Preface To Speech: Speech Balloons

(by Art Spiegelman - found here)

As a super comics nerd, I love the idea of speech balloons. Says the Wikipedia,

Speech balloons (also speech bubbles, dialogue balloons, or word balloons) are a graphic convention used most commonly in comic books, comics, & cartoons to allow words (& much less often, pictures) to be understood as representing a character's speech or thoughts. A formal distinction is often made between the balloon that indicates speech & the one that indicates thoughts; the balloon that conveys thoughts is often referred to as a thought bubble or conversation cloud.

The origin of speech balloons is cool, & is available at that link, so I don't have to go into it, but I wanted to point out two people who I think are absolute masters of the speech balloon.

One is Walt Kelly, who managed to let you know how a character sounded by the way he lettered the words in the balloon:

(image from here)

The other is Dave Sim, who in Cerebus was masterful at not only conveying the speech in the balloon but also the feelings of the characters. Here is Cerebus himself with a hangover:

(image from here)

There are doubtless better examples from these artists & other examples from the comic world. But those were the first to come to mind.

As if you need any more proof I am a super comics nerd.