Type in pictures. Comic book lettering in contemporary American comics. An overview

Abstract

This paper focuses on the issue of comic book lettering in mainstream American comics with an aim to introduce theoretical and methodological framework for further analysis of comic book typography. First, it addresses numerous aspects of relations between text and image in comics and presents the brief history of lettering in American comic book industry, as it grew apart from its European counterpart in the early years of development and became much more institutionalized, in no part because of the works of Will Eisner, Gaspar Saladino and especially Richard Starkins, who introduced an affordable means of using the digital typography in early 90s' comic books. In its main part the paper presents the classification of usage of lettering in comics' communicates, which distinguishes the diegetic (graphic, verbal and mental) and non-diegetic (meta- or paratextual and narrative) communicates. This analysis was based on the research sample of over 700 comic book issues, mostly from the Ultimate Marvel imprint (2000–2015) In the final paragraphs, the author critically examines functions of comic book typography and outlines three possible fields of further study.