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Five For Friday #78—Bif Bam Pow
posted June 1, 2006
 

Suggestion and sample five brought to you by Mr. Eddie Campbell. Five For Friday #78: "Name your five favorite sound effects of all time."

1) What put this in my mind was Ware's remarkable invention in his NY Times series. Two characters have just kissed, and as their lips move apart we see a word strung between them: 'un-kiss'. It seems like a million years since I last fell in love with a sound effect.
2) 'bimp!, when the apple landed on Grog's tongue in BC is a close second.
3) Galoop! Galoop! in The Wizard of ID as the Lone Haranguer galloped past the King's window, and they bring in Bung carrying a gallon bottle of booze, with the liquid going 'Galoop, galoop!
4) 'queck' over a duck's head in the Gorleston Psalter, a 14th century illuminated manuscript.
5) BAMF! wouldn't it be great to have your own distinctive sound effect that preceded your arrival anywhere. Come to think of it, maybe i do and nobody's mentioned it.

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This topic is now closed. If I didn't get yours and you sent it in, I don't hate you. Just send it again.
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Mike Sterling

1. There is no better sound effect achievement than "ERT" -- Amazing Cynicalman creator Matt Feazell's sound for a car coming to a stop. It's perfection.
2. "SLAMDUNK" - the sound of a basketball being...well, you know, as seen in those Jack Davis-drawn basketball ads throughout the '80s.
3. "THWIP" - Spider-Man shooting his webbing. Do they even still use that sound effect anymore?
4. "SPROING" - Cerebus' tail popping out his pants at an inopportune moment in "Cerebus" #59. Not the most imaginative sound effect in the world, maybe, but the gag it's tied to never fails to make me smile.
5. "WEIN" - One of the many effects used in describing the sounds of Swamp Thing regrowing his body in "Swamp Thing" #44...Wein, of course, being the last name of Swampy's cocreator Len Wein.

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Russ Maheras

PPFSZT! -- Jim Main's great, long-running fanzine
KA-THOOM!!! (and it's close relative, THOOM!!!) -- Just because I like the sound of it
BLEED BLEED BLEED BLEED -- From the great "Mad" story, "Sound Effects!"
SMEK SMEK SMEK -- Another classic "Mad" sound effect from, "Souperduperman!"
Buh-ZING!!! -- I made this one up for my strip, "Sudz 'n' Studz"

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Edward Liu

Five favorite comic-ish sound effects of all time:

1. "Wuffa wuffa wuffa" from that issue of Cerebus
2. Thwip!
3. Osamu Tezuka has a sound effect for silence in one of the Buddha volumes. In English, it just whooshes by saying, "SILENCE!!!" It still kind of freaks me out.
4. Any "smacking into something" sound effect that ends in multiple-k's ("Thrakk! Skrakkk!! Whokk!")
5. It's not strictly comics, but the "tuh-tuh-tuh-tuh-tuh" sound they use when the Atom or Bumblebee change size on the Justice League and Teen Titans cartoons.

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Doug Gray

In no specific order:

1) Just about any Don Martin sound effect: BRONK GLIT SHTOINK POIT FLAGROON! FLUBBADA DUBBADA GLINK!
2) "GDUNGE!" (B.C.): My memory is failing me; this is either the sound of Thor running his wheel into the side of a cliff, or the sound of Grog blasting the Fat Broad with a mouthful of snow.
3) "ZOK!" (Romita-era Spider-man): The definitive sound of Spidey giving a thug a judo chop.
4) (Peanuts): In the strips that introduce Jose Peterson (the slugger on Peppermint Patty's baseball team) the sound effects that accompany his home runs are his crazy batting averages...".640", ".850", etc.
5) "AW!" (Love & Rockets): the sound of a teenage kid getting punched in the face by Doyle.

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Robert Ullman

1. On at least one occasion in Marvel's G.I Joe, a mortar being loaded, launched, and hitting its target sounded as follows: "Whump! Wheeeeeeeeeeeeeee! BA-DOOM!"
2. Stinky, I believe, entering a room in an issue of HATE!: "Barge!"
3. Pothead, in Clowes' "Playful Obsession": "Ssuck"
4. Obesity Hopkins, in that same story: "Choff Choff Choff"
5. The cacophony of cumshots at the end of Anton Drek's WENDY WHITEBREAD produced a dazzling array of sound effects, by the best and most memorable, by far, was: "Spill!"

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Charles Hatfield

Great topic, thanks Eddie!

1. FLUSH: Calvin & Hobbes 6/24/86 and 6/28/06.
2. WABOOOMM!! The Source Wall answers, New Gods #7 (Feb.-March 1972), "The Pact," page 20. This is what revelation sounds like.
3. [No words, just ribbons of color rising from their mouths, and intertwining:] The "sweet sounds" uttered by the (reanimate) dead crew in Hunt Emerson's adaptation of Coleridge's Rime of the Ancient Mariner (Knockabout, 1979), part the fifth.

And two from an old Mad feature by Don Martin about comic-book sound effects (going from memory here):
4. PLOOBADOOF. The sound of Wonder Woman's amazon bustier being unfastened (ahem).
5. GEEEN. Plastic Man giving the finger to someone three flights up (my friends and I actually used this phrase quite a bit for a brief period, back in high school).

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Peter MacDonald

The guns that went "papa-ooo-mow-mow" from American Flagg.
"Thwipp!" (Spidey's web-shooters)
"Schlupp! Schlupp!" (Man-Thing?)
The total absence of sound effects in Watchmen.
"Snikt!" (guess who)

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Christopher Duffy

Going on memory here, so forgive inaccuracies.
1. Snakt--Wolverine's claws go Snikt coming out and Snakt going in. I always liked that.
2. Poit--Can I be remembering this right? Did Don Martin do a comic where one of Wonder Woman's breasts pops out of her armor/top thing and makes this sound?
3. Splaplaplaplap--tongue rolling back into mouth after being stretched way out of mouth by dentist....yes, another by Don Martin.
4. Doom!--I think that was the sound effect of Surtur forging some big ass sword in the ongoing subplot where he was introduced over several issues of Thor.
5. Thwip. I thought hard for a Peanuts sound effect that I loved, but I kept hearing Thwip, Thwip, Thwip. Spidew wins again.

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