Caption boxes instead of thought balloons?

[Anthonynotes]

OK, had to post on this, since it's been bugging me for awhile---the current trend in comics of seeing characters oddly narrating their own adventures via the use of caption/editor boxes, without apparently writing in a journal/a letter to someone/telling it to their loved ones/etc. Not too keen on this trend... guess to me, editor/caption boxes should only be for some "omnipotent" voice, such as some sort of unseen narrator describing things/a charcter describing the action to someone specific (i.e. another character, not us the readers)/an editor's reference ("See "Action Comics" #667 for details", or "It was back in 'Tec #247, remember, readers?"), and that hearing the character's internal thoughts are what thought balloons are for. Also think it limits things to only seeing the action through one character's viewpoint, and not letting us, well, hear the thoughts of various other characters to a scene (and using *two* caption boxes in different colors to show who's speaking just looks even sillier...). That, and it makes it seem like the character's crazy or something (who's Superman telling all this to in the latest "Superman" issue? At least show him talking to Krypto or something... ;-) ).

Questions: Where and when exactly did this trend start? Is it some attempt at ripping off some sort of manga thing? Just to be able to write from some first-person perspective? Or because they think thought balloons look too "cartoonish"/"unrealistic"? Your thoughts?

-B.

[ManicWebb]

Well, it's not a manga thing. Manga use exploding thought balloons.

I actually like the idea of characters narrating their own stories in boxes. I like to imagine comics like movies or TV serials when I read them, and narrators typically have no place in film and television unless it's the main character.

As for using boxes for different characters' thoughts...? I don't even know when that happened. I stopped reading comics for a few years, and when I came back, people were thinking inside the box. Hm...

"Thinking inside the box." I wonder if that's a metaphor for Marvel and DC in some way.

[Eddie G.]

Thought balloons are just rather bulky and often didn't look good on the page, that's why caption boxes are used instead. So, the basic answer is that they look nicer.

Personally I don't like too many boxes of text since comics are a visual medium and the story should be told with the panels and the dialogue. Thought boxes have their place, Ultimate Spiderman uses them well as did the Broken City arc of Batman since it actually gave you real thoughts and feelings that Batman had.

[Ed Liu]

Howdy,

As usual, the "no thought balloons" thing was a thing that Alan Moore and Frank Miller used in the 80's which got picked up by a whole lot of people for all the wrong reasons.

Moore would use thought balloons in Swamp Thing, but decided against all thought balloons and even captions in Watchmen. I think he felt that they were often childish and unnecessary, and that you should be able to tell your story without either. In that, he succeeded -- so well that a lot of people don't even seem to realize that neither of them are in the book. In general, I think Moore felt thought balloons were a cheap trick used to communicate exposition or back story. He hasn't been quite as fanatical about this in his later comics, but he chooses to let his artists tell their stories visually rather than hand-hold the reader with thought balloons.

Frank Miller, of course, was the one who replaced thought balloons with his hard-boiled dialogue captions in both Dark Knight Returns and Batman: Year One. In both cases, I believe both of them are used as though a character is writing in a journal. The technique is especially effective when a character's actions are completely opposite to what is seen on-panel; these sorts of things reveal the speaker/thinker to be an unreliable narrator or a deluded one.

DKR is the one book that uses them in a more interesting way, though, because caption boxes are also used any time that a character is speaking on TV (which is often). On the surface, it's probably so he could use the image of the TV without putting a word balloon coming off the TV screen, but I wonder if it's more than that. A word balloon has substance in a panel; it has weight and presence of its own in a comic book panel, and always comes in front of the artwork. The words on TV do not have the same presence in-panel, and the vapid and often wildly inaccurate content from the TV makes those words a poor reflection of reality. In this way, Miller's managed to make words on TV both figuratively and literally less substantial than face-to-face conversation.

Like many things from those books, subsequent creators took the surface technique without taking the intelligence or thought processes that were running deeper. Hence the preponderance nowadays of captions of pseudo-journals, many of which might as well be thought balloons anyway.

The one person who I think can use a thought balloon really effectively is Paul Chadwick in Concrete. Some of his stories are almost entirely "spoken" through thought balloons, which reinforces the characterization of the lead character as a thoughtful and introverted individual. Plus, they're totally rad comics.

-- Ed

[Anthonynotes]

Guess another reason I dislike the trend is that thought balloons have been a standard comic convention for decades, just like the word balloon (which is also just as "bulky"/covers up artwork/etc.), and still get used today in various types of comic strips (including realistic ones such as "For Better or For Worse"). Comics aren't TV/movies---they have their own conventions, and to see it ditched in most comic books for some weird first-person-narrative-to-no-one bunch of captions that makes the characters sound like they're mentally off-kilter just seems goofy/pointless to me. Yes, comics are a visual medium, but the text is just as important.

Guess not surprised it's another trend ripped off (mostly badly) from Moore/Miller...

[Ed Liu]

Howdy,


Guess another reason I dislike the trend is that thought balloons have been a standard comic convention for decades, just like the word balloon (which is also just as "bulky"/covers up artwork/etc.), and still get used today in various types of comic strips (including realistic ones such as "For Better or For Worse"). Comics aren't TV/movies---they have their own conventions, and to see it ditched in most comic books for some weird first-person-narrative-to-no-one bunch of captions that makes the characters sound like they're mentally off-kilter just seems goofy/pointless to me. Yes, comics are a visual medium, but the text is just as important.

Guess not surprised it's another trend ripped off (mostly badly) from Moore/Miller...

Well, the voice-over was a frequent element in earlier films, but it's almost non-existent today. Just because it's a convention doesn't mean it's sacrosanct. Thought balloons are a tool in a comic creator's toolbox, and they can be used well or used badly. I think, in some sense, the "comics aren't just for kids" movement was also partially responsible for the death of the thought balloon in the superhero books. Often, they WERE childish and repetitive, but that's a weakness in the creator and not the tool. Unfortunately, like comics as a medium, I think a lot of lesser creators just assumed that the thought balloon was inherently childish and that the easiest way to achieve respectability in more grown-up circles was to avoid them altogether. It didn't work, but so did a lot of things that were poorly stolen from Moore/Miller.

It also dawned on me who Superman is talking to in those caption boxes in the latest Busiek/Pacheco issue of Superman: us! The simplest answer is that he is talking to us, the reader. He isn't even doing it in that annoying "dear reader" voice that Tolkien used in The Hobbit or C.S. Lewis used throughout the Narnia books :D. Seriously, I think those captions are closer to voice-over in films than they are to old-style thought balloons. Having Superman thinking "out loud" (meaning "in a balloon") about how Mondays are a real drag as he's getting zapped in the face by Neutron really doesn't make much sense, either. A lot of those older V.O.'s don't make much sense if you try and figure out who the speaker is talking to.

There's something more substantial to be found in the thought balloon vs. caption thought usage. I'm still puzzling out what that is. Maybe Scott McCloud will have something Smart to say about it in Making Comics.

-- Ed

[ManicWebb]

It also dawned on me who Superman is talking to in those caption boxes in the latest Busiek/Pacheco issue of Superman: us! The simplest answer is that he is talking to us, the reader. He isn't even doing it in that annoying "dear reader" voice that Tolkien used in The Hobbit or C.S. Lewis used throughout the Narnia books :D. Seriously, I think those captions are closer to voice-over in films than they are to old-style thought balloons. Having Superman thinking "out loud" (meaning "in a balloon") about how Mondays are a real drag as he's getting zapped in the face by Neutron really doesn't make much sense, either. A lot of those older V.O.'s don't make much sense if you try and figure out who the speaker is talking to.
Simply put, self-narrating boxes are more like the Commentary track on a DVD. Here's a superhero reflecting on these moments, and telling you what was on their mind at the time.

On a side note, in Birds of Prey, Black Canary's narrating boxes are shaped like torn pieces of paper, using a hand-written font. They really are more like journal entries.

[Stu]

I believe one of Bill Jemas big ideas at Marvel was to replace the thought ballon with captions. They aren't used in Marvel comics at all now, and I believe he is the main reason why.

I did read that somewhere, but I honestly can't remember where...

[Mynd Hed]

I tend to like caption boxes for internal monologue when it's used to establish the "viewpoint" as inside a single character's head. What really bugs me, though, is when caption boxes are used for the thoughts of several different characters, usually color-coded but with few to no other visual cues as to which thoughts go to which character (such as the "thinking" character actually being present in the panel containing the caption box). It really takes me out of the action when I have to stop and play "match the thought to the character" and then spend the rest of the issue trying to remember which color goes to which character.

[ManicWebb]

I tend to like caption boxes for internal monologue when it's used to establish the "viewpoint" as inside a single character's head. What really bugs me, though, is when caption boxes are used for the thoughts of several different characters, usually color-coded but with few to no other visual cues as to which thoughts go to which character (such as the "thinking" character actually being present in the panel containing the caption box). It really takes me out of the action when I have to stop and play "match the thought to the character" and then spend the rest of the issue trying to remember which color goes to which character.
Green Lantern: Rebirth comes to mind.


I just remembers something: Chris Claremont used thought bubbles in an issue of Excalibur. It was in a story about Archangel and Husk fighting some terrorists for some inane reason. Anyway, Claremont is a classic example of a man who abuses thought bubbles. Throughout Archangel's fight, he kept thinking a play-by-play description of everything that was drawn on-panel.

[Ed Liu]

Howdy,

As it turns out, Busiek was just pulling first-person narrator tricks on us (http://www.comicworldnews.com/cgi-bin/ikonboard/ikonboard.cgi?;act=ST;f=7;t=210;st=600) in the latest issue of Superman:



There was a question someone brought up on another message board I frequent, so I figured I'd ask it here: who's Superman talking to in the caption boxes?

Iron Fist. Or Spider-Girl.

Seriously, he's not talking to anyone, any more than Wally West was talking to anyone all those years he did first-person narration. It's a narrative convention fiction has been using for centuries.

So, if anything, the caption boxes talking to nobody are the norm and the thought balloons are the anomaly :D.

Identity Crisis was the first book I can remember that heavily used different colored caption boxes for internal monologue (90% of which could have worked just fine as thought balloons, except thought balloons are for kids and Identity Crisis Is Not For Kids, but this will be saved for my savaging of IC when I get around to finishing it). It wasn't a bad trick there, since it seemed that the caption box colors were linked to the primary colors of the hero doing the thinking, and there weren't too many different captions on at once. I thought the text IN the caption boxes was terrible, but as a techinque it wasn't so bad.

-- Ed

[Dark Night]

I love caption boxes--i've always purely hated thought balloons with every fiber of my being--they were a corny factor in past comics (such as characters doing play-by-plays in a fight, like discussed). Thought balloons no longer work in modern times. Period.

I much prefer the way caption boxes are used now, as oppossed to the "third-person" narrative in past comics--reading the thoughts/depictions of a scene by some unknown narrator not linked to or involved in the story really took me out of the story. Captions should reflect the character's thoughts in the story-they essentially work the same as thought balloons used to, but just way better---plus the "poofy cloud" look of thought balloons looked totally queer on the panel.

[Ed Liu]

Howdy,


I love caption boxes--i've always purely hated thought balloons with every fiber of my being--they were a corny factor in past comics (such as characters doing play-by-plays in a fight, like discussed). Thought balloons no longer work in modern times. Period.

Um.

No.

"Thought balloons no longer work in modern times" is no more true than "comic books are only for kids." Just because a tool has been used badly in the past does not mean that this is the only use for it, or that it can't ever be used well elsewhere for something different. That's like saying Teflon was a total failure because it's initial purpose was to be used as a refrigerant.

As I mentioned, Concrete is a one-comic proof that thought balloons are NOT dead, but it's because the words IN the balloon are not of the juvenile, expository variety but real live thoughts of a thoughtful character. Darwyn Cooke replaced words in thought balloons with tiny pictograms to show what Peter Parker is really thinking about when people are talking at him in the "Open All Night" (http://www.spiderfan.org/comics/reviews/spiderman_tangled_web/011.html) issue of Spider-Man's Tangled Web -- a techinque comic creators have been using for years. Sloppy, lazy writing is sloppy, lazy writing, whether it's in a thought balloon or a regular word balloon or a caption box.

The more I think about it, the more I think that caption boxes and thought balloons are not interchangable, as seems to be the predominant perception. If you drop text from a narrative caption into a thought balloon, it will usually sound silly, and the same is true if you drop the text from a thought balloon into a narrative caption. Thought balloons are better to capture a character's thoughts in the immediacy of a situation, while caption boxes are better for them to examine things in hindsight. I think this is because prose writing is almost always written in past-tense, while comics, as a medium, is present-tense. Caption boxes are closer to prose writing than comic balloon dialogue, and they always have been ("Meanwhile, at the Hall of Justice..." in a caption is a past-tense statement being made by an unseen narrator). You have to write them differently, and I could envision someone using a narrative caption box AND a thought balloon in the same panel to good effect (maybe contrasting what you thought then vs. what you know now).

Of course, it's Frank Miller that breaks the rules I just listed above. The narrative caption boxes in Dark Knight Returns are essentially thought balloon text, since they're in the present tense. Even then, though, it's the strange immediacy of the noir voice over or (as ManicWebb astutely points out) the DVD director's commentary -- speaking in the on-screen/panel present as though it were the past ("'You need a woman,' he says, slapping my shoulder...While the creature in my gut snarls and tells me what I need.").

One of these days, I'm gonna have to get off my duff and do a Lorendiac-sized article on "7 ways to use a thought balloon" and then a comparable one for the narrative caption.

-- Ed

[Mynd Hed]

Ace, is it bad that I can read that entire post full of good, well-thought-out points, agree with all of them, and still think that thought balloons do nothing for me but bring up an association with Garfield? (-:

That's not to say that they can't ever work, but I'd say that the creators have to work overtime to overcome their cartoony associations in the minds of modern readers. Unless, of course, they're specifically going for a humorous vibe, in which case there's no problem.

[Anthonynotes]

A conversation involving Kurt Busiek (among others) about this topic: http://www.balloontales.com/articles/thoughts/index.html