Comic Book

What is a comic book?

• A comic book, also called comic magazine or
simply comic, is a publication that consists of
comic art in the form of sequential juxtaposed
panels that represent individual scenes.
• The first modern comic book, Famous Funnies,
was released in the United States in 1933.
• Usually when a comic book exceeds 50 pages &
is bound in either soft or hard cover, it becomes
a graphic novel.
 Structure of a Comic Book
• Panel is an individual frame or single drawing
depicting a frozen moment.
• Panels are often accompanied by brief descriptive
prose and written narrative, usually dialog
contained in word balloons.
• One way to look at a panel is that it is like a scene
in a movie or television show.
• In American comics, pages are read from left to
right, whereas the opposite is true for manga.
 HOW MANY PANELS ARE ON A PAGE?
• Generally, a common number for panels for a comic
book page is five to six. However, comic book artists
can play with page format to evoke different
emotions.
• The key elements of comic books include panels,
balloons (speech bubbles), text (lines), and
characters.
• 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 balloon that conveys thoughts is often referred to
as a thought bubble.
• When one character has multiple balloons within a panel,
often only the balloon nearest to the speaker's head has a tail,
and the others are connected to it in sequence by narrow
bands.
• The chain thought bubble is the almost universal symbol for
thinking in cartoons. It consists of a large, cloud-like bubble
containing the text of the thought, with a chain of increasingly
smaller circular bubbles leading to the character. Some artists
use an elliptical bubble instead of a cloud-shaped one.
 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 colored.
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 gray lettering to indicate the tone is softer, as most
speech is printed in black.
Another form, sometimes encountered in manga, looks like an
occidental thought bubble.
• Icicle bubbles have jagged "icicles" on the lower edge,
representing "cold" hostility.
• Monster bubbles have blood or slime dripping from them.
• Colored 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.
 Border
The edge or outline of the
comic page (shaded red in this
example).
 Gutters
The space between the panels of the comic
(shaded red in this example).
 Open Panels
Panels where one or more, or even all, of the sides of
the comic panel are open to show dramatic effect.
 Splash Panel
A panel that takes up the space of several panels
in the comic in order to introduce or highlight an
action or character.