Why Thought Balloons? - Matt Duarte

In retrospect, Thought Balloons was kind of a misnomer. In the time writing and reading for TB, I don't remember a single one of us ever using a thought balloon. The website really should have been called "Caption-Box.com" or "How-Much-Dialogue-Can-I-Fit-In-This-Tiny-Panel.com" or something along those lines. Thought balloons are for the most part out of vogue in the comics world. Of course, I know a thing or two about being out of vogue. At some unremembered point in the past 5 years, I fell out of the weekly Wednesday reading habit. It simply was too expensive and too time consuming for me to keep up. Changes in my life meant that I did not have the time to keep up with all the ever changing trials and tribulations of all these mainstream characters. I was kind of a continuity nut. Not the kind that argues forever about what happened in that one issue of West Coast Avengers from 25 years ago and how it conflicted with the current ongoing events of X-Force Forever. Instead, I was quite obsessed to always stay updated and find out what the latest version of a character was, current motivations and status quo, etc. That would all inform my writing for TB. Once I stopped keeping up with that, I knew I couldn't keep up with TB. Writing a different character every week is completely ruthless. Research, reading, thinking, some more research, some more reading, thinking and before you knew it, the deadline was upon you and you just had to write. Don't get me wrong, it was fun. The competition and camaraderie was absolutely amazing. The feedback and comments were great, something you wouldn't get anywhere else. And I am still proud of some of the scripts I produced. Sometimes I just come into the website just to look at what I wrote all those years ago, and I still smirk at my own jokes, admire what I created. In the end, though, I had to leave it. There are younger, hipper writers (do they have a lot of pouches? I don't know, but I hope they do) that replaced the old guard on here, and they are still keeping up with the weekly grind. Good for them. I know I can't do that anymore. I'm coming back for one last script for this celebration, this five year anniversary. Maybe I'll use some thought balloons in this one...