If you do want to talk about lettering in reviews, but not quite sure what to address, for me there’s three basics that form readable lettering:
- can you actually read the words
- are the balloons readable in the right order
- is it clear who’s speaking

That’s the baseline

In each of those cases, it comes with the caveat of as long as it words you’re meant to be able to read, as long as the balloons aren’t in a weird order for effect etc. But get those three right and you have a “readable” comic. Everything beyond that is something added for story.

So balloon style, font choice, when balloon style changes, when font changes or colour changes. Has the font choice worked with the art? Does it feel as one? If not, has that aided your response to the work? If so, has that aided your response to the work?

If you’re writing about how the world felt alive in a story, did the lettering push that, too? It could be that in a fantasy world a story feels different because the characters don’t feel like they fit in that world — maybe the balloons don’t look like they belong in that world.

The other part of this is that there are things a letterer does that you might not know are lettering, or things you might consider lettering that are the writer. Sometimes a letterer will break up balloons into different beats. Sometimes that’s in the script, etc.

Really all of this is just summed up in the same way you’d approach writing about any other part of if a comic worked. What was the comic trying to achieve, and how successful was it in achieving that? And how did the lettering appear to help that?

An example I use is like, you can follow my three baseline points and end up with square boxes in Arial with arrows pointing to the characters in the scene. It’s going to be “readable” if you do that (it won’t be pretty, but you will be able to physically read the comic)—

—but if you want to have the lettering contribute to the aesthetic, integrate and then be able to add something, then someone has to make a series of decisions.

( this is the most interesting point)