2025-2026 Rumor/Leak List - UPDATED List 9-9-25 (after the livestream)

With as much as comics cost these days, especially Indie comics, I try to make reading them worthwhile. So while I don’t write huge Claremontian walls of text, I do try to follow a more Kurt Busiek model.

As for thought balloons and omniscient narration boxes, I use both. Caption boxes are mainly for descriptions and scene details, while characters have thought balloons.

But I’m old, so I’m just doing what I liked during my reading heyday.
 
The lack of text in modern comics is one of the reasons I stopped reading. I was getting through issues so fast sometimes because of very little text and also so many splash pages that did not move the story along that I kept thinking every month "this story isn't going anywhere". The art, while sometimes beautiful, wasn't enough to balance the value.

Not that I think it was perfect before, as just described. But thought balloons were interesting and somehow stories felt fuller when they actually progressed and weren't stretched out for page count.
 
Comics are an involved symbol system. One is meant to “read” the drawings as much as the text. Comics aren’t illustrated prose and lose a good part of the inherent strengths of the medium when they lean too far in that direction. Krigstein and Kurtzman knew this back in the day. Scott McCloud’s “Understanding Comics” is a good exploration of it as well as some of the essays and work of Chris Ware and Ivan Brunetti.
 
Last edited:
TheSameIdiot said:
I'm planning to do the same with Claremont's X-Men soon. I've read pockets of it out of order, but I want to read the whole saga over the course of a year or two. Maybe I'll get ambitious and start with Kirby/Lee's X-Men #1.

The walls of text are always my hesitation with older comics. A lot of it spells out inner monologues that were evident through subtext or character choice.

I can zip through a modern comic in 5–7 minutes. Anything written before 2000 takes at least 10.
Click to expand...
I just started doing this. I grabbed a bunch of the epic collections and am just starting at Giant Sized and moving until Claremont leaves. It's definitely a more wordy experience getting through the older stuff, but you can see Claremont's style start to refine almost immediately.

I will say, in spite of that, stuff like the M'Kraan Crystal is like two or three issues of X-Men, where today that would be MONTHS of issues across an entire line. As wordy as Claremont is, he still is moving at break-neck speeds through some plots.
 
Thor-El said:
With as much as comics cost these days, especially Indie comics, I try to make reading them worthwhile. So while I don’t write huge Claremontian walls of text, I do try to follow a more Kurt Busiek model.

As for thought balloons and omniscient narration boxes, I use both. Caption boxes are mainly for descriptions and scene details, while characters have thought balloons.

But I’m old, so I’m just doing what I liked during my reading heyday.
Click to expand...

I didn't realize you were a writer. What comics have you written before?
 
Niko (protozoalord) said:
I didn't realize you were a writer. What comics have you written before?
Click to expand...
Nothing you’d have likely heard of. My own Steel Wolf, Taranis the Thunderlord and First Guard for G-Man Comics, Power Company for Coalition Comics, and I’ve been involved in close to another 100 books as well as writer, letterer, designer, etc.
 
Thor-El said:
Nothing you’d have likely heard of. My own Steel Wolf, Taranis the Thunderlord and First Guard for G-Man Comics, Power Company for Coalition Comics, and I’ve been involved in close to another 100 books as well as writer, letterer, designer, etc.
Click to expand...

I actually saw the World's Wonder campaign around maybe once or twice when it was ongoing, so I can't say I'm intimately familiar with your work or anything, but I've still heard of it! But that's cool as hell, and a bit inspiring! I've always wanted to hop into the same line of work (and my current freelance is vaguely adjacent), but haven't been able to motivate myself to write or draw much.
 
Niko (protozoalord) said:
I actually saw the World's Wonder campaign around maybe once or twice when it was ongoing, so I can't say I'm intimately familiar with your work or anything, but I've still heard of it! But that's cool as hell, and a bit inspiring! I've always wanted to hop into the same line of work (and my current freelance is vaguely adjacent), but haven't been able to motivate myself to write or draw much.
Click to expand...
Awesome! Glad to see that got some traction. I’m really happy with how that came out, and we’re working on a follow-up.
 
I like some explanatory text for the powers and fight scenes. I recall that Avengers vs X-Men did that.

That style works well for Iron Man, like in Armor Wars, Heroes Return, Extremis, etc. It is helpful to get descriptions about his flight speed, the speed of a mach-punch, how high is the heat output of a maximum uni-beam, what is the force behind a mid-level repulsor blast, etc.

Without text, you don’t get any details besides a drawing of somebody flying, punching, and blasting.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top