The Language of Comic Books
‘Hear ye, Hear ye!’ Comics are awesome, people!!! VICE has a neat article on how the vocabulary used by comic book writers has been adopted by pretty much every facet of mainstream culture — You probably already know what most of these terms mean:
G L O S S A R Y O F T E R M S :
Done-in-one: n. A single-issue story. / Anthology: n. A collection of stories by a variety of creative teams. / Miniseries: n. A comics title with a definitive endpoint, usually three to six issues. / Crossover: n. A storyline that goes across multiple titles. Usually, these days, a crossover has its own title (an “event book”) as well. The first comic book crossover was 1940’s Marvel Mystery Comics #8. The two most popular features, Human Torch and Submariner, fought each other. From that moment on, [crossovers] became standard operating procedure. / Event: n. [A crossover] that’s happening to the entire universe, the entire line, simultaneously. Almost all the titles participate in that. / Tie-in: n. The individual issue or issues of an [ongoing] title that link into a specific event (unique to events as opposed to crossovers). / Reboot: n. When you take a pre-existing franchise [or fictional universe] and you wipe everything that happened clean and you start from scratch [usually with the same characters]. Most reboots are also a relaunch. e.g., Casino Royale [is a reboot of the James Bond franchise.] / Origin Story: n. [The story in which we see] where a character came from. (Note: Many origins are also first appearances. In Spider-Man’s first appearance, [Amazing Fantasy #15], you meet Peter Parker, he gets bitten by a radioactive spider, and Uncle Ben gets shot.)
That’s right; you can thank comic books this time for influencing western language and not Shakespeare! That show off. Speaking of vocabulary; Here are some onomatopoeia collages by Florida artist, Amy Watkins — signature comic sound effects for that added graphic punch:
“I love my comics too much to keep them in dusty long boxes in the closet. After I’ve read the stories and pored over the pictures, I want to enjoy my comics again, as a medium for new art. I sell original, handmade pieces — no prints here — constructed out of the amazing art of old comic books.” ~ Amy Watkins of PowerUpCollage



