BW Media Spotlight

“Next time leave the exposition to the narration.”

The way we read comics is important. It’s one of the ways comics can tell a story versus other formats. The thought balloon, for example, is an evolution from the word balloon, a way for the reader to know what’s inside someone’s head without them speaking it out loud for some reason. That makes them look silly. Reading a character’s thoughts is a benefit to the audience, but some reason the caption box has taken over going over the character’s thoughts.

The problem is that the caption used to be the place for narration, whether someone was narrating to another character during a flashback or the third person narrator was filling in information for the reader, once comic creators realized that this wasn’t prose or an audio drama script and you could just show what the characters are doing, that would be clunky if the characters said it. Thus it reduces the “as you know” trope because whatever the reader needs the narrator can fill in.

Instead now the “first person” caption box is where you read the thoughts of the character, under the belief that this is better. However, whatever trade-offs it has I don’t feel is worth it. To set this discussion up I have a video from NerdSync Productions and Scott Niswander, with help from Strip Panel Naked host and comic letterer Hassan Otsmane-Elhaou that goes over the history of the thought balloon and why the switch to captions was made. Then I have my own thoughts because it wouldn’t be a feature article if I didn’t.

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