Sound Effects - Whatever Happened To Onomatopoeia? - Ray Wonsowski

Panel 1- KEVIN SMITH is sitting in his comic shop, a Green Arrow poster and a Daredevil poster on the wall behind him, reading a trade paperback of Batman: The Widening Gyre, smiling as he turns the page.

WORD BALLOON (from behind Kevin's chair): Flip.

Panel 2- Same as Panel 1, but KEVIN looks straight at us, a confused look on his face. ONOMATOPOEIA has risen up behind him unseen.

KEVIN: "Flip"?

ONOMATOPOEIA: Whud.

KEVIN: "Whud"?

Panel 3- ONOMATOPOEIA is pummeling the crap out of KEVIN, who is off panel on the floor.

SoundFX: WHUD!WHUD!WHUD!WHUD!WHUD!

Panel 4- Outside Jay and Bob's Secret Stash, ONOMATOPOEIA walks across the street, writing in a pocket notebook. An inset panel shows crossed off item 1 on his to-do list, "Smith, Batman Gyre".Item 2 reads "Liefeld, Nu52 Hawkman".

ONOMATOPOEIA: Skritch.

Sound Effects - One Shot - J.D. Coughlan

Jonah Hex, old west bounty hunter and rogue, hides behind the bar in a saloon, cornered by bandits. He's down to his last bullet.

1111

2233

4455

6666

Panel 1: Looking over the bar from behind it. Hex carefully aims his pistol off-panel. In the background, three bandits taunt him.

BANDIT 1: Come out with yer hands over yer ass-ugly face, Hex!

Panel 2: Close-up of Hex's gun as he fires.

SFX: BLAM

Panel 3: The bullet ricochets off a brass light fixture, travelling from bottom right to bottom left.

SFX: ting

Panel 4: The bullet ricochets off the spitoon on the floor, travelling from top right to top left.

SFX: pling

Panel 5: The bullet, travelling from bottom right, cuts through the cord holding the large lighting fixture (like a cheaper, wooden chandelier, I dunno what you call it) to the ceiling.

SFX: snik

Panel 6: The light fixture crashes down on the bandits.

SFX: KRRRSH

BANDIT 1: Ooft!

BANDIT 2: Argh!

BANDIT 3: Gah!

END OF PAGE

Sound Effects - Buzzing - Hansel Moreno

Panel One: Constantine rifles through his latest mark/client to be’s  desk, a slight buzzing noise fills his ears.

SFX: bzzzzzzzzzzzzz, zzzzzzzzzzzz, bzzzzzzzzzzzzz

Panel Two: Constantine pauses his search to pinch the bridge of his nose and lean over the desk.

Constantine: How can anyone properly burgle with all this bloody noise?

Panel Three:  The buzzing resumes and Constantine cringes and resumes his search.

SFX: BZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ, BZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ, BZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ

Panel Four: The buzzing intensifies. Constantine doubles over, clearly in pain. The room begins to lose touch with reality, the gravity lessens sending papers and furniture into the air.

SFX: BZZZZZZZZZ, BZZZZZZZZZZZZ, BEELLLZZZZZZZZZ

Panel Five:  The buzzing reaches its peak, a flash of dark smoke engulfs Constantine.

SFX: BZZZZZZZZZ,  BEELLLZZZZZZZZZ, BEELZEBUB

Constantine: Oh for Christ's sa--

Panel Six: The room clears, the buzzing stops, there is a flaming pentagram on the floor, the smell of sulfur in the air and no sign of Constantine.

NO COPY

Sound Effects - These Go to Eleven - Grant McLaughlin

Very loosely inspired by the last panel of this comic, which has stuck with me for years for whatever reason.

Every single sound effect save for the last one would be in that simple and small handwritten style - preferably black.  Would probably be best if panels 1 through 7 are spread among 3 more or less evenly sized rows of panels and panel 8 can be its own thing along the bottom of the page.

1 - A hip, rocker-esque dude stands in an empty panel.  He holds a badass electric guitar and strums a single note.

SFX: plink!

2 - An older man comes into the panel and grabs the young rocker by his shirt, shaking him desperately.  It looks like they're on some kind of stage.  The older man is dressed in classic 1950s Rock and Roll stylings.  Who knows, maybe he's even Elvis...

OLDER MAN: Acoustic?  Are you serious?!

3 - Switch to a view of the open space in front of the stage.  It is filled with zombies dressed in Disco-regalia.  They hobble (and dance) towards the stage in great, mindless numbers.

OLDER MAN (OP): That will never be enough to stop the Disco Fever!

4 - The older man plugs in the rocker's guitar.

OLDER MAN: We need pure Rock and Roll.

SFX: plug!

5 - The older man pulls a sheet, revealing a bazillion speakers ready and waiting.  The rocker looks somewhat incredulous / overwhelmed.

OLDER MAN: The louder the better.

SFX: pull!

ROCKER: (quietly): Are all those speakers really necessary?

6 - The older man is being dragged away by the Disco Horde, panic in his eyes.  He yells to the rocker to act.

OLDER MAN: There's no time to answer your question!  Play!  Play and save the world!

7 - Close-up of the guitar.  The pick is just barely touching / starting to strum one of the strings.

SFX: pl-

8 - An entire panel that says nothing but DOOM! (ala classic Walt Simonson).

SFX: DOOM!

Sound Effects – Echo Identification – MK Stangeland Jr.

(5 Panels)

Panel 1: DAREDEVIL, his location exposed inside a warehouse against some nontraditional ‘ninjas’. They’re not so much ninja’s as they are gangsters, thugs, and punks who do a bad job trying to look ninjaesque and have surprisingly impressive martial arts skills.

DAREDEVIL lands on the edge of the group. He kicks one in the face as he comes down.

SFX: Thock!

DAREDEVIL: (Thought Balloon) They certainly aren’t armed like ninjas.

Panel 2: Focus on a NINJA PUNK armed with a slingshot specially designed to throw ninja stars – the panel should be drawn in ‘DAREDEVIL VISION’ style, as seen in what I think was V3 of Daredevil.

SFX: twang

DAREDEVIL (Thought Balloon) Shuriken Slingshot?

Panel 3: DAREDEVIL avoids the shot ninja star and other attacks while shooting his billyclub at a NINJA THUG armed with a katana poorly retrofitted with a conspicuous-looking power-pack and is buzzing with a motorized blade. Everything except for DAREDEVIL should be in DAREDEVIL VISION, and special emphasis should be placed on the sword.

SFX: wack

SFX: (Sword) BZZZZZZZZZ

DAREDEVIL: (Thought Balloon) Electric Swords?

Panel 4: DAREDEVIL is crouched on the ground while kicking a FAUX NINJA. He’s looking off-panel while winding up with the billyclub he shoot in PANEL 3.

SFX: thuk

NINJA GANGSTER: (Off-Panel) DROP!

DAREDEVIL (Thought Balloon) A minigun!?

Panel 5: DAREDEVIL VISION. A NINJA GANGSTER armed with a MINIGUN gets hit in the face with one end of DAREDEVIL’s billyclub. The gun is active, but not firing any bullets at the moment.

SFX: (Minigun, trails off) zwrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr

SFX: krak!

NINJA GANSTER: GUAH!

DAREDEVIL (Thought Balloon) I’ve met some ninjas in my time, and these guys are no ninjas.

(END PAGE)

Why Sound Effects?

Your average human being has five basic senses – Hearing, Sight, Smell, Taste, and Touch. Comics, being a very visual medium, are usually limited to just Sight. You’ve got your words and you’ve got your pictures, which each come out to about another thousand words apiece.

There’s nothing inherently wrong with this, of course – you can tell a perfectly good story using just sight. Or even with just sound. But there’s something more immersive and enjoyable about a story when you find a way to combine the two. And for comics, that’s where sound effects come in. Those words – be they big or little, inconspicuous or a major part of the page – that can be largely meaningless on their own but add so much to a scene.

Given their history, it sometimes becomes hard to imagine comics without them, especially as some sound effects have managed to become iconic in their own right. After all, where would Spider-Man be without his ‘thwip!’? Or Wolverine without his ‘snikt!’? Or can you possibly try to imagine the classic Adam West Batman without the cheesy yet beloved ‘Bam!’, ‘Pow!’, and ‘Biff!’s?

So here’s to the little words that are so much more that the ink they’re printed with and the pages they’re printed on.

And as always, if you’d like to try your own hand at having fun with Sound Effects this week, feel free to ‘POP!’ out your own one-page script and ‘SMACK!’ it into the comments section below.