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...
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...
Hope someone in charge is listening to you on this and the FF.
ReplyDeleteWhen i was doing a bit of lettering about a decade back, this was an issue. It ties in to another point you've made on several occasions - the comic industry's inferiority complex. In the same way that they'll bend over for "real" writers from "real" media like Movies & Television. The basic logic ran like this:
ReplyDeleteMovies don't have thought balloons, and 'comics' want to be grown up like them, so we're going to abandon one of the strengths of our medium so we can be more like those others.
I really can't wait for this phase of comics history to move on so something better can emerge...
Wow. No I hear ya' man. This is really surprising to see, but as you pointed out, makes so much sense due to the old-school nature of the character. They really should make a comeback, but when appropriate instead of being overdone.
ReplyDelete#bringbackthethoughtbubble
ReplyDelete#bringbacktheff
I mean, this isn't twitter, but what the hell.
So this story not only re-introduces the thought balloon, but shows a useful distinction between how thought balloons and first person narrative captions should be used. They may have actually advanced the medium.
ReplyDeleteSorry to sound like an old, clueless grump, but....they don't use thought balloons anymore? How long has this been a thing?
ReplyDeleteB--it gradually crept upon us, until about oh, 6 or 7 years ago, it seemed to be adopted as a universal standard.
ReplyDelete