Do you know what I hate almost as much as Asgardian font?

I hate the fact that not only do you have to write out speech balloons that show characters from the American South speaking phonetically...

...but you also have to show them thinking in a spelled-out drawl, as well.

Seriously, does Rogue actually think "Ah" every single time she she thinks "I"?!? Does anyone?

It's not as though we don't have plenty of other X-Men who doubtless have accents--Kurt, Piotr, Ororo, just off the top of my head--but does Marvel feel the need to phonetically spell out their accents? No, we never hear Nightcrawler say (or think) "ve haff to go to der store." Nope, we'll just get an occasional Claremontian drop of a German word into an other perfect English word/thought balloon.

Also note the relative rarity of "phonetic accents" for other Americans--Boston, Chicago, Gotham, whatever--they are all allowed to speak "normally." Does Kitty Pryde ever get to speak with a Chicago accent (Ditka!!)?

So why the "special" treatment for Southerners? Why only them, and not Russians, or Kree, or Inhumans, or Latverians, or Minnesotans?

A) Marvel believes the reader is too stupid to remember that Rogue and Gambit et. al. are southern unless they constantly rub our noses it in.

B) Stereotypes are OK for southerners, especially when written by non-southern writers. Why give them the same respect we'd give German/Russian/African characters? The foreigners may be able to learn perfect English, but not people below the Mason-Dixon line!

C) Southerners are all just dumb hicks, anyway. Who cares how we make them look?

I'm from Michigan, so I really have no dog in this fight. But it is kind of lazy and borderline offensive, Marvel. Back off.

 Deep breath.

Geez, that kind of came outta nowhere. The reason I really wanted to run that is, it's a house ad in this week's Marvels, and it's (one of?) the covers for Rogue & Gambit #1.

Now, I'm doubtful that those thought balloons will end up on the final cover.  But I think it's significant is that someone in Marvel's marketing believes that thought balloons are not only appropriate in comics, but a better way to sell comics than multi-colored, turgidly written self-narrative captions.

So keep fighting the fight for thought balloons. But, can we do it without the "Ah's" and the "Dis's"?

Will miracles never cease?

In this week's Generations: Hawkeye & Hawkeye #1, Kate Bishop is sent through time and space to have an adventure with a young Clint Barton. Good fun.

As the two split up to pursue separate missions, we get a double-page spread. On the left, we have Kate...
 
And on the right we have Clint:

Do you see? Do you see?!?!?!?!? My gosh, that's got to be those first time I've seen actual thought balloons in a Big Two comic in years!

It's a clever conceit--the character from the present using narrative captions, the dude from the past using "old-fashioned" and currently verboten thought balloons!! Good on you, Kelly Thompson!

And, of course Clint Barton isn't going to self-narrate his life like a junior high student filling a journal with portentous self-analytical musings. He's just going to be thinking to himself, dammit!!

Again, not every character or story is ill-served by narrative captions. Hell, lots of the time they work beautifully, and are the preferable mode.

But by that same token, the arbitrary industry diktat that all comics must now use captions makes no more sense than declaring that everyone must use thought balloons. Not every character "thinks" in literary-sounding essays, playing the Watcher in their own life, spewing out Rod-Serling-end-of-the-episode lessons while they're fighting.

So I hope that, rather than a cute one-off device, this signals a softening of the industry fatwa against our friend, the thought balloon. Probably not, but a man can dream.

Next, we can work on getting rid of that damned Asgardian font...

I'm not sure exactly when or why it happened, but at some point the venerable thought balloon became verboten in the comics world. Go ahead, try and find one in any recent comic (especially from the Big Two)--I dare you.

No, literally all we get now are pretentious narrative captions, as if every single character is writing a novel of their own life, and deigning to share it with the audience.

Hey, I'm flexible. There are certainly instances when captions are superior--nay, even preferable--to ye olde thought bubble.

But for some reason, the entire industry moved in lockstep to more or less simultaneously ban a convention that had been part of comic books nearly from the beginning. I couldn't begin to tell you why--maybe all writers fancy themselves budding novelists, maybe editors are afraid to buck the cool trend, maybe there's some arbitrary diktat in place from some Powers That Be.

Yet I remain firmly convinced that, in many (if not most) instances, the thought balloon is superior.

Why? The cover of My Love #35 (1975) shows why America needs the return of thought balloons:

Can you see it? Look more closely:

If you look at the cover just right, the two lil' bubbles of the thought balloon trail that pass over the reflection of that dress/nightgown whatever look like the dead eyes of some closet monster!!

Look again:

AIEEEEEE!!!

See, that couldn't happen with a narrative caption!

(I'm being totally serious here--that's what I saw when i first looked at that cover!!)

Thought balloons: they can make us think we see monsters on the covers of romance comics!! That's reason enough to bring them back!!

[Oh, yeah, and thought balloons work great on covers, whereas narrative captions wouldn't. That's another reason. Not as good as seeing nightgown monsters that aren't there, but still a fine reason to bring back though balloons!]

Creepy use to run a series about how comic books were made. In #70 (1975), they tackled this topic:

And as part of lettering...

Well, that was interesting. I hope we all learned...

Wait. What was that last one?!?

Oh, the nostalgia.

It's like sighting a dodo, or finding Amelia Earhart!!

Somehow, someway, thought balloons are now verbotten  across the entire industry. Nope, you have to have dramatic self-narration captions, as characters no longer think. They narrate their lives, as if they were dictating their memoirs, even during moments of crisis. They are graphic novels after all--and novels don't have thought balloons!

I'm not saying it's a terrible stylistic choice. But every single time, in every single book? Seriously, who thought that this group-think would somehow take over the entire industry? Is it a delayed Watchmen effect? Are there writers and artists trying to turn in work using thought balloons, but editors are beating them back?

I think the over/under for the disappearance for the speech balloons is 5 years. Soon comics will be nothing but hundreds of captions--dozens of multi-colored, multi-fonted captions filling every page.

Yeah, I'm certainly wrong. But 15 years ago, you would have said the same thing to someone predicting the demise of thought balloons, wouldn't you?

I know I've been complaining for a long time about the disappearance of thought balloons...

...but aren't we going a bit overboard, Harbinger #1?

Ahhhh!! Can't we tone it down a bit? I mean...

OK, you're just mocking me now.