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64-719: One of the earliest antecedents to the modern speech bubble were the " speech scrolls ", wispy lines that connected first-person speech to the mouths of the speakers in Mesoamerican art between 600 and 900 AD. Earlier, paintings, depicting stories in subsequent frames, using descriptive text resembling bubbles-text, were used in murals, one such example written in Greek , dating to the 2nd century , found in Capitolias , today in Jordan . In Western graphic art, labels that reveal what

128-503: A bubble or just floating above the character's head as a modified 'cloudy' thought bubble, depicts anger, not always verbally expressed. Light bulbs are sometimes used when the character thinks of an idea or solution to a problem. In the Western world, it is common to replace profanity with a string of nonsense symbols (&%$ @*$ #), sometimes termed grawlixes . In comics that are usually addressed to children or teenagers, bad language

192-562: A character in their Josie and the Pussycats comic, has musical notes drawn into her word balloons at all times, to convey that she speaks in a sing-song voice. The above-mentioned Albert Uderzo in the Asterix series decorates speech bubbles with beautiful flowers depicting an extremely soft, sweet voice (usually preceding a violent outburst by the same character). A stormy cloud with a rough lightning shape sticking out of it, either in

256-433: A character is gagged or otherwise unable to speak. Another, less conventional thought bubble has emerged: the "fuzzy" thought bubble. Used in manga (by such artists as Ken Akamatsu ), the fuzzy bubble is roughly circular in shape (generally), but the edge of the bubble is not a line but a collection of spikes close to each other, creating the impression of fuzziness. Fuzzy thought bubbles do not use tails, and are placed near

320-455: A different language which Asterix may not understand; Goths speak in blackletter , Greeks in angular lettering (though always understood by the Gaulish main characters, so it is more of an accent than a language), Norse with "Nørdic åccents", Egyptians in faux hieroglyphs (depictive illustrations and rebuses), etc. Another experiment with speech bubbles was exclusive to one book, Asterix and

384-637: A font that is exclusive to them. For examples, the main character, the gloomy Dream , speaks in wavy-edged bubbles, completely black, with similarly wavy white lettering. His sister, the scatterbrained and whimsical Delirium speaks in bubbles in a many-colored explosive background with uneven lettering, and the irreverent raven Matthew speaks in a shaky angular kind of bubble with scratchy lettering. Other characters, such as John Dee, have special shapes of bubbles for their own. For Mad magazine's recurring comic strip Monroe , certain words are written larger or in unusual fonts for emphasis. In manga , there

448-537: A million admissions in France alone) as well as critically, winning Best First Film at the César Awards 2008 . The film reflects many tendencies of first-time filmmaking in France (which makes up around 40% of all French cinema each year), notably in its focus on very intimate rites of passage, and quite ambivalently recounted coming-of-age moments. Satrapi and Paronnaud continued their successful collaboration with

512-727: A pictured figure is saying have appeared since at least the 13th century. These were in common European use by the early 16th century. Word balloons (also known as " banderoles ") began appearing in 18th-century printed broadsides, and political cartoons from the American Revolution (including some published by Benjamin Franklin ) often used them—as did cartoonist James Gillray in Britain. They later became disused, but by 1904 had regained their popularity, although they were still considered novel enough to require explanation. With

576-525: A second film, a live-action adaptation of Chicken with Plums , released in late 2011. In 2012, Satrapi directed and acted in the comedy crime film La bande des Jotas ( Gang of the Jotas ), from her own screenplay. In 2014 Satrapi directed the comedy-horror film The Voices , from a screenplay by Michael R. Perry . In 2019, Satrapi directed a biopic of two-time Nobel Prize winner Marie Curie , titled Radioactive . In 2021, Satrapi starred in

640-493: A sound effect for "deafening silence", shiin ( シーン ) . In many comic books, words that would be foreign to the narration but are displayed in translation for the reader are surrounded by brackets or chevrons ⟨like this⟩ . Gilbert Hernandez 's series about Palomar is written in English, but supposed to take place mainly in a Hispanic country. Thus, what is supposed to be representations of Spanish speech

704-645: A speech bubble with this letter standing all alone means the character is sleeping in most humorous comics. This can be seen, for instance, in Charles Schulz 's Peanuts comic strips. The resemblance between the 'z' sound and that of a snore is a frequent feature in other countries. However, in Japanese manga the common symbol for sleep is a large bubble of snot coming out of a character's nose. Singing characters usually have musical notes drawn into their word balloons. Archie Comics ' Melody Valentine ,

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768-457: A stunned silence or when a sarcastic comment is expected by the reader. The ellipsis, along with the big drop of sweat on the character's temple – usually depicting shame, confusion, or embarrassment caused by other people's actions – is one of the Japanese graphic symbols that have become used by other comics around the world, although they are still rare in Western tradition. Japanese even has

832-495: A tail; this usage, equivalent to voice-over for movies, is not uncommon in American comics for dramatic contrast. In contrast to captions, the corners of such balloons never coincide with those of the panel; for further distinction, they often have a double outline, a different background color, or quotation marks . Thought bubbles are used in two forms, the chain thought bubble and the "fuzzy" bubble. The chain thought bubble

896-461: A thought bubble proved puzzling to Iraqi soldiers: according to one PSYOP specialist this was because the technique was not known in Iraq, and readers "had no idea why Saddam's head was floating in the air." The most common is the speech bubble. It is used in two forms for two circumstances: an in-panel character and an off-panel character. An in-panel character (one who is fully or mostly visible in

960-514: Is Alan Moore and David Lloyd 's V for Vendetta , wherein during one chapter, a monologue expressed in captions serves not only to express the thoughts of a character but also the mood, status and actions of three others. The shape of a speech balloon can be used to convey further information. Common ones include the following: Captions are generally used for narration purposes, such as showing location and time, or conveying editorial commentary. They are generally rectangular and positioned near

1024-473: Is censored by replacing it with more or less elaborate drawings and expressionistic symbols. For example, instead of calling someone a swine, a pig is drawn in the speech bubble. One example is the Spanish Mortadelo series, created by Francisco Ibáñez . Although not specifically addressed to children, Mortadelo was initiated during Francisco Franco 's dictatorship , when censorship

1088-582: Is a French-Iranian graphic novelist , cartoonist , illustrator, film director, and children's book author. Her best-known works include the graphic novel Persepolis and its film adaptation , the graphic novel Chicken with Plums , Woman, Life, Freedom and the Marie Curie biopic Radioactive . Satrapi was born in Iran. She grew up in Tehran in an upper-middle class Iranian family and attended

1152-402: Is a standard speech bubble with a tail pointing toward the speaker's position (sometimes seen with a symbol at the end to represent specific characters). The second option, which originated in manga , has the tail pointing into the bubble, instead of out. (This tail is still pointing towards the speaker.) The third option replaces the tail with a sort of bottleneck that connects with the side of

1216-469: Is a tendency to include the speech necessary for the storyline in balloons, while small scribbles outside the balloons add side comments, often used for irony or to show that they are said in a much smaller voice. Satsuki Yotsuba in the manga series Negima is notable because she speaks almost entirely in side scribble. Speech bubbles are used not only to include a character's words, but also emotions, voice inflections and unspecified language. One of

1280-422: Is the almost universal symbol for thinking in cartoons. It consists of a large, cloud -like bubble containing the text of the thought, with a chain of increasingly smaller circular bubbles leading to the character. Some artists use an elliptical bubble instead of a cloud-shaped one. Often, non-human characters such as Snoopy and Garfield "talk" using thought bubbles. They may also be used in circumstances when

1344-419: Is the traditional direction; and horizontal, as most other languages), manga has a convention of representing translated foreign speech as horizontal text. It is a convention for American comics that the sound of a snore is represented as a series of Z's, dating back at least to Rudolph Dirks ' early 20th-century strip The Katzenjammer Kids . This practice has even been reduced to a single letter Z, so that

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1408-447: Is to letter with computer programs. The fonts used usually emulate the style of hand-lettering. Traditionally, most mainstream comic books are lettered entirely in upper-case , with a few exceptions: When hand-lettering, upper-case lettering saves time and effort because it requires drawing only three guidelines, while mixed-case lettering requires five. For a few comics, uppercase and lowercase are used as in ordinary writing. Since

1472-513: Is written without brackets, but occasional actual English speech is written within brackets, to indicate that it is unintelligible to the main Hispanophone characters in the series. Some comics will have the actual foreign language in the speech balloon, with the translation as a footnote; this is done with Latin aphorisms in Asterix . In the webcomic Stand Still, Stay Silent , in which characters may speak up to five different languages in

1536-795: The Angoulême Coup de Coeur Award at the Angoulême International Comics Festival . In 2013, Chicago schools were ordered by the district to remove Persepolis from classrooms because of the work's graphic language and violence. This banning incited protests and controversy. Her later publication, Embroideries ( Broderies ), was also nominated for the Angoulême Album of the Year award in 2003, an award that her graphic novel Chicken with Plums ( Poulet aux prunes ) won. She has also contributed to

1600-923: The Haute école des arts du Rhin (HEAR) . Her parents told her that Iran was no longer the place for her, and encouraged her to stay in Europe permanently. Satrapi is currently married to Mattias Ripa, a Swedish national. They live in Paris . Apart from her native language, Persian , she speaks French , English , Swedish , German , and Italian . Satrapi became famous worldwide because of her critically acclaimed autobiographical graphic novels , originally published in French in four parts in 2000–2003 and in English translation in two parts in 2003 and 2004, respectively, as Persepolis and Persepolis 2 , which describe her childhood in Iran and her adolescence in Europe. Persepolis won

1664-651: The Mesoamerica area. An early example is a Olmec ceramic cylinder seal dated to c.  650 BC , where two lines emit from a bird's mouth followed by glyphs proposed to be " 3 Ajaw ," a ruler's name. The murals of the Classic era site at Teotihuacan are filled with speech scrolls, in particular tableaus in the Tepantitla compound— this mural , for example, has more than 20 speech scrolls. In Mesoamerica, speech-scrolls are usually oriented upwards along

1728-585: The Op-Ed section of The New York Times . ComicsAlliance listed Satrapi as one of 12 women cartoonists deserving of lifetime achievement recognition. Satrapi prefers the term "comic books" to "graphic novels." "People are so afraid to say the word 'comic'," she told the Guardian newspaper in 2011. "It makes you think of a grown man with pimples, a ponytail and a big belly. Change it to 'graphic novel' and that disappears. No: it's all comics." Persepolis

1792-463: The Belgian artist Hergé 's The Adventures of Tintin series being a good example. Sometimes, the punctuation marks stand alone above the character's head, with no bubble needed. In manga , the ellipsis (i.e. three dots) is also used to express silence in a much more significant way than the mere absence of bubbles. This is specially seen when a character is supposed to say something, to indicate

1856-621: The French animated short film The Soloists , voicing Ava, one of the three eponymous sisters fighting to express their musical talents in a country with blatantly sexist laws. Following the Iranian elections in June 2009, Satrapi and Iranian filmmaker Mohsen Makhmalbaf appeared before Green Party members in the European Parliament to present a document allegedly received from a member of the Iranian electoral commission claiming that

1920-713: The French-language school Lycée Razi . Both her parents were politically active and supported leftist causes against the monarchy of the last Shah . Her maternal great-grandfather, Nasser-al-Din Shah , was the Persian emperor from 1848 to 1896. When the Iranian Revolution took place in 1979, her parents had to undergo the rule of the Islamic fundamentalists who had taken power. During her youth, Satrapi

1984-507: The Roman Agent . The agent in question is a vile manipulator who creates discord in a group of people with a single innocent-sounding comment. His victims start quarreling and ultimately fighting each other while speaking in green-colored speech bubbles. Font variation is a common tactic in comics. The Sandman series, written by Neil Gaiman and lettered by Todd Klein , features many characters whose speech bubbles are written with

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2048-741: The book-carrying Four Evangelists of the New Testament and other Christian saints, a convention appearing in Italy in the 13th century. It may be seen in the Santa Trinita Maestà by Cimabue ( Uffizi , 1280–90), Duccio 's Maestà (1308–11), and other works. The convention had a historical appropriateness, as the Old Testament was originally written on scrolls , whereas nearly all surviving New Testament manuscripts are codices (like modern books). They may also be used for

2112-548: The bubbles are read from left to right in a panel, while in Japanese , it is the other way around. Sometimes the bubbles are "stacked", with two characters having multiple bubbles, one above the other. Such stacks are read from the top down. Traditionally, a cartoonist or occupational letterer would draw in all the individual letters in the balloons and sound effects by hand. A modern alternative, used by most comics presently and universal in English-translated manga,

2176-432: The character who is thinking. Thought bubbles are sometimes seen as an inefficient method of expressing thought because they are attached directly to the head of the thinker, unlike methods such as caption boxes, which can be used both as an expression of thought and narration while existing in an entirely different panel from the character thinking. However, they are restricted to the current viewpoint character. An example

2240-472: The comics. Fesser claimed: "When you see a bubble speech containing a lightning falling on a pig, what do you imagine the character's saying?" In order for comic strip and graphic novel dialogue to make sense, it has to be read in order. Thus, conventions have evolved in the order in which the communication bubbles are read. The individual bubbles are read in the order of the language. For example, in English ,

2304-489: The development of the comics industry during the 20th century, the appearance of speech balloons has become increasingly standardized, though the formal conventions that have evolved in different cultures (USA as opposed to Japan, for example) can be quite distinct. In the UK in 1825 The Glasgow Looking Glass , regarded as the world's first comics magazine , was created by English satirical cartoonist William Heath . Containing

2368-532: The device was in use by artists within Mesoamerican cultures from as early as 650 BC until after the Spanish conquest in the 16th century, and 13th and 14th European painters. While European speech scrolls were drawn as if they were an actual unfurled scroll or strip of parchment , Mesoamerican speech scrolls are scroll- shaped , looking much like a question mark . It is used in heraldry for mottos or slogans and war-cries . Speech scrolls are found throughout

2432-568: The early Tarzan comic strip during the 1930s. In Europe, where text comics were more common, the adoption of speech balloons was slower, with well-known examples being Alain Saint-Ogan 's Zig et Puce (1925), Hergé 's The Adventures of Tintin (1929), and Rob-Vel 's Spirou (1938). Speech balloons are not necessarily popular or well-known in all parts of the world. During the Gulf War , an American propaganda leaflet that used

2496-520: The edge of the panel. Often they are also colored to indicate the difference between themselves and the word balloons used by the characters, which are almost always white. Increasingly in modern comics, captions are frequently used to convey an internal monologue or typical speech. Some characters and strips use unconventional methods of communication. Perhaps the most notable is the Yellow Kid , an early American comic strip character. His (but not

2560-479: The lettering is entirely in capital letters, serif versions of "I" are used exclusively where a capital I would appear in normal print text, and a sans-serif (i.e., a simple vertical line) is used in all other places. This reduces confusion with the number one, and also serves to indicate when the personal pronoun "I" is meant. This lettering convention can be seen in computer fonts designed for comic book lettering, which use OpenType contextual alternates to replace

2624-463: The longest outer edge so that the central element (or "tongue") curves downward as it spirals. Some Mesoamerican scrolls are divided lengthwise with each side given a different shade. Glyphs or similar markings rarely appear on the Mesoamerican speech scroll, although "tabs"—small, triangular or square blocks—are sometimes seen along the outer edge. If the speech scroll represents a tongue, then

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2688-537: The mid-1980s, mixed case lettering has gradually become more widely used in mainstream comic books. Some comics, such as Pearls Before Swine , also use lowercase speech to mark a distinctive accent (in this case, the male crocodiles' accented speech, opposed to all other characters who use standard uppercase speech). From 2002 to 2004, Marvel Comics experimented with mixed-case lettering for all its comic books. Most mainstream titles have since returned to traditional all upper-case lettering. For many comics, although

2752-536: The names of the patrons as painted text and thus supplemented the purely pictorial information with readable content for the already literate urban mercantile elite. European speech scrolls usually contain the spoken words, much like a modern-day speech balloon . The majority of these are in religious works and contain Biblical quotations from the figure depicted – Old Testament prophets for example, were often shown with an appropriate quotation from their work. Because

2816-479: The other characters') words would appear on his large, smock-like shirt. Shirt Tales , a short-run American animated TV series of the early 1980s used this same concept, but with changing phrases on the "T-shirts" worn by the animal-based characters, depending on the characters' thoughts. Also noteworthy are the many variations of the form created by Dave Sim for his comic Cerebus the Aardvark . Depending on

2880-624: The panel of the strip of comic that the reader is viewing) uses a bubble with a pointer, termed a tail, directed towards the speaker. When one character has multiple balloons within a panel, often only the balloon nearest to the speaker's head has a tail, and the others are connected to it in sequence by narrow bands. This style is often used in Mad Magazine , due to its " call-and-response " dialogue-based humor. An off-panel character (the comic book equivalent of being "off screen") has several options, some of them rather unconventional. The first

2944-401: The panel. It can be seen in the works of Marjane Satrapi (author of Persepolis ). In comics, a bubble without a tail means that the speaker is not merely outside the reader's field of view, but also invisible to the viewpoint character , often as an unspecified member of a crowd. Characters distant (in space or time) from the scene of the panel can still speak, in squared bubbles without

3008-410: The same scene, most dialogue is unmarked (languages mostly being inferred by who is speaking and to whom), but miniature flags indicate the language being spoken where this is relevant. Another convention is to put the foreign speech in a distinctive lettering style; for example, Asterix 's Goths speak in blackletter . Since the Japanese language uses two writing directionalities (vertical, which

3072-453: The shape, size, and position of the bubble, as well as the texture and shape of the letters within it, Sim could convey large amounts of information about the speaker. This included separate bubbles for different states of mind (drunkenness, etc.), for echoes, and a special class of bubbles for one single floating apparition. An early pioneer in experimenting with many different types of speech balloons and lettering for different types of speech

3136-517: The single-stroke "I" with a serifed one in appropriate contexts. In some comics, characters who are upside down when speaking also have the lettering in their speech bubbles turned upside down. As this only hinders the reading of the comic, this seems to be used only for humorous effect. Speech scroll In art history , a speech scroll (also called a banderole or phylactery ) is an illustrative device denoting speech, song, or other types of sound. Developed independently on two continents,

3200-629: The start of the Gothic period . Previously, as in Byzantine art , spoken words, if they appeared at all, were usually painted alongside a figure; these are called tituli . However, earlier works using banderoles are the Aachen Gospels of Otto III ( c.  975 ) and the 12th-century English Romanesque Cloisters Cross . The latter work demonstrates the use of banderoles as attributes for Old Testament prophets , to distinguish them from

3264-426: The tabs may represent teeth, but their meaning or message, if any, is not known. At times, speech scrolls are decorated with devices that describe the tone of the speech: In contrast to the abstract nature of Mesoamerican speech scrolls, Medieval European speech scrolls or banderoles appear as actual scrolls, floating in apparent three-dimensional space (or in actual space in sculpture). They first become common at

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3328-482: The universal emblems of the art of comics is the use of a single punctuation mark to depict a character's emotions, much more efficiently than any possible sentence. A speech bubble with a single big question mark (?) (often drawn by hand, not counted as part of the lettering) denotes confusion or ignorance. An exclamation mark (!) indicates surprise or terror. This device is used much in the European comic tradition,

3392-551: The voices of Gena Rowlands , Sean Penn , and Iggy Pop , was nominated for Best Animated Feature at the 80th Academy Awards in January 2008. Satrapi was the first woman to be nominated for the award. However, the Iranian government denounced the film and got it dropped from the Bangkok International Film Festival. Otherwise, Persepolis was a very successful film both commercially (with over

3456-459: The words are usually religious in nature, the speech scroll is often written in Latin even when appearing in woodcut illustrations for books written in the vernacular . This would also enable the illustration to be used in editions in other languages. European speech scrolls may at times be seen in secular works as well and may also contain the name of a person to identify them. On carved figures

3520-470: The words of angels, especially Gabriel 's greeting to Mary in Annunciation scenes. During the 14th century, quotations in banderoles increasingly allowed artists to include more complex ideas in their works, though for the moment usually in Latin, thus greatly restricting the audience that could follow them. In this context, medieval donor illustrations are of particular importance, as they recorded

3584-548: The words would usually be painted on the scroll and have since worn away. In some Late Gothic and Renaissance works, and in architectural decoration, very elaborate empty banderoles seem to be for decorative purposes only. The European speech scroll fell out of favor largely due to an increasing interest in realism in painting; the halo had a similar decline. Marjane Satrapi Marjane Satrapi ( French: [maʁʒan satʁapi] ; Persian : مرجان ساتراپی [mæɾˈdʒɒːn(e) sɒːtɾɒːˈpiː] ; born 22 November 1969)

3648-533: The world's first comic strip, it also made it the first to use speech bubbles. Richard F. Outcault 's Yellow Kid is generally credited as the first American comic strip character. His words initially appeared on his yellow shirt, but word balloons very much like those used presently were added almost immediately, as early as 1896. By the start of the 20th century, word balloons were ubiquitous; since that time, few American comic strips and comic books have relied on captions, notably Hal Foster 's Prince Valiant and

3712-531: Was Walt Kelly , for his Pogo strip. Deacon Mushrat speaks with blackletter words, P.T. Bridgeport speaks in circus posters, Sarcophagus MacAbre speaks in condolence cards, "Mr. Pig" (a take on Nikita Khrushchev ) speaks in faux Cyrillic , etc. In the famous French comic series Asterix , Goscinny and Uderzo use bubbles without tails to indicate a distant or unseen speaker. They have also experimented with using different types of lettering for characters of different nationalities to indicate that they speak

3776-491: Was adapted into an animated film of the same name . It debuted at the 2007 Cannes Film Festival in May 2007 and shared a Special Jury Prize with Carlos Reygadas 's Silent Light ( Luz silenciosa ). Co-written and co-directed by Satrapi and director Vincent Paronnaud , the French-language picture stars the voices of Chiara Mastroianni , Catherine Deneuve , Danielle Darrieux , and Simon Abkarian . The English version, starring

3840-542: Was arrested again and sentenced to death. Anoosh was only allowed one visitor the night before his execution, and he requested Satrapi. His body was buried in an unmarked grave in the prison. It is said that Anoosh was the nephew of Fereydun Ebrahimi , Minister of Justice of Azerbaijan People's Government , a secessionist government that tried to secede from Pahlavi Persia in 1945. Although Satrapi's parents encouraged her to be strong-willed and defend her rights, they grew concerned for her safety. In her teens by this time, she

3904-412: Was common and rough language was prohibited. When Ibáñez's characters are angry, donkey heads, lightning, lavatories, billy goats and even faux Japanese characters are often seen in their bubbles. When Mortadelo was portrayed in a movie by Spanish director Javier Fesser in 2003, one of the critiques made to his otherwise successful adaptation was the character's use of words that never appeared in

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3968-465: Was exposed to the growing brutalities of the various regimes. Many of her family and friends were persecuted, arrested, and murdered. She found a hero in her paternal uncle, Anoosh, who had been a political prisoner and lived in exile in the Soviet Union for a time. Satrapi greatly admired her uncle, and he in turn doted on her, treating her more as a daughter than a niece. Once back in Iran, Anoosh

4032-543: Was homeless and lived on the streets for three months, until she was hospitalized for an almost deadly bout of bronchitis . Upon recovery, she returned to Iran. She studied visual communication, eventually obtaining a master's degree from Islamic Azad University in Tehran. Satrapi then married Reza, a veteran of the Iran–Iraq War , when she was 21, whom she later divorced. She then moved to Strasbourg , France, to study at

4096-630: Was skirting trouble with police for disregarding modesty codes and buying music banned by the regime. They arranged for her to live with a family friend, Zozo, to study abroad, and in 1983, at age fourteen, she arrived in Vienna , Austria , to attend the Lycée Français de Vienne . She stayed in Vienna through her high school years, often moving from one residence to another as situations changed, and sometimes stayed at friends' homes. Eventually, she

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