The Visualisation of Language: Comic Books

Comic-books: 

'a publication that consists of comic art in the form of sequential juxtaposed panels that represent individual scenes. Panels are often accompanied by brief descriptive prose and written narrative, usually, dialog contained in word balloons emblematic of the comics art form. Although comics has some origins in 18th century Japan, comic books were first popularised in the United States and the United Kingdom during the 1930s.'

Comic books have been noted within this investigation for their use of onomatopoeia, punctuation (specifically exclamation point) and now too their use of imagery to inform of speech and thought. Their specific layouts and type hierarchy have developed an entire visual language for storytelling that is still relevant today. Their prominence in pop culture, as well as more highbrow institutions through artists like Lichtenstein who used parody to comment on society, has made them a universal language in their own right.

Structure

• Comic books are reliant on their organisation and appearance. 
• Authors largely focus on the frame of the page, size, orientation, and panel positions. 
• These characteristic aspects of comic books are necessary in conveying the content and messages of the author. 
• The key elements of comic books include panels, balloons (speech bubbles), text (lines), and characters. 
• Balloons are usually convex spatial containers of information that are related to a character using a tail element. 
• The tail has an origin, path, tip, and pointed direction. 
• Key tasks in the creation of comic books are writing, drawing, and colouring.

Speech balloons 

(Also speech bubbles, dialogue balloons or word balloons) are a graphic convention used most commonly in comic books, comics and cartoons to allow words (and much less often, pictures) to be understood as representing the speech or thoughts of a given character in the comic. There is often a formal distinction between the balloon that indicates thoughts and the one that indicates words spoken aloud - the thought bubble.

Other forms

The shape of a speech balloon can be used to convey further information. Common ones include the following:

• Scream bubbles indicate a character is screaming or shouting, usually with a jagged outline or a thicker line which can be coloured. Their lettering is usually larger or bolder than normal.
• Broadcast bubbles (also known as radio bubbles) may have a jagged tail like the conventional drawing of a lightning flash and either a squared-off or jagged outline. Letters are sometimes italicised without also being bold. Broadcast bubbles indicate that the speaker is communicating through an electronic device, such as a radio or television, or is robotic.
• Whisper bubbles are usually drawn with a dashed (dotted) outline, smaller font or grey lettering to indicate the tone is softer, as most speech is printed in black.
• Icicle bubbles have jagged "icicles" on the lower edge, representing "cold" hostility.
• Monster bubbles have blood or slime dripping from them.
• Coloured bubbles can be used to convey the emotion that goes with the speech, such as red for anger or green for envy. This style is seldom used in modern comics. Alternatively (especially in online-published comics), colours can be used to provide an additional cue about who is speaking. Main characters often have individual thematic colours, and their speech bubbles are frequently tinted with their colour; especially in situations when there are no characters visible for speech bubbles to point to.

Layout1. A panel 
(alternatively known as frame or box) is one drawing on a page, and contains a segment of action. A page may have one or many panels, and panels are frequently, but not always, surrounded by a border or outline whose shape can be altered to indicate emotion, tension or flashback sequences. The size, shape and style of a panel, as well as the placement of figures and speech balloons inside it, affect the timing or pacing of a story.[9] Panels are used to break up and encapsulate sequences of events in a narrative.[10] What occurs in a panel may be asynchronous, meaning that not everything that occurs in a single panel necessarily occurs at one time. 

2. Gutter
The gutter is the space between panels. Vertical gutters can be made thinner than horizontal gutters in order to encourage the reader to group each row of panels for easier reading.

3. Tier
A tier is a singular row of panels.

4. Splash
A splash or splash page is a large, often full-page illustration which opens and introduces a story. It is rarely less than half a page, and occasionally covers two pages. Often designed as a decorative unit, its purpose is to capture the reader's attention, and can be used to establish time, place and mood.

5. Spread

A spread is an image that spans more than one page. The two-page spread or double-page spread is the most common, but there are spreads that span more pages, often by making use of a foldout (or gatefold).

Elements

A caption (the yellow box) gives the narrator a voice. The characters dialogue is given through speech balloons. The character speaking is indicated by the tail of the balloon.

A speech/word/dialogue bubble is a speech indicator, containing the characters' dialogue. The indicator from the balloon that points at the speaker is called a pointer.

Sound effects or onomatopoeia are words that mimic sounds.They are non-vocal sound images, from the subtle to the forceful.

Kapow! and other comic book jargon

Specific lexicons:

1. Agitrons - Wiggly lines around a shaking object or character.
2. Briffits - Clouds of dust that hang in the spot of a swiftly departing character or object.
3. Indotherm - Wavy, rising lines used to represent steam or heat. When the same shape is used to denote smell, it is called a wafteron.
4. Kapow! - Onomatopoeic words in stylised lettering that represent noise within a scene – such as Kapow! – are Sound Effects or SFX.
5. Lucaflect - A shiny spot on the surface of something, depicted as a four-paned window shape.
6. Manga - Manga are Japanese comic books. The word is formed from two Japanese symbols or kanji: man, meaning ‘whimsical or impromptu’ and ga meaning ‘pictures’.
7. Quimps - images of planets with rings, like Saturn, used in speech or thought bubbles in place of obscenities. They serve the same purpose as grawlixes, but are graphical rather than typographical.
8. Vites - vertical straight lines drawn across flat, clear, reflective surfaces such as windows and mirrors to indicate reflectivity. Similar to Dites (diagonal) and Hites (horizontal). Hites are also used to indicate something moving at speed.

• Terms like kapow!, blam!, and zap! are largely associated with comics thanks to pop art and the Adam West Batman TV show, which emblazoned these terms across our screens, often accompanied by shrill trumpets blaring madly. 
• Onomatopoeia is so important with regard to the comic book writer’s lexicon. For instance, think of the image of a punch being thrown with POW! being written in large explosive letters. Now take POW! away, and what does the image look like? Just the punch, all by itself. It loses a lot of its punch.
• The impact of an image lies in the internally heard sound effect that one reads as they take in the image. The SKREEECH! of a car sliding around a corner helped one to hear as well as see the image, and a big juddering KABOOOM! makes one hear and feel the effects of an explosion.
• Otherwise empty panels sometimes contain coughs or sighs which breathed life into the image.

Conclusion

Comics have been in production for almost 90 years and in that time have developed an entire visual language, whereby in order to understand the reader must be aware of the relevant hierarchy, semantics and colour coding. Comics are thus a great example of how colour, type, layout and format choices combine to communicate information. Comic books have develop an entire language and set of mutually understood rules and technicalities in order to bring a 2D image to life. This includes using language too stimulate the senses within the readers cognitive reception, through visualising speed and motion, sounds, emotions, and associations towards of characters (such as through colour choices for their bubbles). 

Typographic depictions: