Accents And Dialects

“ There’re accent variations within English, it’s not just an ESL thing. And having one character mention another’s accent is more awkward than some triggering grammatical idiosyncrasy within their dialogue.”

This is continued from the previous question about dialects, and I would agree with the first bit. No one really seems to get offended by a broad Boston accent, but attempts to portray some dialects are pretty horrible from the get go.

The second part I take a bit of issue with, because it’s just an example of a way to convey the information. And it depends 100% on execution. If it’s done clumsily, it will look awkward and obvious. Done well, you won’t even notice.

I would actually say that a big part of comics is compensation, we have to compensate and substitute for the lack of audio and movement (and other limitations of the form and individual artists). A good comic is usually full of such techniques. As I say, if done well, they are pretty unobtrusive.