Thought balloons and captions?

[Jerry W. Loper]

Why are they practically gone? Silver age comics were jampacked with 'em.

[Songbird/Diamondback]

They were kinda redundant when the art could show what one is thinking and narration could be done as well.

But they tried bringing them back and failed. (Go Kill yourself Dr. Pym!) Ugh, I hated the way Bendis used them.

[The Black Guardian]

Yeah, it was what Bendis was having Carol think that was horrible, not the use of thought bubbles in and of itself. I did like the way he showed the duplicitousness of thoughts and action in those scenes.

The lack of thought bubbles is probably my biggest complaint of current books.

Captions really haven't gone away much.

[Hockstatter]

I enjoy "getting inside the character's head" captions but not cheesy unknown narrator ones.

[Michael P]

I enjoy "getting inside the character's head" captions but not cheesy unknown narrator ones.

No one ever told you about the third person omniscient?

[tabo61]

I miss it.

[Bad Wolf]

The kids find them "cheesy" nowadays.

[Joe Acro]

I enjoy "getting inside the character's head" captions but not cheesy unknown narrator ones.

I'm the exact opposite. I like a third-person narrator (take Journey Into Mystery or Dark Tower, for examples) and thought bubbles for the individual characters, if needed.

[Spike-X]

I don't see a problem with using them if there's a need, but I'd hate to see comics go back to the days of pages and pages of exposition and recap all taking place inside clumsily-scripted word balloons.

And there are some stories when knowing a character's thoughts would be detrimental, as in the case of the sudden unexpected betrayal.

[klinton]

Characters like Wanda really suffer with a lack of thought bubbles. Now she needs to utter aloud what it is she's doing or have readers/reviewers complain that her powers are undefined.

And SB/DB: I kinda like Bendis thought bubbles. His work on Mighty Avengers especially was full humorous. :D