Bam!
Pow!
Whammo!
Sound effects in comic books are written translations of major sounds
within a particular scene. These sound effect words are usually
onomatopoetic in nature as they are not real words but expressions
of the sounds. Comic artists and writers use the sound effect words
to help flesh out the scene for the reader, often times emphasizing
volume by how large the words are written.
Comic book sound effects really came to the attention of mainstream
culture during the 1960s with the television series Batman. The
series used large cut scenes of sound effect words during the character
battles to give the show a campy comic book feel.
Today, the sound effects that are used by particular characters to
denote certain actions are well-known by comics fans. The sound
of Wolverine's adamantium claws extending will forever be associated
with the sound effect snikt and Spider-Man's webshooters
are often given the sound thwip. Some sound effect
words are so well-known that they have been changed into verbs to
describe the action, as in the case of Nightcrawler's ability to
teleport being called bamfing after the word used
to describe the sound of imploding air that accompanies his
teleporting.