50 Things - Balloons
You heard me. Thought balloons. Even if they’re dressed up like narrative captions, we all know what they are. They’re the expression of internal monologue alongside the action. They can only happen in comics. Sure, you can do voiceover in film and you can run internal monologue in prose, but those thoughts cannot be physically embedded in the action in the way that comics can do them. Thought balloons are a powerful expressive tool, one that’s continually dumped on or laughed at as a crutch. But ask Grant Morrison; there’s something unique about them, about the distillation of mental energy into ink and space.