Do these exist any more? Since I don't read modem comics, I don't know, but it seems from the bits that I do see that any captions that appear in comic panels these days are the thoughts of an individual character generally written In a world weary sub film noir Raymond Chandler sort of style. The third person narrator describing how awesome everything is a la Stan Lee seems to have vanished. Is this impression a true or accurate, one and if so, is that a good or bad thing?

MEANWHILE ...
Evans asked about third person narrators
and Tommy hoped he would be remembered
if there was a reward.

A banshee wail cuts through the night

FUCK YOU TOMMY TOMORROOOOOOOOW

Mostly vanished. A shame, really.

And the reason doesn't seem to be "We choose this way because _______." As in, an affirmative reason of enhancement. Rather, they seem to have convinced themselves that third person narrative is somehow uncool or inferior. When in fact, you can compose some very compelling prose when it's not required to be the musings of a character.

Part of it, I think, comes from a box they've hemmed themselves into. That is, that they won't do a thought balloon anymore, because for some reason those got deemed uncool. But they need to share what the character thinks, so they use square boxes. But those tend to be noirish Raymond Chandler reflections and not thoughts in the moment.

I was just thinking about this last night. I think it's because a lot of writers and the editors that hire them like to use the superficial trappings of well-received work -- writers such as Frank Miller and Alan Moore used first-person text boxes in their most popular works, so a lot of writers chose to emulate that style. All it would take is another writer of their caliber using third person narration in a couple popular works and everyone would be rushing to emulate that.

I also think the loss of this narrative device is a contributor to decompression -- now they must impart information through exposition or figure out some other way to relay the info to readers, most often in a way that's less efficient than a narrator.

That all said, it's easy to see why this style fell out of favor -- so many writers of the 60s and 70s abused the narration boxes, bogging down a story with tedious amounts of captions. I must admit to skipping captions often when reading many of those older works, as they seem to rarely contain information needed to understand the story. But that's just bad writing style -- if the text was writing in a compelling way, you wouldn't mind.

It's a great shame that thought balloons have fallen so completely out of favor. They are a very useful storytelling device unique to the comics medium. Yet somehow they're hardly used any more. Comics writers have decided that they're just no longer going to use one of the best tools in their toolbox.

I suppose awkward overuse in hastily-written stories of the past contributed to the loss of thought balloons, as well as to the neglect of third-person narration. That and that misguided notion that comics are supposed to be "movies on paper." Movies don't have thought balloons or third-person narrators, so therefore comics shouldn't either. Seems like so many comics writers really want to be moviemakers, but comics are as close as they got. So they're going to make their comics like movies, instead of using them as the distinctive medium that they are.

I associate 3PN with old war and horror anthology comics - with the implication that the character is no longer in a position to tell their own tale.

I think they should start using thought balloons in movies.

They do. They're called voiceovers

Li'l Jay grimly nodded silent agreement with the other posts.

What's wrong with thought balloons that they can't be used in moderation?

Beautifully played, Sir!

Like almost everything else here we have discussed this many times I'm sure. Nevertheless, I wish that comic books would embrace those conventions of the medium that are unique to it such as thought balloons, third person narrative, captions with pointers, dramatic sound effects, speed lines, gesture lines, etc. I don't want every comic to be like that, but it would be nice if some would take a second look at these unique means of telling stories visually. I get really excited when I see something by a creator such as Bruce Timm or Frank Francavilla, who truly loves the medium unashamedly include these in stories for a better reading experience.

Right. It's not like EVERYBODY has to use all of these devices. But there's something very shortsighted about the way a whole generation of writers and artists seems to have abandoned them.

Astro City should use these at times for sure.

I find the lack of them in modern comics - all the things that Jay lists in his post - very off putting. I like to 'read' a comic, and that includes a writer telling me what I can feel, hear, touch. The few I see are pretty much a succession of stills, with little drama or movement.

Where's that luddite emoticon...

I think it's tough to write good third-person narration in a comic that's not going to pull a reader entirely out of the visual storytelling. I think I could only appreciate an ironic third-person narration -- a counterpoint to the imagery and dialogue. The best cartoonists, the writer-artists, always let the art do the talking. A writer like Warren Ellis lets his artist draw, so to speak, a thousand words. Often, though, one reads his comics in ten minutes. They read more satisfyingly collected together in TPB. All of the foregoing is old hat, though, for someone like me whose first comics had already been changed by the formal innovations of the early-to-mid 1980s.

I dislike the use of it in Golden Age comics, where they literally describe the action being drawn in the panel. In the Silver Age and up though, they tended to give a comic a more satisfying read. Claremont and Thomas could over-prose, of course.

But this presupposes that the pictures tell the story, like a storyboard for a movie. They don't have to be that way.

My eye jumps from text to text, and secondarily notices the illustrations. A comic can be an illustrated story, or a "shot by shot" movie, and everything in between.

It's odd that they've removed two entire storytelling techniques, completely off the table, in almost all comics. I was just noticing recently how well Frank Miller used all three in his classic Daredevil run. His books would have a third person narrator, but with a very distinct voice and point of view. And Murdock would constantly have thoughts in thought balloons. But then, a run of pages would become very cinematic, with movement and very few words. The contrast, the mixture, the alternation between narrative and cinematic, stimulated things in the same way that "sweet and salty" can engage more of the palate.

But me no buts.

I like buts and cannot lie.

They're not really that similar. Voiceovers typically give a character's thoughts from a detached perspective looking back at the events, rather than their immediate thoughts in the moment, in the manner that thought balloons do. And more importantly, voiceovers can't be used to provide more than one character's immediate thoughts in the same scene (at least, I can't think of any examples where this has been done in a film, and it seems like if it was tried it would be extremely awkward and ineffective). By contrast, that sort of thing works extremely well in comics with thought balloons.