European Comics Lettering
In honor of Letterer Appreciation Day 2022, I want to look at four aspects of lettering I see in European comics – Les Bandes Dessinees (BD) – that are different from your standard North American comics.
Square Balloons
You don’t see these much in North America. They’re usually used in particularly chatty books, where they help squeeze in more words per panel. See “Largo Winch” or, the worst offender, “Blake and Mortimer.”
They’re used in books that are usually – but not always – aimed at an older audience with more serious fare.
There are exceptions to that, of course. I mean, Tintin used square word balloons.
And, yes, I realize they’re really rectangular word balloons, but people tend to refer to them as “square”. I’m just rolling with that.
Lowercase “I”
I don’t know if this goes back any further and I’m sure people will let me know in the comments, but I picked this up from Asterix first. That goes back to 1959.
Check out the lowercase “I” letters in the middle of words. I like to call this the Inverse European Crossbar I Rule. Anywhere you would use a crossbar “I”, use a crossbarless “I”. Anywhere you would use a crossbarless “I”, use a lowercase “I”.
I don’t know why, but I like it. It gives a little bounce to the lettering without being distracting or hard to read. It has a slightly more comedic tone to it.
Not everyone does it, but it does show up from time to time. “Cinq Avril” even used it, and that’s far from a comedy. Maybe it’s a younger readers’ thing?
Script Fonts
You see this a lot in slice-of-life books, autobiographical stories, stories about kids, or family dramas, in particular.
This might be more comfortable for some people to hand letter, perhaps?
The English translations end up being digital, of course, and those can sometimes be hard to read. A good script font for comics dialogue is a tricky beast to create.
I had issues with “Incredible!”, most recently, where the script was super scripty – very narrow and tight. All those loops become hard to read. Other artists and other fonts use a slightly more open letterform that’s easier to read.
Reuse the Font
I love that the modern translations work so hard so often to use the same or a similar font. It’s a good example of how lettering really is part of the art. The art will look different with a different lettering style done on top of it.
The idea of lettering being an invisible art is pure myth. Also, it’s crap. Lettering is seen right inside the art. It’s insane to think it doesn’t have an effect on the impact of the art.
And the way these European translations are almost always done in the same font or as similar a font as can possibly be found (often to the original’s hand lettering) is a great way to show that.
That’s it – four points about the lettering in Franco-Belgian comics. What else do you notice when reading BD? Leave a comment below.
Happy Letterer Appreciation Day, everybody! Now, go read a comic book and pay closer attention to what you’re reading. HINT: It’s the lettering
Previously, on Letterer Appreciation Days Past
Appreciating Tom Orzechowski, Part 1: “Uncanny X-Men” #141
Appreciating Tom Orzechowski, Part 2: “Excalibur: Mojo Mayhem”
Appreciating Tom Orzechowski, Part 3: “Uncanny X-Men” #244
ok so let’s take things in order :
– shame on you for denigrating beloved classic Blake & Mortimer. Someday you will reread it and realise how wrong you were all along. Joking aside, comics used to be made by proper writers, so american golden/silver age was wordy as well, reread Stan’s scripts. Or Gardner Fox, or anyone from that generation, EC comics, etc. Cmon, be fair.
– square balloons :just plain makes more sense, doesn’t it. Rounds just waste space that should be devoted to art.
– the i controversy. This is purely english-based nonsense, as far as French calligraphy rules are concerned there is only one i, either capitalized at the beginning of a phrase or a proper name, or small in any other case. Plain and simple. Anything else is just lack of education.
– script: this a generational thing, I believe. I learned cursive in school in 19##, but that was mostly abandoned in the 90s over here, as a narration tool, diary-style. Print remains and that’s a narrative trick as well. I remember reading Batman: Year One, many moons ago, and the cursive narration coupled with deplorable printing quality made my reading painful therefore dimming my enjoyment of the book. I wish they’d never do that again. same thing with Asgardian fancy h, enough of that. American comics switching from all caps to mostly small print in recent years is a sin.
– reusing fonts : depends, really. I was happy reading the Incal in the english version with pro lettering because Giraud’s hand style I just don’t get.
Yes, all comics written before 1980s were too wordy, and comics before 1970 were triply so. I find most of them painful to read, particularly the Stan Lee classics. Reading people telling each other things they already know because there’s no room on the page to draw anything gets tedious fast.
Square balloons make sense, yes, but I’m biases towards oval balloons because it’s what I grew up on. This isn’t about logic. It’s about preference. 😉
Ah, cultural differences! But I do still enjoy the dotted-i in the middle of block lettering in English, even though I shouldn’t.
I agree on that scripted caption style in Batman: Year One. Even the amazing Todd Klein can’t make me enjoy that stuff. Thankfully, we got over the style where every character used a different font relatively quickly in the late 90s.
I see your point here, though I loved his stuff on that Silver Surfer book, even if parts of it weren’t the greatest/slickest. Since we’ll likely never see Lt. Blueberry here in English (aside from old and impossible-to-find reprints) then I’ll never get the chance to complain that the translation doesn’t use Moebius’ hand lettering style. =)