What Are You Looking At?

Before I was able to read comics for myself my older sister would sometimes read them to me. But even if no one was around I was already paging through these colorful, vibrant books, just looking at the pictures and trying to piece together the events of the story at hand…and wishing I was able to read them for myself.

And then I DID learn how to read them for myself. And this practice has been going on for the last 30+ years.

But recently I have departed a little from the role of reader, and stumbled more into the realm of creator. And in this progression, profoundly, now I spend a copious amount of time wondering why more people don’t read comics…

SO I ASK THEM!

And although there are some more personal, isolated reasons for not reading comics for some, there are also some reoccurring, shared reasons as well. For people that don’t read comics, when asked why not, I think almost half the people respond that it’s because they find them hard to read. When you have spent the last 30+ years of your life “training” to read comics, it’s hard to image that this could even be a thing! But now wanting EVERYONE to read the comics I create, looking at this from their point of view, I can see how reading them can be a challenge!

Straight from the Wikipedia entry for “Comics”:  “comics are non-linear structures and can be hard to read…”

Most people can read standard text without issue. And, most people can also take in an image easy enough. But comics are that wonderful amalgam of pictures AND words, and when reading them, the eyes must go to the right (not wrong) place. There IS a learning curve to reading comics, and when done right the pictures and words will all work seamlessly together. But when done wrong the eye struggles with what to look at next. And that can be tiring and not enjoyable…for ANY reader.

Now, I’m really appreciating how much skill goes into making quality comics. It’s not just good writing. It’s not just good art. It has to be all about everything working together.  Proper character orientation, well developed page layouts and well placed text captions that all work together to guide the eye through the proper sequence in the right order to make an enjoyable, non-confusing reading experience. Everything involved should be about leading the reader through the story without even noticing, creating a smooth, faultless transition panel to panel, page to page.

The more I look at conventional lettering, now, the more I see issue with it. Overly circular lettering can encroach on the art when done improperly, it allows for lines of dialog that only contain 1-2 words, it can be balloons going up and down scatter shot leading the eye in non-conventional reading patterns. Because that’s how the mainstream medium has always done it. But now that I am exposed more and more to Independent titles in general, I see how much liberty in the presentation can be afforded! And what if…what if one wanted to improve the lettering presentation in order to aid the reader?!?   

I think this is especially true for comics that are read by a new comic audience. People who rarely read comic books may have a hard time perceiving sequential art as anything more than a series of disconnected images. The lettering may be the only part of the presentation that IS familiar to them…so why not make it appear MORE like text that they are already used to processing?

At some point in comics, not that long ago, someone decided to get rid of the thought balloon and slammed in a narrative caption box instead. I mean, seriously, think about that. I recently read an article with a bunch of (pro) lettering guys talking about how the old thought bubbles were no longer being utilized….and in all that lament not ONE of them mentioned the benefit of NOT having all those little circles leading up to the one big one… covering up all of that art... leading the eye everywhere…

There’s not a single thought balloon in Watchmen. It’s really all about consistency and creating a sequence. Creating a style is great, but it has to be secondary to the essentials. 

Happy creating!

-Keith