History Main / Textplosion

* ''Webcomic/{{qxlkbh}}'': [[https://qxlkbh.github.io/131 "131: debate"]] is particularly text-heavy, to the point that two of the four panels are almost entirely occupied by dialogue. To make it easier to read, each of them have even been split into three trapezoidal subpanels containing each line of dialogue.

* ''ComicBook/LegionOfSuperHeroes'': During the "5 years later" arc, text pages were often used to provide exposition on events that occurred during the TimeSkip or other background information. Issue #38, in which the Earth is destroyed by an environmental disaster, is told entirely in illustrated prose.

* ''ComicBook/{{Scion}}'': One issue pays homage to ''ComicStrip/PrinceValiant'' by being made in the same style. The art was laid out sideways, formatted like a Sunday newspaper strip, and the text was separate from the art, just like in ''Prince Valiant''. An earlier, acclaimed issue of ''Scion'' was formatted like an illustrated novel, with blocks of text, sometimes integrated with the art.

This is not necessarily a bad thing, depending on the nature of the story and whether a Textplosion is intended as its own sort of plot device. However, a sudden or long-term shift from graphic art to Textplosion, regardless of quality or content, often results in losing large portions of readership -- since, after all, they came to read a comic.

SisterTrope of WallOfText (extremely lengthy paragraphs in written media), WallOfBlather (a wall of text containing a backdrop character's ramblings), and FeaturelessPlaneOfDisembodiedDialogue (when nothing else happens while the characters talk); all of which can exist within the usual comic dialogue format. Might overlap with PaintingTheMedium if the sudden abundance of text serves an ulterior purpose.

* ''Manga/TownOfEveningCalmCountryOfCherryBlossoms'': At the end of the manga, the illustrations disappear when [[spoiler:Minami becomes too ill from radiation poisoning to open her eyes.]]

* ''Manga/JujutsuKaisen'': Kinji Hakari's Domain Expansion is so pointlessly complicated it "beams its own rules directly into his opponent's head" because ExplainingYourPowersToTheEnemy would take too long. There's a whole, two-page spread, diagram explaining the mechanics of the magical pachinko machine- and the actual effects of the thing can be explained as 'Hakari rolls until he hits a jackpot, at which point he becomes immortal for four minutes and starts rolling again'.

* ''ComicBook/XMenTheKrakoanAge'': Most pages are standard comic pages, but Creator/JonathanHickman, the writer who launched the saga, also uses lots of text-based data pages to deliver large quantities of information. Some are pure text such as diary entries or emails (including some {{Conveniently Interrupted Document}}s), others use charts and imagery as well. Other writers working on the Krakoa arcs have followed Hickman's lead on this. Examples of this are ''ComicBook/SWORD2020'', ''ComicBook/XMenRed2022'', and ''ComicBook/Deadpool2022'' (which also contains Deadpool's red annotations).

[[folder:Manga]]
* ''Manga/Bastard1988'': There's at least one scene, where the author just outright goes "I don't feel like drawing this, so let me describe what happened instead."
* ''Manga/HunterXHunter'': It can get a bit silly about this occasionally. Because much of the fighting action revolves around characters overthinking the moves and strategies of their foes, you can sometimes end up with whole pages dedicated to their thought processes alone. The standout example, however, is a chapter in which one character goes blind and the chapter is seen through his perspective, so it consists of 19 pages of black panels with speech balloons and 1 page at the end of [[spoiler:the Chimera Ant King and Komugi dying together.]] It formerly provided the page image.
* ''Manga/TownOfEveningCalmCountryOfCherryBlossoms'': At the end of the manga, the illustrations disappear when [[spoiler:Minami becomes too ill from radiation poisoning to open her eyes.]]
* ''Manga/JujutsuKaisen'': Kinji Hakari's Domain Expansion is so pointlessly complicated it "beams its own rules directly into his opponent's head" because ExplainingYourPowersToTheEnemy would take too long. There's a whole, two-page spread, diagram explaining the mechanics of the magical pachinko machine- and the actual effects of the thing can be explained as 'Hakari rolls until he hits a jackpot, at which point he becomes immortal for four minutes and starts rolling again'.
[[/folder]]

* ''Webcomic/Paranatural'': The [[https://www.paranatural.net/comic/chapter-7-page-51 seventh chapter]] switches to an illustrated novel format halfway through due to the author suffering from wrist strain.

* In "Manga/JujutsuKaisen", Kinji Hakari's Domain Expansion is so pointlessly complicated it "beams its own rules directly into his opponent's head", because ExplainingYourPowersToTheEnemy would take too long. There's a whole, two-page spread, diagram explaining the mechanics of the magical pachinko machine- and the actual effects of the thing can be explained as 'Hakari rolls until he hits a jackpot, at which point he becomes immortal for four minutes and starts rolling again'.

* ''Webcomic/Paranatural'' [[https://www.paranatural.net/comic/chapter-7-page-51 switched to an illustrated novel format]] halfway through chapter seven due to the author suffering from wrist strain.

* ''Manga/TownOfEveningCalm'': At the end of the manga, the illustrations disappear when [[spoiler:Minami becomes too ill from radiation poisoning to open her eyes.]]

SisterTrope of WallOfText (extremely lengthy paragraphs in written media) and WallOfBlather (a wall of text containing a backdrop character's ramblings), both of which can exist within the usual comic dialogue format. Might overlap with PaintingTheMedium if the sudden abundance of text serves an ulterior purpose.

* ''Manga/HunterXHunter'': It can get a bit silly about this occasionally. Because much of the fighting action revolves around characters overthinking the moves and strategies of their foes, you can sometimes end up with whole pages dedicated to their thought processes alone. The standout example, however, is a chapter in which one character goes blind and the chapter is seen through his perspective, so it consists of 19 pages of black panels with speech balloons and 1 page at the end of [[spoiler:the Chimera Ant King and Komugi dying together.]] It currently provides the page image.

* ''Franchise/{{Tarzan}}'': Burne Hogarth, who had done the NewspaperComic version for many years, published a couple of {{Graphic Novel}}s using text taken directly from [[Literature/{{Tarzan}} the original Edgar Rice Burroughs novels]]. The art is gorgeous, especially in ''Jungle Tales of Tarzan''

* ''ComicBook/XMenTheKrakoanAge'': Most pages are standard comic pages but Creator/JonathanHickman, the writer who launched the saga, also uses lots of text-based data pages to deliver large quantities of information. Some are pure text such as diary entries or emails (including some {{Conveniently Interrupted Document}}s), others use charts and imagery as well. Other writers working on the Krakoa arcs have followed Hickman's lead on this. Examples of this are ''ComicBook/SWORD2020'', ''ComicBook/XMenRed2022'', and ''ComicBook/Deadpool2022'' (which also contains Deadpool's red annotations).

* ''Webcomic/AlienDice'': It features a paragraph accompaniment below every comic. Sometimes the text restates what just happened, and sometimes it tells a completely different story, which can lead to some confusion.
* ''Webcomic/CtrlAltDel'': It switched into this for the "Winter-een-mas 2012/Game Games Bowl" story-arc. Tim Buckley has said that doing it in comic form would have taken several months, long past the Winter-een-mas "season," and that he didn't want to do another long-term comic story arc so soon after the "Scott and Ted" arc. It... works pretty well, actually.

* ''Webcomic/ElfLife'': It has vacillated between comic and novel styles over the years.
* ''Webcomic/{{Goblins}}'': It sometimes has filler in the form of a single panel depicting another one of the previous paladins who wielded the magic axe and a long description of how they got it.

* ''[[http://www.kchronicles.com Keith Knight]]'': It sometimes lets the text dominate over the art in his cartoons.

* ''Webcomic/{{Sonichu}}'': It is notorious for this, often taking entire pages up with nothing but exposition, usually on comic sans.

SisterTrope of WallOfText (extremely lengthy paragraphs in written media). Compare WallOfBlather (textplosions containing a backdrop character's ramblings). Might overlap with PaintingTheMedium, when the sudden abundance of text serves an ulterior purpose. It's sometimes a victim of SpeechBubblesInterruption when other textplosions happen, or a character interrupts it.

* ''ComicBook/CerebusTheAardvark'': It ran several dozen issues which were almost entirely text save for a few panels and pages done in the classic illustrative style.
* ''ComicBook/LegionOfSuperHeroes'': During the “5 years later” arc, text pages were often used to provide exposition on events that occurred during the TimeSkip or other background information. Issue #38, in which the Earth is destroyed by an environmental disaster, is told entirely in illustrated prose.

!! {{Comics}} Examples:
[[AC:Comic Books]]

[[AC:Comic Strips]]

[[AC:Manga]]

* ''Manga/{{Town of Evening Calm}}'': At the end of the manga, the illustrations disappear when [[spoiler:Minami becomes too ill from radiation poisoning to open her eyes.]]


[[AC:Web Comics]]

!! Other Media Examples:
%%[[AC:Anime]]
[[AC:Video Games]]
* ''VideoGame/{{XenoGears}}'': Due to harsh deadlines forcing the developers to choose between leaving the story off on a cliffhanger or telling the rest of it in highly compressed form, many scenes were cut out of Disc 2 and replaced with cutscenes of the characters doing an ExpositionBreak.

This is what happens when a comic's story literally transcends the capacity of the page to contain it (or at least, when the author thinks so).

In a Textplosion, the comic becomes an illustrated novel, or even a novel without any illustration at all. Note that this does NOT include comics which are crammed with word balloons or narration; that would be a WallOfText. If the format is still recognizable as a comic (that is, most panels having things happening in them), as opposed to a glorified novel with a few pictures or even none, you have not witnessed a Textplosion.

Causes for the shift can be rather diverse, to include such things as the plot mushrooming out of control, the author deciding they can better express themselves in pure text, or simple artistic laziness.

This is not necessarily a bad thing, depending on the nature of the story and whether a Textplosion is intended as its own sort of plot device. However, a sudden or long-term shift from graphic art to Textplosion, regardless of quality or content, often results in losing large portions of readership -- since, after all, they came to read a comic.

!! {{Comics}} Examples:

* ''ComicBook/{{Cerebus}}'' ran several dozen issues which were almost entirely text save for a few panels and pages done in the classic illustrative style.

* ''Webcomic/{{Darkbolt}}'': In the [[[[http://www.darkbolt.com/comic.cfm?Page=1060 issue]] where Shiori talks about her brother and their past, illustrations gradually become scarcer as the amount of {{exposition}} grows.

* ''Webcomic/RoguesOfClwydRhan'': Some strips use wordless strips with text boxes rather than regular comic format.