Scans_Daily

Your "the fuck?" example is so commonly used even on message boards that nowadays it looks natural to me, but I know exactly what you mean. It is a bit ajar if you just take it as text. With conversation-heavy writers like Bendis, you're almost required to read his dialogue like an actor reads a screenplay. There aren't going to be instructions on how to read the lines (as those are always discouraged from scripts); you gotta find the tone yourself by getting immersed into the scene, with the art roughly serving as your director.

Garth Ennis does this the most, I think. His blokey characters like Billy Butcher would talk half the time in sarcasm, irony and colloquialism, and Ennis would present them completely dry, because other characters won't acknowledge it, presumably because they can hear Butcher's tone and intonation, whereas readers can't. Those lines can stop me cold sometimes, but after knowing what they're supposed to mean, re-reading the whole conversation then makes it flow all the better. I dunno, it's an interesting style.