Caption

Captions are the narrator. Narration prints on a pale wash of the action ink (so the solid yellow stays the one action), place and time on paper, transitions inverse. Up to 35 words they are lettered in Shantell caps; above that they switch to Schibsted body in sentence case.

Example#

Volume

Paper

Colourway

I have spent five years as a developer in the ad business.

Toronto. Taking projects, Q4 2026.

Live render of examples/caption/basic.tsx

Usage#

Use a caption for the narrator: where and when we are, what happened between panels. It is a square plate, flush in a panel's corner, lettered like a balloon.

Kinds. narration (a pale caption wash, default), place (paper) and transition (inverse: ink fill, paper text).
Lettering. auto letters captions of 35 words or fewer in caps and sets longer ones in the text face; force either with letter or text.
Placement. In art panels, place puts it in one of the nine areas.

Layer and volume#

Reading plate at 0°, identical at every volume; the register sets the rule. In art panels it sits flush in its area's corner. Quiet: no arrival (the panel reveals it).

Anatomy#

I have spent five years as a developer in the ad business.

Toronto. Taking projects, Q4 2026.

CaptionSquare plate, ink rule, 36 characters wide at most..mk-caption

Volume#

Quiet
I have spent five years as a developer in the ad business.
Toronto. Taking projects, Q4 2026.
Identical; no arrival.
Studio
I have spent five years as a developer in the ad business.
Toronto. Taking projects, Q4 2026.
Revealed with its panel.
Press
I have spent five years as a developer in the ad business.
Toronto. Taking projects, Q4 2026.
The same.
Rave
I have spent five years as a developer in the ad business.
Toronto. Taking projects, Q4 2026.
The same.

Content#

Narration in the first person, present tense: "I have spent five years as a developer in the ad business."
Place captions are a place and a time: "Toronto. Taking projects, Q4 2026."

Do and don't#

Toronto. Taking projects, Q4 2026.

Where and when.

Don't

Click the button below to get in touch with us about your project.

An instruction dressed as narration.

Captions narrate. Instructions and actions are reading-layer text and keys, with literal labels (C9).

Accessibility#

Long reading (paragraphs, pricing, forms, legal) never goes in a caption.
Fills and text come from the caption pair tokens.

Props#

Prop	Type	Default	Description
`kind`	`CaptionKind`	none
`lettering`	`"auto" \| "letter" \| "text"`	none	`auto`: lettering up to 35 words, text above.
`place`	`Area`	none	In art panels: the area of the 3 × 3 placement grid.
`as`	`"div" \| "p"`	none
`children` required	`ReactNode`	none

Plus 279 React and DOM attributes passed through to the root element (className, ref, aria-*, event handlers and the rest). Generated from CaptionProps in packages/overprint-react/src/comic/caption.tsx.

Tokens#

System tokens (18)

Its own properties (4)

--mk-caption-bg
--mk-caption-fg
--mk-cx-line
--mk-cx-line-ink

Scanned from its CSS at build and checked against its registry entry; 15 read but not declared there.

Changelog#

Arrived in 0.1.0.

0.1.024 October 2026

MinorreactThe print and comic kits, P0 (21 P2-T11 to P2-T15): the art core (seeded halftone, bursts, balloons, lines, krackle, printer's marks, SFX layers, the texture tiles and gen-print-tiles), the print kit (Halftone, Overprint, PrinterMarks, Sticker, Stamp, Seal, useStampLand, Tape, Grain, Misregistration and the .mk-ov second ink, GiantGlyph, ShapeGlyph), the data Cover (grid and score, coverAlt, CoverLegend), the comic registers and kit (Panel, PanelGrid, Balloon, Caption, CornerBox, EditorsNote, ContinuedIn, SFX, SfxBurst, SpeedLines, FocusLines, ImpactStar, KeyPop).