- What is the best way to get the 96 files into InDesign? One at a time? Is there some quicker way?
In general, your questions all boil down to what I'd call "workflow design" and the quickest way is not always the best. My current understanding is that you will set up your dialogue balloons, do your lettering, and a) first export PDF for review, b) next implement reviewer's changes, and then c) be responsible for the final flattened-to-TIFF output. Is this correct?
One way would be to first ensure that your 96 pages of art are all named sequentially (perhaps with numbers at the beginning of the filename) and then File -> Place them all at once. You'd still have to scroll and click once for each of the 96 files, but you wouldn't have to File -> Place 96 times. However, if your 96 pages could be combined into a single PDF (not difficult if you have Acrobat Pro installed) then you could combine them all into a PDF quite easily, and use a script like the MultiPageImporter to place the whole PDF at once. That would be the quickest way, barring some other script that will place all 96 TIFFs at one go. On the other hand, if you are responsible for the final output of the final TIFFs, then combining in Acrobat might induce further problems that wouldn't appear until later - for instance, if those TIFFs are part of a color-managed workflow. (I'm guessing, here. I really don't know.)
That's just one chunk of your workflow. The whole thing must be considered carefully if you want your final product to please everyone involved. If I didn't care about color, here's what I would do:
1) Use Acrobat to combine all TIFFs
2) Place that PDF with the script linked above
3) Do my speech-bubble work
4) Export a PDF for my reviewers
5) Implement reviewer's changes
6) When the file is final - export a fresh PDF
7) Use Acrobat to save the entire PDF as... you guessed it, TIFFs.
However, I mislike using Acrobat that way. You did ask for fast, though. I have no way of knowing how badly that workflow would mess with any other parts of your publisher's workflow. The only way to build the workflow that would work for everyone would be to figure out what all of the publisher's requirements are, and how to ensure that the original art makes it through the process completely unchanged.
There may be a script out there for placing multiple TIFFs that I don't know about. I know a smattering of Javascript but it is obvious that the PDF multi-page importer to which I linked is pretty much PDF-centric and not easily adapted. However, I don't doubt that a multi-TIFF-importer script would be much easier, and if you're going to use this workflow again then writing or commissioning such a script (or just flat out asking for a scripting favor) would probably be in your best interest.
