Old comics feel to wordy, but new comics read to fast.

[Comic-Reader Lad]

I sometimes wonder if we just are use to reading less text now and days. Even when I watch old movies, especially some black and white, they seem to talk non stop as if the novelty of sound was in the air.

Having said that, some Silver Age Books are tough for me to slog through. Same for some current books, I am on an early Vertigo Kick and I could barely take all that mopey text when it first came out, now I just say some writers are better than others.

I really enjoy all the text in the old 50's E.C. comics.

Today's movies ARE less wordy -- on purpose. The international audience is more important now, so the less dialogue, the easier it is to translate and less obstacles for the foreign audience to get into the story.

[Comic-Reader Lad]

Anyway, on topic, I prefer the older comics. For Marvel Silver Age, it got readers into their heroes neurotic thought processes. For DC heroes, a lot of that clunky Mort Weisinger dialogue and thought balloons are just weirdly funny now.

Beyond that, more dialogue and thought balloons give each character his or her own voice and allows the reader to get to know them better.

At first, thought balloons were changed to thought captions for some reason. I guess writers thought it was cooler, but every character's caption-voice sounded the same.

In the last number of years, even that's been eliminated, so you get just the bare bones of dialogue. Then, with decompression, you just get the bare bones of a plot.

Comic writers really need to rethink their storytelling techniques. They don't have to go all the way back to 1965, but some more meat needs to be put on the bones.

I'm guessing that artists prefer minimal dialogue and captions so that their original art is more appealing to sell. It's just a bunch of posters now.

[Jim Kelly]

I just say some writers are better than others.

I'm reading WAR AND PEACE. Very slow, just a chapter or two at a time each day. Sometimes it's very dense and hard to get through. Other times the story picks up and it's a breeze. I have no doubt this is a work of art and that Tolstoy's style has to be accepted as his identity as an author.

Roy Thomas was a hard slog for me in the 1970s. And he's a hard slog now. He packs in a lot of exposition. But that's who he is as a writer. It doesn't make him a worse writer or a better writer. It's just his identity as an author.

I think we tolerate the indulgences of writers in media that are considered real art, but we still downgrade comic books because we don't really believe that most of them deserve to be considered as art. And certainly the publishers are mainly interested in making money and playing to the lowest common denominator.

If William Black can exist in obscurity and die without achieving worldly success, yet be considered a genius long after his corpse has turned to rot; then a simple comic book printed on newsprint might one day turn out to be a work of genius, too.

[Chubistian]

I'm reading WAR AND PEACE. Very slow, just a chapter or two at a time each day. Sometimes it's very dense and hard to get through. Other times the story picks up and it's a breeze. I have no doubt this is a work of art and that Tolstoy's style has to be accepted as his identity as an author.

Roy Thomas was a hard slog for me in the 1970s. And he's a hard slog now. He packs in a lot of exposition. But that's who he is as a writer. It doesn't make him a worse writer or a better writer. It's just his identity as an author.

I think we tolerate the indulgences of writers in media that are considered real art, but we still downgrade comic books because we don't really believe that most of them deserve to be considered as art. And certainly the publishers are mainly interested in making money and playing to the lowest common denominator.

If William Black can exist in obscurity and die without achieving worldly success, yet be considered a genius long after his corpse has turned to rot; then a simple comic book printed on newsprint might one day turn out to be a work of genius, too.

I think people like Moebius, Marjane Satrapi, Alan Moore, Neil Gaiman, Hugo Pratt, among many others, broke the idea that comics aren't just for a young audience, once the reader gets past the prejudice that comics aren't art. Superheroes tend to be less considered when talking about comics as an art form and even in some intelectual circles, they would gladly read Corto Maltese but deny any consideration for a Marvel or DC comicbook (with exceptions such as Sandman or Watchmen), to put an example

[mr_crisp]

Thank god I'm not the only one who noticed this. I read older graphic novels and they seem to take forever and new ones I can breeze through.

[Buried Alien]

I personally love the combination of word balloons, thought balloons, narrative boxes, and pictures that told the stories of the Bronze Age.

Buried Alien (The Fastest Post Alive!)

[Chubistian]

Thought balloons need to come back

[Jim Kelly]

I have this distinct memory of reading "The Eraser Who Tried to Rub Out Batman," in BATMAN 188--which was the first comic book I bought at the drugstore with my own money, but by no means my first comic book--and that I mainly looked at the pictures and read some of the word balloons and maybe a few captions, but never felt that I needed to read everything. I didn't look at the panels strictly from left to right and top to bottom either, but would look at what caught my attention first on the page and then work from there.

So my comprehension of the story was not according to Hoyle. It took me awhile to discover that you were supposed to read everything in the story in order--I thought that was optional and the way to read a comic was to look at it and decide for yourself what was the story. This is probably why my report cards from school were full of Xs. I was something of a dreamer and would just look at stuff and make up my own stories about things, even numbers.

And actually, these days, when I pick up new comics, this is how I often consume them. I will flip through them and look at the panels that jump out at me and scan different pages, without actually reading the full comic front to back.

[DanMad1977]

My 2 cents:

Thought balloons are great. Its stupid when Spider-Man talks to himself when he is alone. I could cringe when that happens.

Comics from the 60-80´s I find to wordy, yes. But I tend to skip word ballots, when I notice they are unimportant. I always skip caption boxes.

Erik Larsen almost never uses caption boxes in Savage Dragon, and it works perfectly fine.

New comics are a fast read, too fast. Sometimes its ridiculous and I have the feeling the writer did an issue in a few hours and takes the rest of the month off.

If a writer is good, like Greg Rucka on Lazarus than a book can be read with a lot of dialog. Than it doesn't feel like too wordy. And he even shows issues with less words, that are equally good. So its up to the writer. When I read Dan Slotts Spider-Man, I can easily fall asleep. His dialog is heavy and boring.

[phantom1592]

That's really interesting. Any examples of those debated ambiguities off the top of your head?

I remember a lot during Bendis' Daredevil. Who knew what about who... Lots of pages of just Daredevil looking pensive, angry, disappointed... depending on who was looking at it.

heck they had one 'silent issue' where they actually brought back two villains (Shotgun and Boomerang), gave them entirely different looks... and the issue 'read' like two random assassins, because nobody recognized two normally recognizable vilains. Heck, Shotgun is pretty minor villian, but he WAS in teh first Daredevil Comic i ever read so i WOULD have been excited to see him again... but without words, thoughts, or anything other than 'letting the artist tell the story' it was way too vague.

[superduperman]

Been reading the pre-Crisis New Teen Titans and, yeah, they are a bit wordier than what we have today. And the dialogue is yeeesh! And, yeah, today's comics are a lot faster read than the old ones. I don't know if they got paid by the word by then or what.

[Pinsir]

I've tried reading Silver age comics to my kid and my mouth gets sore before I'm even half-way through. I've read several chapters from actual books out too and its not as exhausting (FYI, I tried reading Silver age books because I know no one is going to get violently bonked in them).

[boltmonster]

For me it more comes down to the writing preference, either compressed or decompressed. With compressed stories a lot happens in one issue and you learn more. In the decompress stories it takes an entire issue just for somebody to lift their finger and at the end they're pointing at somebody. it's pretty much a very big difference and I started noticing the decompression stories happening after 1995 and by 2005 that's been the standard for all writing comics now.

[Menacer]

While I originally discovered comics in the early 90s. I only collected for a few years... maybe 50 issues and couple tpbs.

I've since picked up reading in 2016 and have collected hundreds of issues and mostly tpbs.

I own mostly books from 90s to present. Though mostly I own books between 2010 to 2020.

Generally I enjoy much or what I read and tend to rate most books I read 4/5 or 5/5... I'm a newer reader so maybe I'm just not jaded yet, maybe easy to please...

Having said all that I have ventured into older books.

Obviously you have to read Crisis on Infinite Earths if you wanna be taken seriously as a DC reader. Unfortunately after 2 attempts I only made it about 1/2 to 3/4 the way through... and this is a problem I've found with older books... repetitive and massive walls of text bubbles and dated sound to the language.

I'm working my way through a Mister Miracle book by Steve Englehart and find he describes exactly the actions that are visible in the panel... very redundant... other issues to with the writing and I'm on a break from the book.

Fourth World by Jack Kirby, the massive Omnibus... I'm a number of issues in, no huge walls or text but he does often describe the characters feeling... any case I will finish it but that older style is a bit jarring.

Ultimately age and stylistic preferences are gonna dictate what each reader likes...

I lend all my books to one of my best friends... he reads loads of fantasy novels. When he finished COIE I asked if he enjoyed it, if he found it to wordy.

He loved it... and I've yet to finish it... and we are the same age...

So it's hard to say what people will like...

While I've found Tom Kings style very easy quick reads... I don't mind it. He's not a favourite but I like him.

Morrisons is far denser. And I love Morrison...

Over all I don't find modern comics to short. But I have found older books bit odd to read.

[iron chimp]

I dont think words alone make a book a slow or quick read. A book with no words can take the longest time to read as you build the story up reading the panels and their connections but id imagine a book with no words which is just a forensic look at brushing ones teeth, you could burn through in a couple of minutes.