Why did golden and silver age comics rely so heavily on unnecessary narration boxes? I know the art was a lot more basic back then, and some time they would try to fit a lot of unseen story in with the narration. But a lot of the time the narration boxes are just describing what is going on in the panel that is obvious. Not only that, but usually the character is thinking exactly the same thing the narration is describing, like in the first Justice League of America issue, which is where it first started bugging.
I know it was a different era, but it just seems pointless. Is there some reason I'm not seeing for it? When did they finally drop wordy narration in favor of more art?
I know is one of the reasons I couldn't get into Claremont X-Men. I eventually stopped reading the narration boxes. The character describing an action is also annoying, reminds me of Troll 2 with the kid dialogue describing whats happening on screen "They are eating her and then they are going to eat me! Oh my God!"
William Edwards
Yeah that's how I feel reading through early JL and Flash. I just ignore the boxes at this point because they're never anything I can't tell just from context or art.
Though I read a bunch of stuff from the early 40s awhile back and didn't have the same issue. The narration boxes as I remember them were smaller and less intrusive, mostly just things like "but then..." or "elsewhere...". I don't remember 40's Superman having boxes describing exactly what he was doing in the panel.
Elijah Russell
A lot of the time, it's a mixture of: 1. Being able to cram more story in per page; the opposite of decompression, and 2. Being friendly to new readers by explaining everything long-term readers already know again, and also correctly assuming children are retarded and forget things.
Jonathan Gray
>I know the art was a lot more basic back then Actually, at least in the silver age the art was more dynamic and storytelling significant than most shit nowadays
Liam Kelly
Because these were children's books and editorial had to treat every issue like it's the readers' first.
John Kelly
Captain Marvel had a lot of that, but then the stories were basically Billy talking about his latest adventure over WHIZ radio so it sort of makes sense.
Jack Barnes
This
You can say what you want about Claremont's X-Men but you pick an issue at random and tell me by the end that you don't know 1) who's on the team, 2) what they can do and 3) who the leader is
Christian Hughes
Claremont's X-Men (and his writing in general) aged like milk because of that. I don't know how Miller could accept working with him in that Wolverine mini, Claremont's prose shat all over it.
Alexander Williams
That doesn't mean you have to explain everything that's happening in every panel, which is what most of those boxes do. I'm fine with the recap and repetition on the introduction of the issue because I understand it in its context of it being a periodical publication, but that other shit has no excuse. It's just another proof that the American industry never really took itself seriously and always looked down on its audience.
