In the comic book industry, typesetting is referred to as “lettering.” Letterers generally classify typefaces into two categories: balloon or display/sound effect (sfx).
The examples here come from Avengers: The Children’s Crusade #8. The typeface is a digital balloon font created by Chris Eliopoulos and I believe is based on his own hand-lettering. The lettering was done by Cory Petit of Eliopoulos’ lettering studio, Virtual Calligraphy.
Digital comic book fonts are designed to mimic traditional comic book hand-lettering, complete with all the inconsistencies of hand-lettering like subtle baseline and x-height shifts, kerning irregularities etc. “Tracking” (or letter spacing) refers to the overall space in a word or block of text. “Kerning” refers to the spacing between a pair of letters.
Good comic book lettering is invisible. You’re obviously aware you’re reading balloons and sfx, but they should NEVER take you out of the moment and stop your flow of reading the story.
As I read this issue, I came across the bold “YOUR” in the first balloon above and was immediately pulled out of the story by the bad kerning of the “Y” and “O”. Not only did I stop and notice the poor kerning in that word, I started looking at all the other balloons on the page to see their kerning. Absolutely killed the flow of the comic.
Chris Eliopoulos is a terrific letterer whom I have a lot of respect for and this post is in no way an indictment of him or his abilities. Just pointing out some things with this particular typeface that could use adjusting (see my tweaks in the image above) to increase its readability and avoid interrupting the flow of the comic.
