Speech Bubbles: Difference between revisions

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* Most comics use different forms of speech bubble to represent telepathy, internal dialogue, phone calls etc., etc.

* ''[[The Invisibles]]'' uses this to good effect.

** [[The Grim Reaper|Death]] is the sanest and most down-to-earth of the Endless and the only one whose Speech Bubbles are completely normal.

* Jamie Madrox's duplicates in ''[[X-Factor (comics)|X-Factor]]'' get slightly different fonts from standard speech bubbles.

** ''Asterix and the Cauldron'' featured a Roman tax gatherer whose rectangular speech bubbles resembles modern tax forms, complete with check boxes.

** When our heroes complain to the camp cook about the army food in ''Asterix the Legionary'', the cook responds with mocking sweetness, before yelling his head off. While he's being nice, his speech bubbles are filled with smiling suns, flowers, singing birds and music notes.

* Nearly every important character in ''[[Watchmen]]'' has either a different color/style speech bubble, or a different font. Sometimes both.

* Deathurge speaks with all black Speech Bubbles as does Doorman after he takes up Deathurge's mantle.

* Super-Skrull speaks with green Speech Bubbles in ''Annihilation: Super-Skrull''.

* Speaking of ''[[Crisis Crossover|Annihilation]]'', in the Drax The Destroyer tie in all aliens speaking in their native tongues get weird bubbles plus in the series proper Annihilus gets purple ones, Tenebrous gets black ones, Aegis gets red ones, and The Xandarian Worldmind gets square ones with a yellow border.

* The Preservers in ''[[Elf Quest]]'' originally spoke with wavy lettering, and when the series collected for the first color edition each preserver spoke with its own color of bubble. This was dropped in the Marvel reprint which was completely re-lettered, and the new lettering carried over into some collected editions. The DC Collector's Edition and [http://www.elfquest.com/gallery/OnlineComics/OQ/OQ10/DisplayOQ10.html?page=7 Online Edition] of the Original Series use new computer lettering, restoring the wavy Preserver style and colored bubbles.

* In ''[[PS238]]'', aspiring supervillain and [[Take Over the World|world conqueror]] Zodon has a chip inserted into his head to make him stop cussing all the time. The innocuous words that replace his attempts to swear are rendered in a blocky font.

** Nick Zerhakker in ''[[Skin Horse]]'' has a similar problem. He doesn't sing, though. Yet.

* Depending on the writer, various [[Marvel Universe]] characters have distinctive font and speech bubble styles, including [[Fantastic Four|Ben Grimm (pretty much all the time) and Johnny Storm (whose speech bubbles take on a fiery appearance when he's using his powers)]]; and Wolverine, particularly when [[Unstoppable Rage|berserk]].

* In Teri Sue Wood's ''Wandering Star'', all the characters have elaborately hand-drawn dialogue, except for a group of mind-controlled slaves; theirs is typewritten.

* ''[[Buck Godot: Zap Gun for Hire]]'' uses different bubble styles and fonts for different alien races. [https://web.archive.org/web/20150428210107/http://www.airshipentertainment.com/buckcomic.php?date=20080322 This page alone] has thirteen different bubbles.

* Disney had for a time comics about baby versions of their characters. Baby Gyro Gearloose spoke in speech bubbles outlined by equations and formulas. Considering Gyro is the inventor as well as being terribly scatterbrained, that it probably represents that his mind's elsewhere while he's talking.

* In ''[[Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Adventures]]'' when a character is upside down, the text in their speech balloon would be printed upside down as well.

* The biochips in ''[[Rogue Trooper]]'' have sort of semi-circular indentations in the edges of their bubbles.

* In ''[[Atavar]]'', the [[Robot War|Uos']] speech bubbles are square and all their dialogue is '''bold'''. In the first few panels, before Atavar gains the ability to speak their language, the Kalen's dialogue is represented by random Greek letters.

* The speech bubbles in ''[[Cerebus the Aardvark]]'' could be incredibly expressive and as artistic as anything else that was going on in the comic, especially when Cerebus was drunk, mad, or having an argument with himself.

 

* Many [[Scanlation]]s groups use this to great effect.

 

 

* ''[[Priest (manhwa)|Priest]]'' uses this a lot; Protagonist Ivan, spirit guide Belial, big bad Temozerala, his demon lieutenants when they transform, and the zombies all have their own fonts.

 

 

 

* In ''[[SaGa Frontier]]'', the words in your character's speech bubbles are different colors than everyone else's. If you run into another one of the main characters during a storyline, their words are the same color as your own.

* ''[[City of Heroes]]'' represents characters' speech in speech bubbles. Players can choose the color of their bubbles and text.

** The ''[[Mario & Luigi]]'' trilogy shares this love for playing with the speech bubbles.

* In ''[[Vampire: The Masquerade Bloodlines]]'', the malkavian font is like cut out letters from a paper.

* In ''[[Final Fantasy IX]]'', every character has them throughout the game, even with the scrolling text in them.

 

* In ''[[A Moment of Peace]]'', humans have normal speech bubbles and gods speak in floating, colored, Comic Sans MS text.

* In ''[[Exterminatus Now]]'', the Dark Gods have different colored speech bubbles and fonts, and the main character's superior's speech bubble is black with white text. He himself is nearly always in shadow. The writer pointed this out in the comments for the comic.

* Similarly, ''[[Irregular Webcomic]]'' uses different colors for different characters, or at least tries to. Many characters and many crossovers have lead to a few cases where multiple characters in a strip speak with the same (or very similar) colors.

* Richard from ''[[Looking for Group]]'' falls under this proposed trope.

** Diverse colored speech bubbles for outsiders such as celestials, infernals, and ghosts. Infernals usually have black speech bubbles with colored text inside (lampshaded with Qarr the Imp, who is recognized by his red-on-black speech bubble). Celestials have brightly colored bubbles with black texts. Elementals like Celia have a color related to their plane of origin.

** Dragons and half-dragons also have colored speech bubbles related to their species.

** The shape is sometimes significant too, like with [[Lawful Neutral|modrons]] having rectangular bubbles.

** The arrows pointing to which character is speaking also give indications. They are straight when the character is healthy, but become irregular for a wounded or dying one to represent shaky speech. Minister Malack's are always this way, hinting of a raspy voice.

* ''[[Erfworld]]'' uses one font (Maiandra GD) for [[Up the Real Rabbit Hole|real-world]] characters (including Parson even after he is [[Summon Everyman Hero|summoned]] into Erfworld), and another (Gorilla Milkshake) for Erfworld's native inhabitants.

* ''[[Coga Suro]]'' has the usual convention of robots having square speech balloons. Most of them, anyway. Styx, an evil example, has black speech balloons with white text. For a few chapters, each character had a different font, but this was dropped later.

* ''[[8-Bit Theater]]'' has the Dark Warriors, were everyone but Bikke has weird speech bubbles; Garland's are red on black (formerly black on gray), Drizz'l's are white on black, and Viblert's are black on red. There's also Sulk's (a whiny version of The Hulk), which are green. The Light Warriors also get uniquely-coloured text when they don't speak in normal speech bubbles; this has led to much [[Wild Mass Guessing|discussion]] over the identities of the speakers in [http://www.nuklearpower.com/2004/06/26/episode-434-wouldnt-you-like-to-know/ one particular comic.]

** A question which has recently [http://www.nuklearpower.com/2009/05/19/episode-1129-there/ been answered.] '''(Spoilers!)'''

* ''[[Dream Catcher]]'' typically uses a standard font for everyone, except early on in the gateworld where they briefly used hard to read cursive text.

** When Bangladesh DuPree breaks her jaw and has it wired shut, her speech bubbles become rebuses.

** Other groups that have their own special speech bubbles: [http://www.girlgeniusonline.com/comic.php?date=20031027 Jagerkin] (and the Generals are even more special), and [http://www.girlgeniusonline.com/comic.php?date=20051107 and voice-enabled clanks]. Castle Heterodyne [http://www.girlgeniusonline.com/comic.php?date=20080709 has a bubble similar to the Jagers], and Von Pinn and the Geisterdamen have their own particular fonts, but the same speech bubbles as human characters.

** Each character has their own colors of speech bubble, with their own [[Painting the Medium]] moments. When Psycho Mantis is using his powers, his text turns from black to <s>red</s> green. It's when he goes totally nuts that his text turns red. And when one character is possessing another, the possessing spirit's speech bubble is used. This is actually used in the last comic, to reveal that {{spoiler|Big Boss has taken over Ocelot's mind, not Liquid as the games would have you believe}}.

* In ''[[Ozy and Millie]]'', all the dragons have their own distinctive fonts.

** Most characters in ''Vinci & Arty'' have distinct fonts, with the exception of non-recurring characters, who just get a generic font.

* ''[[Combo Rangers]]'' (hey, [[All The Tropes:There Is No Such Thing as Notability|there's no such thing as notability]], right?) has speech bubbles [[Color Coded for Your Convenience]], in accordance to the character's uniform colors. This was useful when it was revealed that a [[Big Bad]] was a clone of Power Combo, thanks to their similar speech bubbles.

** This convention was picked up by ''[[Darths and Droids]]''.

** And in the recent [[Deep-Immersion Gaming]] portions of ''[[The Wotch]]''.

* David Hopkins' ''[http://www.pholph.com/ Jack]'' uses a very distinctive style of speech bubble for any dialogue spoken by the Sins in the strip and a second distinctive style for those characters who are/were Fallen angels, although the latter is rarely seen.

** Candy and Ryan Dewalt, the pair behind ''Vinci & Arty'', did a story arc for ''Jack'' (with full approval from David Hopkins) and brought their talent for character-specific fonts to ''Jack''.

* In ''[[Schlock Mercenary]]'', the [[Big Bad]] race of the time had an in-universe [http://www.schlockmercenary.com/d/20020421.html font change] to something more readable as part of the terms of a surrender.

* Miss [http://www.nettserier.no/ascii/2008/05/25/ Delta] (a digital artist from @hens) in ''[[Adventures In ASCII]]'' has half-triangular speech bubbles reflecting her body shape.

* In ''[http://www.electric-manga.com/ Kagerou]'', different colors are used to differentiate characters, as well as to show which of Kano's personalities is at the fore. His speech bubbles usually match his [[Kaleidoscope Eyes]].

* One [http://mountaincomics.com/shampoo-week-2-finale/ special Mountain Time episode] puts speech bubbles to a somewhat meta use.

* ''[[The Way of the Metagamer]]'' started out using Comic Sans for everything. Later on, it switched to Gemelli—but when characters are under mind control or otherwise possessed, their font changes back to Comic Sans. Additionally, the narrator speaks with floating rectangles instead of bubbles—whenever a character [[Interactive Narrator|imitates the narrator]], they too use rectangles.

* ''[[Drowtales]]'' uses differently colored speech bubbles for different characters. In one panel, Ariel and Chirinide both yell at Kyonne to leave them, and share one bubble with a gradient between their respective colors.

* In ''[[Roza]]'', [http://www.junglestudio.com/roza/?date=2007-05-23 the guard monster roars in red].

* In ''[[Precocious (Webcomic)|Precocious]]'', [http://www.precociouscomic.com/archive/comic/2010/04/09 speech with asterisks.]

* In ''[[Thistil Mistil Kistil]]'', [http://tmkcomic.depleti.com/comic/ch02-pg20/ Loki is angry. The lettering is not neat, and shows red.]

* In ''[[Sinfest]]'', [https://web.archive.org/web/20140209174203/http://sinfest.net/archive_page.php?comicID=4026 using fonts, and no border for Buddha's awakening]

* In ''[[The Specialists]]'' [http://thespecialistscomic.com/page-59/ Baron Crossbones speaks in black bubbles with white writing.]

* In ''[[American Barbarian]]'' [http://www.ambarb.com/?p=87 red, white, and blue speech for a moment.]

* In ''[[My Life at War]]'' they use the shape of speech bubbles to [https://web.archive.org/web/20160306171806/http://www.mylifeatwar.com/?p=22 indicate a character's accent].

* In ''[[Level 30 Psychiatry]]'' translated [[Pokémon-Speak]] is rendered in Blue and Yellow balloons reminisant of the Pokemon logo.

* Naturally, these get used throughout the whole of ''[[Ears for Elves]]''; however, the ways their shape and layout can be used is shown excellently [https://web.archive.org/web/20150121074535/http://www.earsforelves.com/archives/572 here].

 

* Many cartoons of [[The Silent Age of Animation|the silent era]] such as [[Felix the Cat]] would use Speech Bubbles as opposed to the word cards usually seen in live action silent films.

 

* Toon Lagoon at [[Universal Studios|Universal Orlando]]'s [[Theme Parks|Islands of Adventure]] is inspired and populated by the characters of King Features Syndicate, and has dozens of speech bubbles (and indeed, entire cartoon set pieces) deployed throughout the island for making amusing photographs.

 

{{reflist}}

[[Category:Sequential Art]]

[[Category:The Silent Age of Animation]]

[[Category:Webcomic Tropes]]