32 Best Comic Fonts for Comic Strips, Manga, & Cartoons
Want to letter your comics like a pro? You’ll need is the best comic fonts for the job—and you’re in the right place to find them.
We’ve trawled the web to pick out the best fonts for comic books, mangas, and cartoons so that you don’t have to.
And no, we’re not talking about Comic Sans here—yuck.
We’re talking about the very best comic fonts, by the very best artists and designers, many of which have been used across the world in famous comic prints and TV shows.
Ready? Let’s dive into it!
The 32 Best Comic Fonts (Free & Paid)
1. Boom Comic Font — Our Top Pick
Boom is an explosive comic font that’s super thick and juicy. It jumps off the page and is easy to read at any size. It comes in OTF and TTF formats
Why it’s our top pick:
Boom has everything we’re looking for in a comic book font. It’s loud, in-your-face, and full of character. Boom is the perfect choice for those onomatopoeia sound words that you want to jump off the page. Zap! Splat! Kapow!
2. Breaking the Comic
Breaking The Comic is a playful font that breaks all the rules. It features a unique cracked texture and bold, thick letters that jump off the page. True to its name, the font looks ‘broken’, with glyphs that are designed to look like they’ve shattered into pieces. It comes with all the standard glyphs and is available in OTF and TTF formats.
3. Badaboom
If this font looks familiar, that’s because you’ve probably seen it before—at least, you will have if you’re a comic book fan.
Badaboom is the original comic font that’s been used worldwide in print and television. The punchy, lighthearted style is iconic, and it’s a safe choice for any genre. And the best part? It’s free to independent/small press comic creators!
4. Mangaka
Mangaka is a cartoon headline font that’s perfect for mangas, comic strips, children’s books, graphic novels, and many other design projects. It includes letters, numbers, and punctuation.
5. Mysterio
Working on a detective comic strip? Check out Mysterio—a somber comic font that’s full of intrigue and mystery. This curious typeface features slightly wavy strokes and is highly readable. It includes all the most important glyphs, including Latin A-Z, a-z, numerals, and punctuation.
6. Nikopol
Nikopol is a weird and wonderful comic book-themed font family. It comes in three styles: regular, halftone, and rough. We particularly like the halftone version. It has an authentic vintage comic book texture.
The rough version features wavy strokes which give it a spooky aesthetic. You can mix and match different styles depending on the nature of the scene. It’s an all-caps font so there’s no full lowercase version, but there are lowercase ‘i’ and ‘m’ alternates.
7. Chunky
Chunky is another fun and upbeat comic book font worth checking out. It comes with uppercase and lowercase letters, symbols, and ligatures, with support for multi-language.
8. Crime Fighter
Crime Fighter is another awesome font designed deliberately for use in comic books. It mimics traditional handlettering and is versatile enough to work well in any type of comic strip, but it’s particularly well-suited to superhero themes.
9. Webcomic
Webcomic is a comical handwritten typeface by designer Gasstype. Its simple letterforms have that iconic hand-lettered feel, and it’s very versatile.
10. Klasikap
Klasikap is a powerful comic display font that packs a punch. Use it for dialogue that you want to jump off the page and grab the reader’s attention.
11. Goof Ball
Goof Ball is a voluptuous cartoon font with fat strokes and squished counters. There’s something undeniably funny about it, and it’s got that retro style that would make it perfect for old-school cartoons and humor comics.
12. Belizarius
Belizarius is the perfect font for horror comics. It has an eerie vibe and looks like it’s been scrawled or scratched into the page. It’s created by award-winning comic book letterer Nake Piekos, and it’s totally free to independent comic creators!
13. Funicorn
Funicorn is a cute cartoon font that’s perfect for girly comics and mangas, as well as children’s product packaging, book covers, posters, and lots of other projects.
14. Sureton Comics
Sureton Comics is a hand-drawn typeface by Adil Budianto. It’s dashing and humanist, with a simple and clean look that’s versatile enough well to work in many different designs.
15. Tsuki
Tsuki is a beautiful Japanese-inspired typeface that’s ideal for manga comics and other Asian-themed designs.
16. Poncon
Poncon is a modern sans serif font with rounded corners and a playful style. It’s another good choice for mangas and lighthearted comics.
17. Best Friends
Best Friends is a comic book-style font by Salt and Pepper Designs. It’s full of character and is very impactful.
18. Vintagity
Vintagity is a comic display font with a subtle faded texture that gives it a vintage vibe. It includes lowercase and uppercase letters, multilingual characters, numbers, and punctuation.
19. Boldly Missy
Boldly Missy is a webcomic handwriting font that was used as the dialog in the popular webcomic “Basic Instructions”. It was made back in 2006 by talented designer Missy Meyer and has been tidied up since. It’s not perfect, but it’s pretty close—and it’s free!
20. Comic Sidekick
Comic Sidekick is a unique hand-drawn brush font family that comes in 11 different styles. There’s a regular version, outline version, inline style, alt version; and hand-drawn, brush, and pain variants.
You can mix and match styles within your comic strip or layer them up to create interesting effects. And if that wasn’t enough, you also get a bunch of comic shapes like speech bubbles, banners, and underlines to use alongside it!
21. Kartun
Kartun is another cute cartoon font collection. It was inspired by modern brand logos but it’s well-suited to comic strips, cartoons, and graphic novels thanks to its bold, playful look.
22. Fat Roar
Fat Roar is a cartoon graffiti font that’s rebellious, hip, and would well in certain types of comics. It was inspired by street art and uses a typical throw-up style design. It comes in OTF, TTF, and WOFF formats with all the usual glyphs included.
23. Chucklesome
Chucklesome is a very heavy font with rounded corners and wide, fat letterforms. It looks comical and would be perfect for children’s cartoons and lighthearted comic strips.
24. Buzinga!
Buzinga! is a layered comic font with a name inspired by Sheldon from the Big Bang Theory. It includes 5 font styles (including regular, extruded, and shadow) and 10 font families, which you can layer on top of each other to create eye-catching designs. It also includes unique swashes and bonus comic-related graphics like bubbles.
25. Jacklos
Jacklos is a carefully-crafted comic font by designer Graphicfresh. It’s really cute and would be perfect for slice-of-life comics.
26. Comic Speeds
Comic Speeds is a fast and furious display font with a unique design. It comes with alternate characters featuring speed effects that’ll make your typography look like it’s racing off the page and leaving you in the dust.
27. Penbox
Penbox is a playful, comics-style sans serif font that’s bold and joyful. It comes with 20 bonus colorful speech bubbles in AI format, which you can use for dialogue in your comic strips.
28. Asterix
Here’s another cool comic font with its own sense of style: Asterix by Arend Studio. It features bold letterforms that look like they’re crumbling away, with torn edges. It’s a good choice for horror comics featuring undead characters.
29. Dotoria
Dotoria is a strong brush typeface. It’d work well in many creative projects including comics and graphic novels and comes in two styles: standard and italic.
30. Quick Fox
Quick Fox is an iconic comic font that’s instantly recognizable and guaranteed to grab your reader’s attention. The weird and wacky letterforms are bold and highly readable.
31. Rakhisa
Working on a comic strip set in the Arabian peninsula? Rakhisa is the font you’re looking for. It’s a faux Arabic cartoon font that mimics the look of real Arabic symbols.
32. Hey Comic
Last but not least, we have Hey Comic—a fun layered display typeface. It comes in two styles: regular and extrude. By layering the extrude version on top of the regular version, you can create eye-catching 3D text.
How to Choose the Best Comic Fonts for Your Project
There are lots of comic fonts out there designed specifically for comic strips, but you shouldn’t just pick one out at random. It’s important to make the right choice for your specific project. Here are some tips to help you do just that.
Your Font Shouldn’t Be Invisible
There’s a common misconception that comic lettering should be invisible to the reader—that it shouldn’t attract attention so that the reader can focus on the story itself.
This is bad advice. The reason it’s often said is that many amateur comic book creators are bad at lettering, so simple lettering that doesn’t stand out is the safest choice.
The problem is that if you go down that route, you’re missing out on an opportunity to enhance your comic. A font can directly interact with art and reinforce the message of your comic, so don’t be afraid to experiment and choose something more expressive.
Match the Font to the Tone of Your Comic
Different comic fonts have different ‘moods’, just as different comics have different moods. Make sure you match the font to the tone of your story. If you’re writing a creepy comic strip, a horror font might be a good choice. If you’re working on a Sci-Fi theme, a futuristic font might work well.
Make Sure the Font Blends Well With the Art
Your lettering shouldn’t just sit on top of the art—it should complement it. Try to choose a font that works well with your art. Think about things like the weight and curvature when comparing your options.
Think About Readability
A good comic book font doesn’t just look cool—it has to be highly legible too. After all, the most important part of a comic is still the story itself, and you won’t be able to tell it if your reader can’t make sense of the lettering on the page.
When you’re comparing comic fonts, remember that a typeface that’s easily readable in large sizes won’t necessarily still be easy to read when it’s shrunk down to fit on a comic strip page.
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