Arnold Zwicky's Blog

Today’s Zippy, an instance of extreme meta-cartooning:

References in the text:

Ham Fisher and Joe Palooka. From Wikipedia:

Joe Palooka was an American comic strip about a heavyweight boxing champion, created by cartoonist Ham Fisher in 1921. The strip debuted in 1930 and was carried at its peak by 900 newspapers.

Frank King and Gasoline Alley were discussed on this blog here.

Carl Barks and Uncle Scrooge. From Wikipedia:

Uncle Scrooge (stylized as Uncle $crooge) was a comic book starring the stingy Scrooge McDuck (“the richest duck in the world”), his nephew Donald Duck, and grandnephews Huey, Dewey, and Louie, and revolving around their adventures in Duckburg and around the world. It was first published in Four Color Comics #386 March 1952, and the most recent issue to date (Uncle $crooge #404) was released in 2011.

… The first 70 issues mostly consisted of stories written and drawn by Carl Barks.

And the title of the cartoon, “My Brunch with Zippy”, is an allusion to My Dinner with Andre:

My Dinner with Andre is a 1981 film starring Andre Gregory and Wallace Shawn, written by Gregory and Shawn, and directed by Louis Malle.

The film depicts a conversation between Gregory and Shawn (not necessarily playing themselves) in a chic restaurant in New York City. Based mostly on conversation, the film’s dialogue covers such things as experimental theatre, the nature of theatre, and the nature of life, contrasting Shawn’s modest, down-to-earth humanism with Gregory’s extravagant spiritual experiences.

… Shawn tries to argue that living life as Gregory has done for the past five years is simply not possible for the vast majority of people. In response, Gregory suggests that what passes for normal life in New York in the late 1970s is more akin to living in a dream than it is to real life. The movie ends without a clear resolution to the conflict in worldviews articulated by the two men. (Wikipedia link)

This entry was posted on August 20, 2013 at 7:15 am and is filed under Linguistics in the comics. 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.