So in pro versions you get the whole extended family as opposed to the nuclear family. Some type fonts have dozens of variations like the Arial and Garamund families. Neither of which I'd use for a comic except for walls of text.

I kind of dislike super italic bold variations as main text. There are some comics that use it and it just seems forced as if everyone is screaming and talking a mile a minute. Sometimes I wish comic creators would target their use of fonts on how people talk as opposed to a 19th century actor's declamation oratory.

But of course all text everywhere in all graphic art must have a drop shadow. ;-)

ozoneocean wrote:
A lot of my fonts I got through work.
Scarf is right, they do have more variation. Mainly I'll use that for other graphic design stuff than comics.
Blambot does have pro versions of his fonts with extra characters.
Extra options in pro fonts include anything from just the normal italic and bold options, to special things like extra-bold, condensed, ultra-condensed, black, extra-black, thin, extended- then those things PLUS bold or PLUS italics, so in a font package you might be getting 10 or more font variations.
That sort of thing is important in Graphic design for trying to match a style that a client wants or just looking for the exact style you need for something, but most of us won't go quite that far in a comic.

It goes beyond the font weight options though. One feature of pro comic fonts you'll tend not to find in free fonts is two versions of each letter. The free ones will usually just offer crossbar and non crossbar I - sometimes not even that. Custom ligatures too: when you type out “oo” for instance, you'll automaticaly get the two different versions of o. Once you start using these things it's really hard to live without them!

As for bold italic, I use it constantly. It's a comic lettering tradition to use it for emphasis in dialogue, while straightforward bold is practically never used. I don't know why that is, but the traditional way looks good to me so I use it.