Celebrate the Summer of Super heroes!
With 7 Super Heroes movies opening in cinemas in the space of 4 months, it's easy to see why the United States and United Kingdom are calling it the “Summer of Super Heroes”.
So where did it all begin?
Superman and Batman were the first super heroes to jump from the pages of comic books to the big screen, opening the path to others like Cat Woman, X-Men, Spiderman, Transformers and Hulk in the past, and with Thor, Green Lantern, Captain America - actually being given a second chance after a major flop on his first debut in 1990 - and Conan making their Hollywood’s debut this season. There’s no wonder that this is really the era of superheroes!
Word is going around among comic books and superheroes fans that this season would be the perfect on, if we could have the 3rd work of Christopher Nolan on Batman – The Dark Knight – and also the first attempt to bring Wonder Woman to the cinemas, after her successful TV series back in the 70’s, but we need to wait until next year for these two to make their entrance!
Comic books and superheroes have been in our lives for a long time, whether we are fans and buy every comic book from a particular superhero or if we've bought one or two issues in our lives. The success of comic books is measured in two fronts - the art work, how a certain artist portraits a certain superhero and the copy writing, how a writer creates a compelling storyline. A good combination of artist and writer is so important, just like a Superhero and its sidekick!
If comic books gave us the likes of Batman, Superman, X-Men and countless others, they have also given us new words like: Kapow; Bang; Splonk and among many more Badoom, these are onomatopoeic words. Onomatopoeia is a word that imitates or describes a sound.Even though the word itself seems very complicated, it's quite easy to come across during each day!
Since comic books are very visual, the sounds effects are replaced by the use of certain words in special lettering.
Have you ever thought of their meaning? Well, we have gathered a few examples for you:
- Clank; click; clunk – sound of metal, chains, robots footsteps …
- Dook, Dook – sound of drinking
- Kapow – sound of an explosion
- Plop, plop – sound of water bowling
- Thwip – sound of Spiderman web shooter
- Ting, ding, ring, ping, clang – sound of music, bells …
- Sniktt – sound of Wolverines blades
- Zork – sound of a kick by Batman
- Boing, varoom/vroom, whoosh, swish, swoosh – sound of fast movement; object speed …
If you have any other example of onomatopoeia from a comic book, do let us know! We might not have super powers, but we do like our English to be super. Learning a language is a vital knowledge, and we all know knowledge is power!
That is why millions of students around the world choose to learn English with Kaplan International English. If you would like to know more about Kaplan's English courses and schools locations, check out our website or contact one of our Educational Consultants today and give a whoosh to improve your English.