Verbal Tic/Comic Books

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.


Examples of Verbal Tic in Comic Books include:

  • The interstellar bounty hunter freelance peacekeeping agent Deaths Head, from several of Marvel's UK comics, would often end his sentences with "Yes?" or, less commonly, "no?" or "huh?"
  • In the Asterix comic books, the title character is bemused on a visit to England by the locals' habit of adding ", what" to the end of their sentences.
    • The original French version has them speak using British expressions (translated in French) and use French words but with an English syntax; adjective-noun instead of noun-adjective.
  • In The Sandman series, the character Fiddler's Green (a part of land in the Dreaming who walks the world as a human named Gilbert), always interjects the word "Hoom." into his statements.
  • Rorschach's "Hrm." According to Jackie Earle Haley, who plays him in The Movie, it's impossible for him to do without wearing the mask.
  • Bug, of Micronauts, Annihilation: Conquest and --*Tik!*-- Guardians of the Galaxy takes this to its logical extremes, as his tic is that his speech is randomly interrupted by "TIK", a side effect of his speaking difficulties.
  • Blindfold of X-Men is... hard to describe. Basically, as she's having a conversation with you, she sounds like she's giving yes-or-no answers to someone just offscreen.
  • In The Walking Dead, Axel ends most of his sentences with a "You follow me?"
  • Golden Age Etta Candy has "woo woo!"
    • When facing down a Khund warrior, Modern Age Lt. Candy sarcastically muttered "Woo &^%$ing woo!"
  • Fallen Angel has Chief Examiner Slate, henh. It appears to be a trait of the position, as his successor, Ezil, has inherited it.
  • Doufu Ma from Bowling King doesn't have a specific phrase he uses... but his constant stammering (which ruins his Bishounen image) is definitely a verbal tic.
  • When Canadian John Byrne was writing the Marvel Comics series Alpha Flight (about a Canadian superhero team), Puck had the stereotypical Canadian habit of adding "eh?" to the end of his sentences. He specifically did not have that tic in thought balloons.
  • Similarly, several Marvel monsters as seen in Nick Fury's Howling Commandos, including the Glob (who needs a special respirating device to speak and breathes with a deep "-SSSK-" a few times a sentence) and the Zombie, whose limited intelligence keeps him from completing a thought without stumbling through it with several uses of "Um..."
    • And following that pattern, as The DCU's Metal Men began to develop more distinct and expressive personalities, Dumb Muscle Lead couldn't complete a thought without interrupting it with "Uhh..." Tin's stammering may also count, and Mercury boasts about the fact that he's the only metal that's liquid at room temperature so often it might as well be one of these, too.
  • Batman villain Scarface has a slight variation in that he pronounces the letter "B" as "G" (due to the fact that the Ventriloquist is the one actually talking and this is an actual problem faced by many ventriloquists); Humorously, this means, among other things, that he cannot properly say "Batman" or, indeed, speak intelligibly at all depending on the context. When Peyton Riley became the new Ventriloquist, Scarface's "B" sounds became actual "B" sounds.
    • In a straighter example that ties into this, Scarface often ends sentences with "guddy goy."
    • This became a major plot point during the Cataclysm story arc - Robin revealed the Quakemaster to actually be another of the Ventriloquist's puppets by daring him to say his name, since he had been carefully avoiding words with B in them.
      • Unfortunately, in his first appearance, Quakemaster correctly pronounces the word "Burn".
  • Oyuki-chan, or as Ninjette calls her in reference to her verbal tic, "fucking Oyuki-chan".
  • Grant Morrison gave unique pseudo-tic catch phrases to several characters in his JLA run (most of them were Gotham-based) including Batman: "hh", Huntress: "tt", and Commissioner Gordon: "ff". He even uses Damian Wayne's "tff" and "tt" as subtle cues that he really is Bruce's son.
    • In the Morrison-penned Final Crisis, "hh" is Batman's dying word.
    • Wingman, the member of the Club of Heroes who spent his whole life trying to be Batman and thus emulates him even in this sense: he uses "tt", and his own dying word is "kk".
  • In the ABC Warriors comics, Happy Shrapnel, as one of the oldest ABC Warriors still in service, is often interrupted during speech by an uncontrollable buzzing sound that sometimes conveniently takes the place of expletives.
  • The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen has Griffin's distinct "Aheheh".
    • Though this isn't without purpose, as it would otherwise often be impossible to know that he was indeed in the scene; especially when he's doing espionage.
  • Nova recently introduced an alien Corpsman who abuses the hell out of the prefix "ultra-".
  • Worldbreaker in Atavar begins the majority of their sentences with "We are Worldbreaker."
  • Bionicle's air-Toa have a habit of running pairs of words together, often redundantly ("Toa-heroes" has come up more than once). Then again this is how all of the Le-Matoran/Toa speak.
  • WE ARE VENOM!
  • When nervous, Chrysoprasia from DR and Quinch is "unbelievably quiet apart from the weird, squeaky little 'EE-OUK' noise that she keeps making in her throat."
  • In Judo Girl, master villain Captain Steel succeeds in transferring his consciousness into a sentient liquid form, which for some reason causes him to repeat the last syllable in every sentence he speaks. For example: "My body is my intelligencegencegence. I am invulnerablebleble. I am immortaltaltal. At last, I am truly Captain Steelsteelsteel!"
  • The Messiah in Preacher (Comic Book) frequently uses the nonsense word "Humperdidoo", or some variant thereof.
  • Hell're you lookin' at, bub?
  • Jaeger Ayers of Finder tends to refer to the people he's talking to as 'cousin' quite a lot.
  • This is why Etrigan always rhymes his words, it is a Verbal Tic common to high-ranking demons. It takes effort for him not to speak in verse.