I know the words are onomatopoetic. But is there a special term used in comic book production for these words or their word ballons? Also is their a term for a screen overlay in television/film production? Thanks!
Since this is about literature, let’s move it to Cafe Society.
Colibri
General Questions Moderator
According to wiki, which draws from “Duncan, Randy; Smith, Matthew J. (2009). The Power of Comics”, these are “sound effects”.
Kind of a let-down.
WAH-waaaaahh…
Yeah, I haven’t been able to find any unique terminology for them either.
I always loved Ben Edlund’s use of them in the original Tick comics…
Take!
Noose!
Tussle!
Control Remotely!
How about SFX?
I always liked Eat! Eat! Eat! in the Looney Tunes comics whenever anyone was chowing down.
Bort!
Snuh!
There was the year I went to the San Diego Comic Con carrying a big cardboard “Meanwhile…” narration box.
I don’t think so. That refers to actual onomatopoeic sounds. Gunfire *budda-budda-budda *would be sound effects, so would an explosion blam. A punch *thud *would be, but *pow *isn’t an actual sound.
That’s special effects, that is visual effects in a movie or TV show.
Not? I would have said “Pow” is onoma…what you just said. It’s the sound of an impact, or is intended to evoke the sound. How is “Pow” different from “Wham” or “Bomf?”
You might have a better case against “Slam,” which is more evocative of the martial arts move that causes the “Ker-Wham.”
(Raspberries to Sonic the Hedgehog for heavily over-using “Ker-” as a prefix. Although they were engaging in self-parody, so maybe it doesn’t count.)
The late, great Don Martin of Mad Magazine was the master of sound effects. This site lists all of the ones he used over the years, include such classics as Spwap, Skroik, PBLRBLPSFT, Fwoosh and many others. Enjoy!
I remember the one with two women typists. One was going at light speed with her typing, and the sounds were TIK TIKKA TIK for the keys, BING! for the bell, and THWIZZZZIK ZAK for the carriage return. The other woman got annoyed and eventually jerked out the page (THZZZ ZZZZ ZZZZ), straightened the page with a “fnap,” and the last panel showed that the first woman had typed out all the previous sound effects. META!
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/HitFlash
Is this what you had in mind? (When you open the link, open the “Live Action TV” tab to see more on the Batman example specifically.)
Well. If they’re not accurate representations of the events, then they’re unsound effects.