Speech Balloon - Artist-specific Variations

Artist-specific Variations

Some characters and strips use highly unconventional methods of communication. Perhaps the most notable is the Yellow Kid, an early American comic strip. His (but not the other characters') words would appear on his large, smock-like shirt.

Also noteworthy are the many variations on the form created by Dave Sim for his comic Cerebus the Aardvark. Depending on the shape, size, and position of the bubble, as well as the texture and shape of the letters within it, Sim could convey large amounts of information about the speaker. This included separate bubbles for different states of mind (drunkenness, etc.), for echoes, and a special class of bubbles for one single floating apparition.

An early pioneer in experimenting with many different types of speech balloons and lettering for different types of speech was Walt Kelly, in his Pogo strip. Deacon Mushrat speaks in blackletter, P.T. Bridgeport speaks in circus posters, Sarcophagus MacAbre speaks in condolence cards, "Mr. Pig" (a take on Nikita Khrushchev) speaks in faux Cyrillic, etc.

In the famous French comic series Asterix, Goscinny and Uderzo use bubbles without tails to indicate a distant or unseen speaker. They also have had fun experimenting with many different types of lettering to suit characters with distinct nationalities, thus meaning they speak a different language that Asterix may not understand, but the readers can. So Goths speak in blackletter, Greeks in angular lettering (though always understood by the Gaulish main characters, so it's more of an accent than a language), Norse with "Nørdic åccents", Egyptians in faux hieroglyphs (depictive illustrations and rebuses) etc. Another original experiment with speech bubbles was exclusive to one album, Asterix and the Roman Agent. The agent in question was a vile manipulator who could create dissension amongst any group of people with a single innocent-sounding comment. His victims start quarreling and ultimately fighting each other while speaking in green-colored speech bubbles, which symbolize darnel.

Font variation is a common tactic in comics. The Sandman series, written by Neil Gaiman, features many characters whose speech bubbles are written with a font that is exclusive to them. Some examples: the main character, the gloomy Dream speaks in wavy-edged bubbles, completely black, with similarly wavy white lettering. His sister, the scatterbrained and whimsical Delirium speaks in bubbles in a many-colored explosive background with uneven lettering, and the irreverent raven Matthew speaks in a shaky angular kind of bubble with scratchy lettering. Other characters, such as John Dee, have special shapes of bubbles for their own.

In Mad's recurring Monroe comic strip, certain words are written larger or in unusual fonts for emphasis.

In manga, there is a tendency to include the speech necessary for the storyline in balloons, while small scribbles outside the balloons add side comments, often used for irony or to show that they're said in a much smaller voice. Satsuki Yotsuba in the manga series Negima is notable because she speaks almost entirely in side scribble.