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Let’s Make It Readable!

Here’s another in Marek’s series of minis dealing with the grunt work of making comics, this time trying to get people to understand the aesthetics of text.  Granted, it doesn’t seem like this would be an issue for people who are already making their own comics, but you’d be surprised how much stuff I see where some crucial chunks of dialogue are just unreadable.  This comics shows Reed and Bill… OK, that’s just a terrible pun.  Still, for the sake of the meaning behind this comic, I’ll soldier on.  Reed has all the useful answers, Bill shows how not to do everything.  Marek makes some good points here: to write the words before drawing the word balloon, to make sure of placement of the word balloons to have any given panel make sense, to step back and read your work from a distance to make sure it’s all legible, and to have someone proofread your work before inking.  Marek won me over instantly with that panel, as easily corrected spelling errors are one of my biggest pet peeves.  Granted, comic artists don’t have the spell check that I do when writing these reviews, but most of them do have friends, or they could post a few pages on their websites to get rid of at least the most glaring spelling mistakes.  This is another good contribution to this particular series of minis, and Marek should thinking about putting all of these together when he’s done, as they’d make a decent “how-to” book for beginners.  And, frankly, some people who should already know better.  Marek was also nice enough to send me a gigantic collection of his strips, so look for that in the coming weeks.  I have a sneaking suspicion that this may all be too much cute for a giant book, but I’d be happy to be proven wrong.  No price, let’s call it $1