Questions Answered Before Being Asked!

Still reflecting on the subject of our last blog entry (translating Japanese) there should also be mention of the challenge faced by the cartoonist in presenting conversations between two or more characters in the same panel.

Here's two versions of the same cartoon. The first version (above) has been constructed in the vertical mode - from top to bottom - to satisfy the long entrenched reading habits of the Japanese magazine audience. (I'm not going to change them now.)

After years of using the North American layout for designing comic strips (from left to right) I have to admit, it wasn't easy at first to change my ways. Not only must the Japanese storyline progress in a downhill motion, but the speech balloons in each panel must progress from right to left. The exact opposite of my initial left to right impulse.

So I had to consider the stage location for all my characters; otherwise I'd find them blabbing their (zany?) back and forth comments out of order. Heck, it just wouldn't make sense for questions to be answered before they were even asked; if you know what I mean. The way I decided to deal with it, was to approach the writing task in reverse - a system that sometimes still persists today my conversations normal in.


The second version presented here suffers (first off) by not receiving the same depth and dimension that colour can add; and secondly, if I'm honest with myself, I think I drew the first one a little 'tighter' (better) too. The skinnier size of this domestic panel forced me to place the woman's spoken words ABOVE her husband's rather than beside it when they shared a square - a remedy I can always employ in both languages without being in error either way.

Here's another example of two characters speaking in the same panel and how I dealt with the translation switch. In each of the 4 comic strips I've posted here, there has been an opening panel deleted due to scanner limitations, but in most cases, the jist of the idea remains clear. What we've lost from the missing panel in the strip below however, plays a bigger part in the gag. The premise that the son (Raymond) has been on an unrelated search for his mask will tie in nicely with the mother's insistence that she perform homemade family haircuts from now on.



The more they talk, the less room they leave for anything else in the frame. It's important to advance the storyline, but not at the expense of delivering an attractive picture. What's more important to the reader? Sometimes choices have to be made between art and text and too much of either can diminishing both. When everything has to 'happen' in the confines of a four frame cartoon strip, without misplacing any word balloons, it can soon become more work than fun for both artist & reader.