#original comic project

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I have very mixed feelings about caption boxes. I'm generally not a fan, because my writing tends to focus more on dialogue between people and not internal speech. I come from the theatre. Narrative monoguing is more rare.

The person talking about caption boxes here however, points out that they're super useful in a non diagetic perspective. Caption boxes inherantly exist outside the temporal space of the comic page. They can provide the audience a degree of specificity that art and dialogue cannot. They're also useful for juxtiposing what we see on the page vs what a character is feeling internally.

They're also helpful, he points out, to leading audiences to conclusions about what they're seeing.

Thinking about that, and comparing comics with theatre, I immediately went to look at Brecht.

Brecht is very much about leading audiences down a path to a specific conclusion, but he likes to do in a way that doesn't feed them the conclusion, but rather makes it so that his conclusion is created by the viewer. (It's the only possible conclusion that the viewer can form based on the evidence he presents in the play)

So how does Brecht use or not use the technique? (I'm comparing caption boxes to the use of monolgues that directly address a theatrical audience here).

In Mother Courage, everything is diagetic. All the monologues are addressed to other characters. The songs occur within the context of the world.

The Good Person of Szechwan, on the other hand, begins with a character monolguing directly to the audience. The audience is addressed throughout the play. Many of the songs are directly to the audience as well. A lot about this play is nondiagetic.

So what does this say about caption boxes? Probably that despite my aversion to them, they have a very useful place in comics. And there's no right or wrong answer on when to use them. Brecht used multiple techniques in different plays to have the same effect on his audiences.

@deacons-wig Aye cheers <3

From the Untitled Comic opening:

SOLDIER: It killed two of our men. And the criminal.

VINCENT: It’s obviously unfinished. But the concept is incredible.

He pauses, strokes the weapon again.