Comics used to read like pseudo novels, with scene descriptions, motivational explanations etc. Granted that much of this could have been removed anyway, but these captions do give a much broader reading experience.

A lot of comics nowadays seem to be talking heads with stilted captions containing a minimal of information. A bit like how the main credits for TV shows have been replaced by three second intros.

I have at times pondered whether this may be due to a shift from Marvel method to full script, but DC also had verbose captions so that theory is flawed.

I miss captions

Read an old Brave and the Bold by Bob Haney or a Robert Kanigher war comic. Those things were written, with genuine thought given to word choice, mood, pacing, and scene. Those characters have reasons for what they're doing and it's not just to woo you into hanging on to find out what those reasons are next month. You've got the whole story in front of you. A lot of these characters are never going to be seen again.

Were yesterday's books all brilliant? No. Often not. Far from it, in fact. But experience of reading the book itself was nevertheless more complete than what you receive today. The stories were fully conceived and executed. Who does that anymore? Now things just sort of ramble to odd conclusions six months to a year later, with lots of sound and fury along the way. 

Read a Morrison comic. Tedious, self-involved conceptualizing, barely gelled enough to hold its shape on the page and then liberally doused with violence and contempt. Read Warren Ellis. The comic spits in your face. 

The idea is that it will all come together at some point and you'll be able to look back and say, "Ohh, so the guy with the beard was really a transdimensional weapons maker and the girl was the gun. Oh, yup. I see that now. Eight months from when they first came on-panel. And so the thing she was doing in that whatever-it-was dome thing they never explained was firing her time-self as a projectile forwards in time to kill the hero, but the android figured out the resonance pattern as it was manifesting, and so was able to project an image backwards along the distortion path and warn the hero in time. All of which is now happening in the background because this month's issue is actually all about the Lord of the Serpents and his alternate dimensional selves winding themselves together into a universe-crushing python being. Or maybe not. It could just be a distraction set up by the Maestro of the Mind's-Eye who's lurking in the background..."

It's all supposed to fuse together at the end like a beach novel, which doesn't ever play out, because beach novels are still written, and we've let that go for the most part now, in favor of this odd, unique-to-comics staggering and interlacing of events and dialogue, which scatter jagged diagonal panels across the page to jumble tedium-inducing plots with seamy, self-absorbed characters, and weave it all together with yakkity-yak talking heads.

Fine for what it is, but it isn't storytelling anymore so much as it is stream-of-consciousness disaster porn.

If I buy *some* modern comics, we're talking ten minutes. 

And it's hard to justify due to the price. Less than a quid (around 40p) gave me SUPERMAN VOL. 2 #9 (by our host), but two comics nowadays cost around six quid - and I'll have read both of them in a short amount of time.

I do miss thought balloons. 

I don't recall Paul Levitz' Legion books doing that, but I sure do recall it happening in Giffen's books - Legion, Justice League, whatever.

I don't mind considerable text if the story calls for it. I don't mind minimal text if the story calls for it (reference "The Many Deaths of the Batman".) I want the story to be told as the story requires it.

I'm minded to think of the Prince Valiant strip, which - as I recall - was more illustrated paragraphs than a standard comic strip. These seemed excellent pieces of comic, so I don't object to those very much. There are a variety of methods to present graphic art and story... I just want them to be GOOD art and stories, that's all.