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Hello from UK

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topic icon Author Topic: Hello from UK  (Read 180 times)

CaptainGustav

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Hello from UK
« on: January 25, 2025, 10:33:33 PM »

I living in UK but l am a Asian, although I'm not a actually fan of American comics - in fact I only bought The Adventures of Tintin (Europe) and Mickey Mouse (US) as a kid but today I basically only read Japanese comics and animations.

The reason I found this place is that I am starting to draw a fan art comic about warships and naval battles (More detail on Pixiv https://www.pixiv.net/artworks/125107322), so I found the treasure under the "Pirate" entry here.

I'm curious why Americans like to add so many words to comics??
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gregjh

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Re: Hello from UK
« Reply #1 on: February 01, 2025, 01:51:08 PM »

Hi Captain, I'm originally from the UK but living in Asia so I'm kinda like the anti-you :-)

Hope you enjoy it here.
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The Australian Panther

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Re: Hello from UK
« Reply #2 on: February 01, 2025, 11:00:48 PM »

CaptainGustav,

Asia is a big place, so I'm not sure what your native language would be to say 'Welcome!'. So here it is in Japanese. ようこそ

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  today I basically only read Japanese comics and animations.

You will note that we have a 'Non-English section' on CB+. There are no Japanese (or Hong Kong for that matter) comics there. That's not because we don't want them, we would  love to have some. Every book on CB+ is PD [In the Public Domain - out of copyright] that's how we keep it legal and free. We would need someone to research the Japanese Anime industry who would know which books are PD and then to have a source for the books themselves.
For all we know there might be a site that's a Japanese version of CB+!

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  I'm curious why Americans like to add so many words to comics??


A very interesting question indeed!

That's a characteristic which is by no means universal though.
Depends on the creator/s and the publishers policies.
Personally I always found a lot of British comics far wordier.
But a great topic for a longer discussion. 

Again, Welcome!   
     






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paw broon

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Re: Hello from UK
« Reply #3 on: February 02, 2025, 09:30:22 AM »

Wordy? Oh, I don't know. Take a look, at Robb's scanlations of Dutch beeldromans, or the original Dutch versions. You want wordy? There you go.  As Panther says, depends on a number of things.  Some comics and strips are perfect examples of the balance of words and pictures. There's an article I read recently which takes apart the huge number of British strips which combined word balloons with below( occasionally above) the illustration text boxes. 
I'll try tofind it.
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Robb_K

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Re: Hello from UK
« Reply #4 on: February 02, 2025, 06:42:00 PM »


Wordy? Oh, I don't know. Take a look, at Robb's scanlations of Dutch beeldromans, or the original Dutch versions. You want wordy? There you go.  As Panther says, depends on a number of things.  Some comics and strips are perfect examples of the balance of words and pictures. There's an article I read recently which takes apart the huge number of British strips which combined word balloons with below( occasionally above) the illustration text boxes. 
I'll try tofind it.

One of the major factors influencing the wordiness of comic strip or comic book panels is the size of the pages in the case of The Dutch Beeldromansen, size and language are the major factors.  Size is the major factor because Beeldromansen were about 3/4 the size of the small, 1940s cigarette pacquets, so even average amount of wording would take up too much of the panel size to allow enough room for the artist to portray the scene's action.  That is why the Beeldromansen genrally used the entire page as a single panel, so there would be enough space to show enough artwork to convey a decent amount of action.  The other major factor, the way the language is expressed in words based on grammar rules, also affects it in the panel-crowding direction, as Dutch, compared to English, is generally 120-125% higher in number of alphabet letters (characters) used to convey similar concepts.  Imagine having as much as 35% to 50% less room with which to draw necessary action scenes, using the ultra-wordy Hochdeutsch (Standard German)?

A third major factor is the style of the story-telling style of the author, and how much the want to convey through the strip's artwork, vs. hoiw much they value being a wordsmith.  That balance also depends upon whether or not the artist and writer are the same person.  A writer/artist may want to express more through the art's action and/or facial expressions, where a wordsmith may want the subtleties in his/her choice of words to carry more weight than the art.  Or, you may get a wordsmith, like Charles Schultz, who used a lot of pantomime in his art, as well as very strong and expressive body language and facial expressions to convey attitude and motivation for actions, and not used a lot of wording, but also made his words count more.

I don't have enough knowledge of East or South Asian comic strips to know what style of word importance is most common.  I have a few different Chinese comic books from a Chinese/Indonesian friend of mine, which are fairly sparing in wordiness (economical, using less text) than the average British or US comic books I've seen.  But perhaps the amount of wordiness in comic books and strips in ANY language or nationality (country) of publication can vary with the type of publication based on historical publication traditional styles?
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