Leticia Neria PhD thesis - Research@StAndrews:FullText ...

deep thought, etc. 21 ‘Even the shape of the balloon in which the text appears can
communicate something about the nature of the sound’. 22 It can also be studied
according to its content, which can simply be dialogues or even images. The type and
shapes of letters are relevant. ‘Lettering […] treated “graphically” and in the service of
the story, functions as an extension of the imagery. In this context it provides the mood,
a narrative bridge and the implication of sound’. 23 The use of bold fonts denotes
excitement, small ones mean that someone is whispering, and sometimes images appear
inside the balloons, such as strange signs when a character is swearing, or a light bulb
when someone has an idea. 24
Related with balloons are the inarticulate sounds which are the words that refer
to sounds. They are similar to onomatopoeia. They express sound but might also
describe a fact, a situation. Words such as ñam, sigh, brrrrr, clink, ejem, rrruunn, bring
meaning to the comic, and they are chosen because of the noises that we/something
often make in real life. 25 These noises have been transformed into words and are
exclusive to comics. They can be defined as exclamations which correspond to a
stereotypical situation that is already a convention, agreed and known by the readers and
the creators. 26 Thanks to them, we recognise that a character in a comic is feeling cold
when he says ‘brrrrrr’; it is an expression that comes from the noise we make when we
are cold, our jaw shivers, and we make a vocal sound.
Gubern adds that there is a social convention about balloons and inarticulate
sounds because they were popularised by US comics and repeated by comic artists
21
A complete revision of different styles of balloons is found in Luis Gasca and Roman Gubern, El
discurso del cómic (Madrid: Ediciones Cátedra, 2001), pp. 422-479.
22
Gene Kannenberg, Jr., quoted by Duncan and Smith, The Power of Comics… p. 156.
23
Will Eisner, Comics and Sequential Art. Principles and Practices from the Legendary Cartoonist (New
York, London: W.W. Norton & Company, 2008), pp. 2,4.
24
Gubern, El lenguaje de…, pp. 145-150, and Muro, Análisis e interpretación… p. 95.
25
Gubern, El lenguaje de…, p. 145.
26
However, a neophyte in the language of comics will be able to relate the ‘sound-word’ to its reference
(helped by the image). Moreover, when we read the word ‘squeak’ we know the sound it recalls from our
own experience.
253
Image 6.1.
‘Balloon’
Image 6.2.
‘Inarticulate
sounds’