A GLOSSARY OF COMICS TERMS
By José Villarrubia

This a glossary of the nomenclature most commonly employed by sequential art professionals.
Common mistakes include using “storyboard” for “layouts”, “speech bubbles” for “word balloons” and “comic strip” for “comic book”

Album
European Graphic Novel.

Alternative Comics
Independent comics from small publishers. Usually creator owned and in black and white.

Anime
Japanese Animation. See Manga.

BD (pronounced beh-deh)
Bande Dessinée (literally “drawn strip”) – Franco-Belgian Comics.

Blurb
Copy that relates to a title, usually in the cover or the splash page.

Borders
The edges of the page.

Bronze Age
The Bronze Age of American Comic Books lasted from the early 1970s to the mid-1980s

Breakdowns.
See Layouts

Bubbles
The little connecting circles to thought balloons. See Thought Balloon.

Caption
Shape containing narration not spoken by a character. Sometimes used now instead of thought balloons. See Thought Balloon.

Caricature
A portrait that exaggerates or distorts the essence of a person or thing to create an easily identifiable visual likeness. Caricatures of politicians are commonly used in editorial cartoons.

Cartoon
Humorous single-panel drawing, most of which have captions and generally do not use speech balloons. The term is also used to mean “animation”.

Cartoonist
And artist who draws and sometimes writes cartoons.

Centerfold
The two folded pages found in the center of the book, where the staples can be seen.

Colorist, Color Artist
The artist that applies color to line art. Nowadays they mostly employ Adobe Photoshop. In contemporary American comics normally a flatter prepares the pages for the colorist. See Flats.

Comic Book
An approximately 7 by 10 1/2” staple bound pamphlet usually containing 22 pages of story. The first comic book appeared in the United States in 1934, reprinting the earlier newspaper comic strips.

Comic Strip
A horizontal sequence of panels usually featured in a daily or Sunday paper.

Comics
Juxtaposed pictorial and other images in deliberate sequence (from the book “Understanding Comics - The Invisible Art” by Scott McCloud.) See Sequential Art.

Comix
Underground comics (or comix) are small press or self-published comic books that began to appear in the US in the late 1960s, until 1980, when they were replaced by Alternative comics.

Comicon, Con
A comic book convention.

Credits
Text where the authors are listed.

Digital Inks
Enhancing the pencil lines in a page in Adobe Photoshop, usually increasing the contrast, in order to make them easier to reproduce. In American comics digital inking is gradually replacing traditional inking. See Inking.

Double-Page Spread
Two facing pages featuring a single large horizontal panel.

Editorial Cartoon
Also known as a political cartoon, is an illustration or comic strip containing a political or social message, that usually relates to current events or personalities.

Fanzine, Zine
An amateur fan publication

Flats
A preliminary step to coloring contemporary American comics where a layer is done in Adobe Photoshop separating all the areas of the illustrations in a page with flat colors. See Flatter.

Flatter
The person who prepares the flats. See Flats

Full Script
A script where the writer breaks the story down in sequence, page-by-page and panel-by-panel, describing the action, characters, and sometimes backgrounds and “camera” points-of-view of each panel, as well as all captions and word balloons.

Fumetti
Photographic comics, Photo-novels. Also the name for all Comics in Italy.

Golden Age
The Golden Age of American Comic Books lasted from 1934 until the late 1940s. During this time, modern comic books were first published and enjoyed a surge of popularity.

Graphic Novel
A square bound comic with a long, complete story. Sometimes it is a reprint of several comic books.

Gutter
The space between panels.

Hentai
Sexually themed manga and anime.

Indicia
Text listing the publication details of a comic book or graphic novel.

Inker
The artist that does the finished drawing in ink for a comic.

Inking
Traditionally finishing the pencil drawings in a comic in India ink or other types of inks for easier reproduction.

Layouts
Preliminary sketches, showing the rough composition of each page and usually done in pencil. See storyboard.

Letterer
The typographer or calligrapher for a comic book.

Logo
Title of a comic book as it appears on the cover or title page.

Mainstream
In America, Superhero comics from Marvel Comics, DC Comics, Dark Horse Comics and Image Comics. See Alternative Comics, Comix.

Manga
Japanese comics. See Anime.

Marvel Method
The Marvel Method is a form of comic book writer-artist collaboration in which the artist works from a story synopsis, rather than a full script, creating page-by-page plot details on his or her own.

Modern Age
The Modern Age of American Comic Books encompasses from the mid-1980s until present day.

Page
One side of a leaf of something printed.

Panel
A rectangle that contains a moment in the story.

Penciller
The artist that does the pencil drawings.

Script
A script is a document describing the narrative and dialogue of a comic book in detail. It is the comic book equivalent of a television program, teleplay, and animation script or a film screenplay.

Sequential Art
Comics. Used to avoid giving the impression that all comics are funny. See Comics.

Silver Age
The Silver Age American of Comic Books is the period from 1956 to around 1970.

Sound Effect
BANG! WHAM! SPLASH! etc.

Spine
The folded and stapled part of the comic book.

Splash Balloon
An outline around lettering done in jagged shape. It represents loud speech or sound.

Splash Page
A page containing a Splash panel.

Splash Panel
A single panel covering a whole page.

Storyboard
A series of sequential images for the purpose of pre-visualizing a motion picture, animation, motion graphic or interactive media sequence, including website interactivity. Storyboards are not used as a preliminary step for comics. However some consider storyboards themselves to be a form of comics. See Layouts.

Thumbnails
Small preliminary sketches, done in advance of the layouts.

Thought Balloon
A cloud shaped area that represents what a character is thinking. Rarely used in modern comics, except for humor. See Caption.

Tier
Row of panels (left to right) on page.

Title
The name of the story.

Webcomics
Webcomics, online comics, or Internet comics are comics published on a website

Word Balloon, Speech Balloon, Dialog Balloon
Caption enclosing dialog with a tail pointing to the speaking character’s mouth. See Thought Balloon.