeleine - Many Waters (re-read)
Meyer, Stephanie - The Host
Pierce, Tamora - Protector of the Small quartet (re-read)
Pollan, Michael - In Defense of Food

Comics for March

Clugston, Chynna - Scooter Girl (re-read)
Friedman, Aimee and Norrie, Christine - Breaking Up (re-read)
Hino Matsuri - MeriPuri 1-4 (re-read)
Kawahara Kazune - High School Debut 1
Kishimoto Masashi - Naruto 1 (re-read)
Soryo Fuyumi - Eternal Sabbath 2
Takanashi Mitsuba - The Devil Does Exist 1, 2 (re-read) & 3
Yazawa Ai - Nana 9

I am so sad, Eternal Sabbath #4 arrived on Saturday, but #3, which I ordered at the same time, has yet to come. Alas, because I am really liking that series.

Months are long. And yet I have finished one book in the last ten days? What have I been doing with myself! Probably thinking about rocks. Or writing poetry about rocks. Or poetry about poetry...

I also wrote a letter! There was an article in the NZ Book Council magazine about italics. And, oh fool, the author thought she would talk about the mysterious multitude of italicised words to be found in comic books. The article was 'Slanted and Enchanted', by Ashleigh Young. I wrote this explanation because she stated she couldn't find a reason for the prevalence of these 'italics'. Well, you're not going to get far with the wrong word.

What she's referring to is not italics, but bold lettering. Italics may be the closest equivalent in prose, but as she noted, they are used quite differently. I have to wonder who she asked that no-one told her this, because you're going to be able to find a lot more with the correct terminology.

The consensus seems to be that bold lettering is used to indicate speech patterns, stresses based not so much upon the content as upon how the characters talk. A secondary function is to make the page scan better. The eye latches onto the bold words, making it easier to move between them. I've read some quite wordy comics that don't use bold lettering, and I think they could have benefited from it. A tightly packed word balloon is quite imposing, and that amount of dialogue in a comic can bog things down. Comics are a visual medium, not just a verbal one.

Of course, it's possible to do it badly, but that's up to the writer of the comic. I would argue that the examples she uses aren't as bad as she implies ? the emphases in "I'm GLAD your trip back to your world didn't DIMINISH your sense of the OBVIOUS, Quislet," are quite sensible when you consider that the character is speaking sarcastically. And probably superheroes do just speak more urgently than us.

Bold lettering also doesn't stand out as much when you're reading the comic as it does when quoted - at least, not for someone who has grown up reading comics as well as prose. Different conventions for a different medium. Several of the things Ashleigh mentions as increasing urgency, such as block capitals and explanation marks, are things that developed because up till quite recently, the printing of comics wasn't as clear as it is now - upper and lower case lettering became difficult to read, and fullstops tended to disappear.

Whether or not these things are needed now is debatable, and they are changing. For instance, Marvel, in 2003, decided to get rid of the block capitals in their comics. And following that, bold lettering did seem out of place - the author Neil Gaiman commented in his blog once that he didn't realise the lettering wasn't going to be in all-caps, when he wrote the script for Marvel comic '1602' - and that once he did, he cut most of the bolding.

So some comics do without bold lettering, (other than to indicate prose-type italics) - you don't find them in manga, or many comics from indy publishers, and some writers, such as New Zealander Dylan Horrocks may not use it even when writing for a big name like DC. Some editors decide they want their comics to look less 'comic-y'', and will do away with things such as bolding and block capitals indiscriminately. That doesn't necessarily make for better storytelling. If comic books have developed these conventions, and using them serves a purpose, than why not use them?

There's nothing alien about it. Just because you're not familiar with the history and development of a medium doesn't mean it doesn't have one. Sometimes I wish I were doing a BA, and that I could go on and be a scholar of comics. Not that a lack of qualification is likely to stop me.

By way of sources, Kurt Busiek's 'On Writing for Comics', an excellent discussion of lettering at Balloon Tales, an entry in Neil Gaiman's blog from 2003 (it's very depressing that I recalled it and found it to write the letter), and my own comic book collection. I get very distressed when people make claims, about a medium I love, when they actually have no idea what they're talking about.