Arnold Zwicky's Blog

Zerbina takes up art, as well as Pez cuisine — to little Wernick (I say it’s broccoli and I say the hell with it)’s disgust:

Bill Griffith is famous in these parts for his fascination with words, especially names, and for re-using existing names rather than make up new ones from scratch. This time it’s Basil Wolverton, who was not in fact a German expressionist, though he was an artist, a comic book writer and artist, known for his grotesque images of people:

Despite the man’s very British-sounding name (which no doubt tickled Griffith), he was solidly American. But, oh, that wonderful name!

I’m guessing that Zerbina’s sculpture (or Chia Pet construction?) of a Pinhead topknot is entirely Griffith’s invention. But, knowing Griffith’s inclination to use real art objects as well as real names in his strips, it’s also possible that Topknot has some artistic reality (which I have yet to discover) outside of the Dingburgish lands.

This entry was posted on August 26, 2010 at 7:26 am and is filed under Art/lit/music/film, Linguistics in the comics, Names. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.