{"id":1561,"date":"2010-03-22T21:49:49","date_gmt":"2010-03-23T02:49:49","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/comicscomicsmag.com\/?p=1561"},"modified":"2010-03-22T21:49:49","modified_gmt":"2010-03-23T02:49:49","slug":"word-balloons-in-visual-space","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/comicscomicsmag.com\/?p=1561","title":{"rendered":"Word Balloons in Visual Space"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>

Clowes' "Wilson", from The New Yorker<\/p><\/div>\n

Joe\u2019s excellent post<\/a> on thought balloons got me thinking about comics balloons (or text frames) in general: not just thought balloons but also word balloons, narrative boxes, and labels (like the famous arrows in Dick Tracy<\/em> which diagrammatically call attention to two-way-radio-watches and other items of interest). It would be great to have a history of text frames in comics. There have been stabs here and there by scholars. Thierry Smolderen\u2019s \u201cOf Labels, Loops, and Bubbles\u201d in Comic Art<\/em> #8 is a good start.<\/p>\n

About thought balloons: When did they emerge? I know Harold Gray was very chary of using them: he only used thought balloons a handful of times in his 44 year run on Little Orphan Annie<\/em>. I think this was deliberate. While his characters where gabby they were also secretive \u2013 this is true not just of Warbucks but even Annie, who never says all she knows. Gray wanted to keep his characters mysterious, hence he avoided thought balloons.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Here are a few thoughts on word balloons as physical objects:<\/p>\n

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Clowes' Mister Wonderful excerpt.<\/p><\/div>\n

Many cartoonists use text frames in a strictly utilitarian fashion, to convey dialogue and information. More interesting is the use of these frames as physical objects within the larger visual space of the panel and the page. Dan Clowes is a master of this technique. In his recent “Wilson” story in the New Yorker<\/em> and the earlier “Mister Wonderful” serial in the New York Times Magazines<\/em>, he uses text frames not just as boxes or balloons to hold words but as objects in their own right which can sometimes be hidden by other text frames, or placed partially off-panel so they can\u2019t be fully read. Ken Parille, writing in Blog Flume <\/a>about “Mister Wonderful”, notes, \u201cTo show Marshall\u2019s self-involvement, Clowes superimposes Marshall\u2019s narration boxes (perhaps a better term would be \u2018interior monologue boxes\u2019) onto Natalie\u2019s word balloons. At first, her words are completely inaccessible to us because we are \u2018hearing\u2019 through Marshall; but as he begins to pay more attention to her \u2013 and less to himself \u2013 her words become more visible-audible with each passing panel. It\u2019s an interesting way to show how we can simultaneously be aware of different things \u2013 our thoughts and another\u2019s speech \u2013 and how our awareness can change.\u201d<\/p>\n

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McCay's Little Nemo, Jan. 02, 1910.<\/p><\/div>\n

<\/a><\/p>\n

Clowes has some important precursors. In a Little Nemo<\/em> Sunday page from January 02, 1910, King Morpheus has the gout and is great pain. His shouts of anguish aren\u2019t regular balloons but more like little explosive bursts, which dominate the page and cover over the main characters.<\/p>\n

\"King's<\/a><\/p>\n

In a Gasoline Alley<\/em> daily strip from June 28, 1940, Frank King shows two women in a restaurant. He wants to create some distance from these characters, one of whom is an unsympathetic schemer, so in one panel we see them through a window which covers up part of their word balloon.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

Hanks' The Superfiend, Sept. 1940.<\/p><\/div>\n

Evidence of Fletcher Hanks\u2019 artistry can be seen in \u201cThe Superfiend\u201d from Fantastic<\/em> #10 (reprinted in You Shall Die By Your Own Evil Creation<\/em>! By Fletcher Hanks, edited by Paul Karasik). On the first page, Starburst uses his \u201clong-range television finder\u201d to read the thoughts of the Superfiend, \u201cCivilization must be destroyed!\u201d This noble sentiment doesn\u2019t appear in a thought balloon but rather in a word balloon (presumably because Starburst can \u201chear\u201d what the Superfiend is saying). Equally intriguing is the way the word balloon isn\u2019t confined within the television screen but bursts out of it, making it seem like an act of aggression rather than a passing thought.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

Englehart and Rogers' "Slab", 1981.<\/p><\/div>\n

In a story called \u201cSlab\u201d from Eclipse Magazine<\/em> #1 (1981), Steve Englehart and Marshall Rogers experimented with overlapping word balloons. As Gary Groth noted at the time, \u201cRogers (or Englehart) uses a density of word balloons to suggest confusion at a crowded airport. This may be a wrongheaded attempt to translate filmic language to the comics form. This effect works well in film (I am thinking of Robert Altman\u2019s overlapping soundtracks), but not in comics for the same reason it has never, to my knowledge, worked in prose: the words on the printed page must be sub-vocalized. We cannot let them wash over us in the same way we can in a film. The reader cannot simply subliminally acknowledge dialogue on the printed page as he can acknowledge and subordinate disconnected dialogue in film. Words on a page must be read. The effect in a comic, then, is distraction.\u201d (Comics Journal<\/em> #65). Groth might have been right about this story in particular but he was wrong in general. As Clowes has demonstrated, overlapping word balloons can be effective technique. As with anything in the arts, techniques don\u2019t exist in isolation of the overall effect. Any technique can be put to good use by an intelligent artist.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Joe\u2019s excellent post on thought balloons got me thinking about comics balloons (or text frames) in general: not just thought balloons but also word balloons, narrative boxes, and labels (like the famous arrows in Dick Tracy which diagrammatically call attention to two-way-radio-watches and other items of interest). It would be great to have a history of text frames in comics. There have been stabs here and there by scholars. Thierry […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[299,437,448,478,480,544,807,808,855,1229,1273,1296,1381,1386],"class_list":["post-1561","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blog","tag-clowes","tag-hanks","tag-frank-king","tag-groth","tag-gasoline-alley","tag-harold-gray","tag-little-nemo","tag-little-orphan-annie","tag-marshall-rogers","tag-steve-englehart","tag-text-frames","tag-thought-balloons","tag-mccay","tag-word-balloons"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/comicscomicsmag.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1561","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/comicscomicsmag.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/comicscomicsmag.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/comicscomicsmag.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/comicscomicsmag.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1561"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/comicscomicsmag.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1561\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/comicscomicsmag.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1561"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/comicscomicsmag.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1561"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/comicscomicsmag.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1561"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}