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Underground > Comic Books >

On thought bubbles and narrative captions

15:46 / 08.08.04

So I picked up Grant (slash George slash Greg slash Gary?) Morrison's MYSTERY IN SPACE thing and thought it was a good read and all and had some lovely beat-poet stuff going on, but one of the things that struck me was the use of thought bubbles. For a few years, at least, I think, thought bubbles have been far and few between, and I've missed the buggers. Narrative captions seem to be the standard today. Marvel appears to have pretty well banned the bubbles (although Claremont snuck one or two in an issue of Uncanny recently). Seems trivial, yeah, but I just wanted to see if there was anyone up for discussing this phenomenon in relation to storytelling.

Thought bubbles, of course, take the heat for not being "realistic" because when you think, your thoughts aren't composed into nice sentences like they are in comics. Therefore, narrative captions forego the pretense of representing immediate thought and read more acceptible for serious stories. Most of Frank Miller's narration in DARK KNIGHT RETURNS, for example, would read real strangely in thought bubbles.

The problem is, since narrative captions allow for more composure and artfulness, when you need to show a character having a more immediate thought, it reads strangely as well. Spider-Man comics (which used to be jammed full of his thought bubble inner monologues) now use captions. Which reads well enough when he's swinging through the city, pondering whatever problem it is he's having. But then in a fight or whatever, you read "Whoa! Almost got flash-fried by Electro!" and the fun, goofy immediacy doesn't work well in the more serious captions.

So I, at least, miss thought bubbles in mainstream superhero comics. Captions work in crime stories, comics that tell multiple points of view, even "heavier" superhero comics, but they seem a bit ponderous when you're reading something light like Spider-Man or the like.

Anyone wish to take up discussion on the merits of these methods as storytelling craft?

22:35 / 08.08.04

Yes, thought bubbles have become an endangered species and I'm more than happy with that, partly for the reasons you outline, but also because they are a cheat - a cheap expository device that has historically been used as a way of reiterating either what is the obvious (the 'wow, he just missed me!' kind of re-inforcing thought balloons) or what should be obvious (the moments when a characters feelings should be obvious from their expression/the design on the page...)

In both cases the thought balloons are unecessary and detract from the dramatic tension that most stories should have.

I use the word unecessary because I am of the opinion that there are other ways that a comic creator can give the reader a glimpse inside their character's head. The chiev amongst these would be expressive artwork. I often wonder at how seldom nuanced facial expression and other methods of non-verbal communication such as guesture and posture play a part in communicating a characters interior life in comics these days... Doesn't anyone read Comics & Sequential Art anymore? another way to convey a character's inner thoughts is through careful use of design language - isolated, marginalized figures appearing isolated and maginalized at the edges of large panels for example - at its best thiis can almost be subliminal - you can even employ expressionist techniques to bend the design and shape of objects around your character to communicate how they feel...

Having said this, one area that I think that thought balloons are still the best tool for the job is to convey certain types of humour. One of my favourite shorts strips is by Jhoenen Vazquez - the 'Meanwhile' strip about the first date - it doesn't need to maintain dramatic tension - each panel, each thought balloon, is designed to be overblown - prompting some small smile at every opportunity. The big pay off line 'ohmigod! someone put shit in my pants' (which I remain convinced is the best all-purpose punch line ever ) is almost irrelevant to the story.

But yeah - not sure how coherant this has all been, but I for one am glad to see the downfall of thought balloons - I just hope more comics creators will continue to play around with was in which the convey their character's inner thoughts...

01:01 / 09.08.04

I think one of the main reasons for the death of the thought balloon is the rising age of the average comic fan.

Yeah, Spider-Man used to have tons of the bubbles but they did more than reiterate the action on the page, they let the writers tell the kids what Peter Parker was thinking. Older readers might be able to decipher the characters facial expressions but most kids aren't going to understand the look Peter gives to Mary Jane (assuming the artist can even draw it in the first place).

Solitaire Rose as Tom Servo

05:04 / 09.08.04

I actually miss thought bubbles, and think the trend away from them was that Alan Moore didn't use them, and since all of his other ideas were stolen, why not that one?

In the comic strip I write, I use them a lot, mostly to set up jokes without having the characters having to talk to themselves, or putting extra characters for the character to talk to. In many cases in the 70's, most of the best writing was IN the thought bubbles (like in Tomb of Dracula or Howard the Duck). Not using them is a stylistic choice, and for some writers they need to do so, to improve the flow of non-action stories, or when the artist just isn't up to the task of storytelling in their art.

10:04 / 09.08.04

yeah i think the mainstream fear of the brain-bubble is a shame. they're unique to comics as a form, and the fact that they need a heavy re-think (just a bit more attention to the actual ebb and flow of internal narrative would be good) doesn't mean they've outlived their usefulness. it's good i think to have the extra layer of narrative, added to the pics, the captions and the dialogue. plus, great for jokes, psychic attacks, shared moments between characters.

alternatively, something that might be worth considering would be a conjoining of the narrative caption and the thought-bubble - the best for this was miller's captions in elektra assassin, nothing better captured the stream of consciousness (under extreme circumstances) as a narrative prop: words that actually enhance the story's kineticism.

STOATIE LIEKS CHOCOLATE MILK

11:18 / 09.08.04

The "Man Made God" issue of the Filth got me thinking about this too... I didn't consciously notice to start with, but was thinking "this feels weird... not like the Filth usually reads" until he pointed it out himself. Neat.

I'm not a big fan of thought bubbles myself (although the JTHM strip referenced by sleaze is one of The Best Comic Scenes EVER!!!)... I'm not sure why that should be. I think it's probably because the majority of people who use them DO tend to go for whole shitloads of infodumping therein. That said, Pat Mills always used to piss me off by having just blatant infodumping caption boxes (especially in Slaine), so I'm not sure where the balance lies...

11:36 / 09.08.04

I suppose it's a matter of striking a balance between thought balloons and captions. I agree that the artist/writer should be able to convey a huge amount of info throught the panels alone but sometimes a scene just works better with a thought balloon. Another Vasquez example is a brilliant scene in "I Feel Sick" where a panel is repeated with the though balloon reading "That's it, just keep smiling..." and it's hilarious. Wouldn't work quite so well with a caption box, I feel, and certainly would have been rubbish had the character whispered it. (On the flip side, imagine "Planetary" with though balloons. Urgh.)

And that's another thing, I've seen writers use whispering as some form of thought balloon replaement and it hardly ever works. Whatever about the arguement that people don't really think in coherent sentences, we certainly don't whisper comments to ourselves! It just looks stupid on the page and it's worse when there are other characters around the whisperer.
Sometimes a look is all you need to convey a particular feeling but I think Bio K9 is right, kids need explaining, adults don't.

So, after all that rambling, I, personally, don't miss thought balloons but can see that they have thier place.

12:37 / 09.08.04

I think Ultimate Spider-Man is probably an interesting example of this. Storytelling techniques has obviously advanced to the point, where the writer relies more heavily on the artist to convey the emotions of the charactrs and not thought bubbles. I personally love understatement and think that thought bubbles kind of of hurt the believability of the story. Especially when done to simply reiterate what is obviously in the panel. On a side note: Whispering in comics is no longer indicated by broken lines around a word ballon -- now it's just making the words smaller to indicate it. That's strange, I wonder why the change?

12:54 / 09.08.04

First-person narration in square/rectangular boxes seems to have almost entirely replaced thought bubbles (popularized mostly by Frank Miller in Dark Knight and his Daredevil work) when the writer wants us to "hear"/read/see the main character's thoughts.

19:30 / 09.08.04

Thought bubbles are great in your standard superhero book, they beat long winded exposition from characters, and I quite like the old fashioned feel of them. They certainly don't work on everything though, V for Vendetta works so much better for being devoid of certain 'comic' tricks, thought ballons included, as an example, but stuff like spiderman isn't the same withough thought bubbles.

21:47 / 10.08.04

I've been reading Daredevil Visionaries: Frank Miller Volume 1, and the thought bubbles make the book virtually unreadable. It's the worst kind of weak exposition, and conveying things that we can already see on the page. Plus, there's continuous thought bubbles that say stuff like "If I can just stick this landing..." then the next panel is "Yes, stuck it," in an attempt to create these really artificial cliffhangers. Claremont's early stuff is probably the worst example of that type of thing I read. He'll always have someone say, "If I can just use my powers to reflect this, there's a miniscule chance I won't die," then of course it works.

I feel like the thought bubble is best left to comedy. One of my favorite moments in Preacher is where you see Herr Starr with a thought bubble above his head, and in the bubble is a pile of shit. It's the kind of joke you can only do in a thought bubble.

Horatio Hellpop

23:54 / 10.08.04

well, i don't agree entirely that quality is best served by having the characters emoting on-panel. much can be done with exploring the contrast between thought and visible expression.

another way of creating a sense of the internal workings of the character is to have text actually share the plane of the artwork and be incorporated into/around it, a technique david mack uses to strong effect in his work. mack's narrative can usually be understood without making the effort to explore all the pathways of these background words but the impact and nuance of his stories is greatly enhanced through their use. sienkiewicz does this as well (i'm thinking specifically about elektra: assassin because i've just been reading it, but i'm sure it's also done in stray toasters and probably elsewhere).