QUOTABLES

Speak up Speak out In a Bubble

The speech bubble is brand new all the time, but did you know it has an ancient history?

In her book, The Early History of the Speech Bubble, Laura Monaghan tells us that history’s variations of the speech bubble have been used in European and the Mesoamerica ancient art.

Two Mixtec rulers are shown insulting two ambassadors through the use of “flint knife” icons attached to the speech scrolls. 

Here’s something interesting we found…

The "speech scrolls," wispy lines connecting first-person speech to speakers' mouths in Mesoamerican art between 600 and 900 AD, are among the earliest precursors to the modern speech bubble. Before that, murals featured paintings with stories in sequential frames and descriptive text resembling bubble-like text. Painted ‘comics' with speech bubbles were found in an ancient Roman tomb.

A 1506 painting by Bernhard Strigel with banderole.

But look how they’ve evolved…

Notable for its minimalist beauty and sheer creativity, the newspaper comic strip Krazy Kat (1913 to 1944) is also the source of several firsts. Krazy's Kat’s gender was constantly shifting and they may have been comics' first nonbinary character.

We’re created 2-sided pillows with speech bubbles in our Quotables collection. Our version offers two sides to the story, with words of wit and wisdom.

That’s all folks. Felices vacaciones amigos.

Courage Drifter