Funny Story
February 29th, 2008 by david brothers | Tags: claremont, Marvel comics, x-menI learned the word “feeble,” and also “feeb,” from X-Men comics.
That wasn’t very funny after all, was it?
I love those words that comics writers used back in the day when they had to play it safe with dialogue. Can you imagine saying, “Hey, frail! Get over here!” and a woman actually getting upset and infuriated enough to hit you with the focused totality of her psychic powers (awourrg) instead of, say, laughing in your face like would happen these days?
I wish someone, somewhere, had documented all those ridiculous ’80s phrases. Claremont alone could fill half a dictionary.
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“What in blazes?”
“Curse you!”
I’m partial to the character specific phrases myself. Great Rao & Sweet Christmas among them.
Kirkman’s bit in Ant-Man about SHIELD agents being trained to yell “blast!” instead of swearing, so they don’t offend anyone nearby, was a huge scream.
And I have to agree that (from my perspective as an English teacher anyway) superhero comics were more interesting when they had to be careful what words they used. (I actually think that’s part of why I’ve never gotten into manga; the dialogue is all so simple and straightforward. Then again, I also blame falling literacy rates in part on the decline of comics among young readers and the transition from text to voice in video games, so I may just be cranky and old.)
Feeb comes from Feeble-minded not just feeble. It’s more “Hey, stupid! Get over here!” than calling them weak.