Agree with both. There were also some stories done in second person there were very effective. Some EC books come to mind. Who and why was it decided that comics can only be panels with dialog?

Dialog and first person narration. First person narration is, to me, an even less authentic storytelling construct than the thought balloon, especially in, say, a JLA story where different sections are narrated by different JLAers: 3 pages of Batman narrating, then 2 pages of Green Arrow, then a few Zatanna pages... It implies that sometime after the events of the story, each member sat down and recorded or related recreations of their remembered thoughts in those moments. In a novel, we can assume that the narrator is, well, writing out their memoirs or something, but it's not so easy to dream up a scenario where each participant is sharing detailed reconstructions that often include closely held secrets and private opinions. And of course, occasionally the narrator of a section will actually die, so how did this information ever get recorded?

I suppose the narrative technique allows writers to be more expressive, using more engaging language that would be inauthentic when rendered as the more immediate thought balloons. We've all seen absurdly expository use of thought balloons in older comics: "If only I had my Miraclo tablets! But they were proving dangerously addictive, so I had to invent the Miraclo ray instead, which allows me to gain superpowers for one hour, but only if I expose myself to them using the machine in my lab. Unfortunately, the lab is on the other side of town, and Dr. Glisten has locked me in this meat packing plant, where I will die from exposure to the cold before I can escape!" I can see how that same information could be better conveyed as a narrative contemplation of the situation after the fact.

I do wonder why writers would deprive themselves of the kind of scene-setting, art-augmenting text the likes of which enriched books like TOMB OF DRACULA, but maybe the editors just grew to impose new conventions as they went along with the trends. Arguably, the art should do the heavy lifting on establishing atmosphere, and the kind of stuff Wolfman did in TOD was sometimes--perhaps usually--superfluous over the likes of Gene Colan panels. But not every artist is a Gene Colan, right?

Today everything is so decompressed bloated.

You're too nice.

It's interesting to me because when I talk to some of my much younger friends about comic books today, they sometimes ask for recommendations to go back and read this era, or have just discovered some of it on their own. And many times they say to me "it's so slow to read!", as in so much exposition and talking overall.

I'm probably somewhere in between myself. Just sheer "quality-wise", stuff like those early Spider-Man stories just seem on a whole other level to me. In terms of actual reading, I find I have to be in a little bit more of a mood to sit down and actively "read" all that. Hard for me to get through more than an issue or two at a time. Whereas I can take some later stuff and sometimes read a year's worth of content in one go. I don't view either approach as truly "better" since I like aspects of both, though I do lean a bit towards some of that "decompression" has gotten out of hand in more recent years (like TOO little happens overall).

Me too. You can really get stuck into them and feel as if you've read a decent comics-worth of story at the end.

Love ya both. Drinks are on me.

Hey! You got your twelve cents' worth, didn't ya!?