Over the years, the formatting of comic books has been changing from lengthy dialogues to using fewer dialogues to tell a story.  So the question here is: are comic books better with lengthy dialogues and story narrations or are they better off with fewer dialogues and narration?

My opinion: I think there’s great potential for using both formats and there are also certain disadvantages in using both formats; so in other words, I actually enjoyed reading both formats for different reasons.

I enjoyed reading the comic book format that uses lengthy dialogues and story narrations for the comic book stories because they help explain so much about the characters and the story itself (such as explaining about the characters’ feelings and thoughts about a certain situation and the narration telling the fans what is going on in the story).  However, the biggest thing that irks me about comic books that have lengthy dialogues and narration is that it takes so long to read the comic itself because you would be spending so much time trying to read through the dialogues and the narration and sometimes you just don’t have the time to read everything in the comic.  Another problem I had with comic books that have lengthy dialogues is that you are wondering to yourself about whether or not all that dialogue is really necessary to the story.  The biggest thing that gets on my nerves is that sometimes the narration tends to repeat a character’s power set in every issue, like for example, in the older X-Men comics, there were times where Nightcrawler’s powers of being able to teleport anywhere with the smell of brimstone behind him were being repeated in every issue of the X-Men comics.

I also enjoyed reading the comic book format that doesn’t use lengthy dialogues and lets the artwork tell the story because for one thing, it makes it easier to read the comic since it’s much quicker to read through.   Another thing I like about comic books with less dialogue is that I can admire the artwork and see it move the story forward if it’s done well.  The main thing that I don’t like about comic books with less dialogue and narration is that sometimes not everything is explained in the story and you’re left wondering how this event happened and what the characters are thinking about in these situations.   Also, if the artwork is done terribly and there is no dialogue explaining what is going on, then it would definitely be difficult to even understand the comic at all if the artwork is not done well enough to explain the situation.

 So, what are you opinions on this?   Do you rather read comic books that have lengthy dialogues and narrations or do you rather read comics that have short dialogues and story narrations?   And do you think that comic books are better off with short dialogues and narration or should they extend the dialogues and the narrations a bit more?