Comic Book Sound Effects
To capture the excitement and dynamism of the 2D drawings that appear in sequence on the page, writers must imbue their action with real world sounds. There is a fine line between capturing the perfect onomatopoeia and making a tit of themselves.
Just The Facts
- Comic book sound effects introduced all right-thinking people to onomatopoeias way before their class mates.
- They have long been a staple of comics, and as such there is a certain amount of affection for them.
- A Cracked reader is expected to reproduce at least one third of the sounds in the chart above with their voice.
- A machine gun makes the sound "ratatat" and not "urh-urh-urh-urh-urh."
Cracked on Comic Sound Effects
Sound effects in comics have to be chosen carefully, or you fall into the category of "that dude who writes comics about dongs." Incidentally, this never happened to Herge, but only because Cracked has not decided to bestow that honor upon him (yet).
Comic book sound effects have to concisely express a particular sound without any ambiguity. "DZOF," as shown above, does not fit into this category. What is the sound here? Short and sharp "DZOF" or more of a booming sound "DZOF!"? In general, avoid consonant combinations favoured by ex-Viking countries.
Unless your comic is meant to be funny, avoid sound effects that actually look like words. "BAF" works well enough for a punching sound, but "WANGO" takes you out of the realm of the dark and eerie and places you squarely in the 50s.
I genuinely tittered at the Captain America 'WANK!' picture.
ReplyDeadpool makes fun of the sounds in his comic book all the time.
ReplyBECAUSE HE'S AWESOME
(extremely relevant point made)
Deadpool in Marvel vs. Capcom 3 is some of the funniest s**t in the world.
There is no explosion quite like KABOOM22. That's the original sound effect from Red Alert: Command and Conquer 1995. I've got it if you guys want a listen.
Reply@comicbooksfx is a twitter bot that tweets random comic book sound effects. i have yet to add DONG! or WANK! though.
ReplyA big part of those is typography and imagery. Which would you expect to be about sex: squelch, with a straight, structured look and purple colour; or a squelch with a white colour that looked drippy?
COMIC SAAAAANS!
Replythis reads like someone's half-arsed attempt at making some notes, not like a finished article.
ReplyLame lame lame.
Um, why are you always the one who says the articles are "half-arsed?"
And when would "wango" be used?
ReplyWhen flashing an unsuspecting passerby?
most of these were just lost in translation ^^
Reply"after writing Boom Boom" lol
ReplyHahaha, "wank" was the funniest one!
ReplyEver seen a page from a manga? Any manga will probably work. Half the stuff on any given page is likely to be sound effects. They have onomatopoeia for practically everything you can think of...
Reply Hide All See All 3 RepliesWhich are awesome. And, might I add, usually become pure failure when "translated" for a North American dub (or version, whatever)
XD They have so much onomatopoeia that some of them have a glossary in the back explaining to us silly North Americaners what they mean.
Dragon Ball Z had a sound effect list that included:
FWAOM
AOMU
CRRRRRRRRKAA
GLARE
BOMB
FIGH and my favorite,
ASDON!
My favorite comic sound effect was in batman. Cracka-Thoom!! kinda sounds like a name for a white member of the Zulu
ReplyThank you so much. You just made my day. Someone please make a movie about cracka-thoom. He can be like a Zulu version of Lawrence of Arabia.
He should be played in the movie by Johnny Weissmuller.
Was that a Black Eyed Peas reference? I hate that song...
ReplyShame on you! You should hate ALL their songs.
Loved the chart of sound-effects. A truly masterful graphic!
ReplyComic book collections at http://www.rillabooks.com/classifieds? http://tinyurl.com/yzerkmu
Replythe POW was quite funny
Reply'Thoom', plus a slightly unfortunate picture (picture is SFW, text is not): http://i924.photobucket.com/albums/ad86/khariifa/AnalFisting.jpg
ReplyAW, I wanted to see porn
*sarcasm
what about some of the snd effects from Mad magazine,my personal favorite is" KAKA-SPLAT!! "
ReplyDon Martin and MAD wasn't included since they were already jokes/a parody of sound effects and cracked is not in the business of stealing jokes.
I'm dissapointed there was no mention of 'Bonk!' the most hilarious onomatopoeia ever put to paper.
Replyerr... yes there is.
I think the written sound effect should just be the action taking place, like "KICK-NUTS!"
ReplyOne-Piece did that, with such effects as punch, break, crack, glare, swing and eat.
Seriously, eat.