Comments on: The Problem with American Vampires Is That They Just Don’t Think

By: Best Online Comics Criticism 2010 | Robot 6 @ Comic Book Resources – Covering Comic Book News and Entertainment

Sat, 22 Jan 2011 17:02:15 +0000

[...] (tie). “The Problem with American Vampires Is That They Just Don’t Think”, by Joe McCulloch (5 votes). I voted for this one. Obviously I’m horribly biased as I consider [...]

By: Best Online Comics Criticism 2010

Best Online Comics Criticism 2010 — Wed, 19 Jan 2011 12:22:10 +0000

[...] McCulloch: Essay on Thought Balloons (“The Problem with American Vampires Is That They Just Don’t [...]

By: “Battle for the Train of Gold” « G.I. Joernal

“Battle for the Train of Gold” « G.I. Joernal — Tue, 04 Jan 2011 21:12:01 +0000

[...] Lobbyist of the Year: Joe “Jog” McCulloch, Thought Balloon Lobby [...]

By: Tim Young

Tim Young — Tue, 27 Apr 2010 22:25:34 +0000

We discussed this article and the whole “thought balloon” issue in our podcast episode “Thoughts on Thought Balloons”: http://deconstructingcomics.com/?p=495
Hope you’ll take a listen!

By: » #229 Thoughts on thought balloonsDeconstructing Comics: A podcast about getting started in comics

Mon, 26 Apr 2010 09:04:32 +0000

[...] Vertigo editor asked him not to use thought balloons in his work on American Vampire. An article in Comics Comics Mag brought this to our attention, and sparked discussion. Why do some editors now discourage, or even [...]

By: The Comics Podcast Network » Deconstructing Comics #229: Thoughts on Thought Balloons

Mon, 26 Apr 2010 09:02:34 +0000

By: Tuomas

Tuomas — Mon, 29 Mar 2010 12:12:56 +0000

I think one thing that though balloons can do that narrative boxes simply can’t do well is illustrate moments when someone is saying something, but AT THE SAME TIME thinking something totally different. A simple example: imagine a panel in a comic book where a character says “I love you!”, but at the same time thinks “I hate you!”. Now, if the artist puts “I love you!” in a speech bubble and “I hate you!” in a thought balloon below it, the effect is that the character is saying one thing and simultaneously thinking the other. Now, if you tried to express that with narration boxes, it wouldn’t have the same effect, as narrative boxes are less tied to a specific moment and have a more timeless, detached quality than thought balloons. In a typical Vertigo style the narration is usually done IN RETROSPECT, so in the narration the character is actually recounting something that has already happened to her in the past. Done in this style, our example panel would have a speech bubble saying “I love you!”, and a narrative box saying something like “But really I hated him.”. Now, this would convey the same general idea as the first example, but the effect the simultaneous juxtaposition of speech and thought would be lost. Even if the narrative panel was done in an “immediate” and not in a “retrospective” style, the effect would not be the same. If you’d replace the “I hate you!” thought balloons with a narrative box with the same text, the effect of a simultaneous speech and thought would be diminished, because narrative boxes aren’t attached to a SPECIFIC MOMENT in the way thought balloons are.

From this you could draw a more general theory: thought balloons are useful when you want to attach a thought a character is having to a specific moment in time and space. Of course this is not the only way a writer or artist can put thought balloons into good use, but I think this is one example where they have a clear advantage over narration boxes.

By: Sunday Brunch: 3/28/10 | Comics Should Be Good! @ Comic Book Resources

Sunday Brunch: 3/28/10 | Comics Should Be Good! @ Comic Book Resources — Sun, 28 Mar 2010 16:02:16 +0000

[...] Jog, the critic's critic, discusses a dying piece of comics grammar, the thought balloon: Plus, thought balloons simply aren’t as versatile: you can’t stretch them out over the course [...]

By: XyphaP

XyphaP — Sat, 27 Mar 2010 01:56:07 +0000

Thought balloons may not be an industry norm, but they certainly aren’t a pariah. Amazing Spider-man (ironically the “regular” counterpart to the thought balloon eschewing Ultimate SPiderman) has definitely had thought balloons that were not a reminiscent throwback, and is still being used as more than prosaic rendering of thoughts. #623, the closest one, has thought balloon words jumbled all together, sometimes in varying sizes to each other, and, in a particularly interesting scene, Peter’s thinking about his future plans when something interrupts him, compelling him into verbal speech describing the situation. That may just be on the Waid issues, though.

By: Ebrey

Ebrey — Fri, 26 Mar 2010 18:40:20 +0000

I think the codification of the “Vertigo style” has led to most Vertigo series becoming formulaic and boring, Vertigo was a big deal in the 90s. Nowadays, Image does middlebrow comics better. Image comics allow more experimental art (see: Jonathan Hickman) which is a big problem with Vertigo.

Frank Miller is the best writer of narrative captions, bar none. Narrative captions are mostly about seeming cool and nobody’s definition of cool is as fascinating as Miller’s.