If, like me, you spent (part of) your formative comic-reading years engrossed in the likes of The Beano and similar children's periodicals, you may have grown up accustomed to seeing fluffy cloud shapes detailing characters' thoughts liberally sprinkled through the stories you read. It may even have escaped your notice, that ‘thought bubbles', (or thought balloons, if you prefer) are virtually non-existent in modern, ‘adult' comics. The question is, why?

We are often privy to dramatic characters' unspoken thoughts via narration or voiceover in literature or film, or soliloquy in theatre. Thought bubbles seem a reasonable, comparable method of representing the archetypal ‘internal monologue' within comic pages. Yet, thought bubbles are somehow seen as unsophisticated, in comparison to captions or, inexplicably, speech bubbles.

Wikipedia supposes that thought bubbles "are sometimes seen as an inefficient method of expressing thought because they are attached directly to the head of the thinker." If that were truly the case, however, our comics wouldn't have speech bubbles either. There is very little difference between the two; both somewhat detract from the realism fashioned by illustration, and both literally disrupt/interrupt the art in terms of their placement on the page. Also, whilst invasive in visual terms, both are near indispensable in communicating the essential elements of a comic story and in offering a more rounded experience than art alone.

Alan Moore (who else?) is oft cited as one of the principal proponents of excising thought bubbles from comic pages. Moore himself explains that this initially came from a suggestion by David Lloyd, during the production of V For Vendetta:

"All of a sudden it made everything much more real and documentary. The less that you relied upon captions and thought balloons, the more compellingly real the dialogue and pictures became."

I certainly have no axe to grind on V For Vendetta, one of Moore's greatest works, nor on how he employs captions to denote internal monologue. However, I would take issue with whether a thought bubble is any less ‘real' than the jagged shape used to represent the Norsefire government's broadcasts, or whether comics in general should be ‘more documentary' (not that that is Moore's assertion).

After all, there are many unrealistic aspects of comics that we have gotten used to either ignoring or suspending our disbelief in, whether it be yet another industrial accident creating a superhero, the lack of swearing, or no one ever needing to pop down to the shops because they've run out of toilet paper. Some of these we could do without, but they don't generally get in the way of enjoyment of a good story, much like, I would argue, the odd cloud shape.

Some writers even eschew thought bubbles in favour of characters speaking out loud to themselves. To me, this is far less realistic than a signified representation of an internal thought, and reminiscent of crummy, TV-movie dialogue where people make redundant announcements such as "Now, to defuse the bomb!" (instead of just defusing the bomb).

Undeniable classics, such as Jeff Smith's Bone, have no thought bubbles, but do feature speech balloons containing just a single exclamation mark. Albeit that it's the circular rather than cloudy shape, these might as well be thought bubbles. There's no speech, but an unspoken feeling/emotion is conveyed. Is it specifically the shape, then, that modern comicdom finds so objectionable? Surely not, when you consider the wealth of different shapes of bubble you find in a critically acclaimed series such as Neil Gaiman's Sandman, wherein his Dream speaks in jagged, cloud-shaped, black and white bubbles, and various other main characters, have their own individual bubbles and fonts.

Asterix, though aimed at a young audience, is, of course, a sophisticated series which employs thought bubbles from the very first episode right up to the most recent. Are bubbles maligned because they are too reminiscent of children's fare such as this, and the aforementioned Beano?

It's worth noting that the very first issue of The Beano contains just one recognisable thought bubble, showing the inner reflection of Lord Snooty (cloud-shaped, but recognisable, principally since it has the word "thought" printed inside it). The funny thing, and all told, few things about The Beano are actually funny, is that issue #1 contains a number of strips, such as Uncle Windbag, in which illustrated panels sit above corresponding, narrative text. One could argue, only slightly shakily, that the modern vogue for pictures + speech balloons + text captions, rather than innovating, merely reflects that older style of visual storytelling, as seen in 1938.

Of course, there are current ongoing series where you will still find the iconic bubble, such as the excellent Fables or the dour American Splendour (a crushing bore if you asked me). Alan Moore has himself been known to return to the thought bubble on occasion, but principally to satirise earlier graphic storytelling, such as in the Superman parody Supreme or the everything-parody Tomorrow Stories.

I am not proposing that thought bubbles should feature in every series going, but merely that they need not be reserved for satire, and seem unfairly maligned in comparison with similar devices, especially the ubiquitous speech bubble. Of course, I could be missing something. And, if I may, I would like to conclude by quoting the great Mr Moore completely out of context:

"You can't reproduce a thought in an empirical laboratory experiment, so you cannot properly talk about thought. Thought is a supernatural event which we all experience every minute of the day.^"

Quite.