Yesterday, in my posting “Sir, I bring you a token of my subservience”, a Zippy strip in which Griffy addresses a Muffler Man, offering the fiberglass giant a phallic offering to his superior masculinity. It turns out that this strip is a reworking of the text from an earlier strip on a similar theme. And there we have the two-strip set-up for today’s discussion:
(#1) [The 5/21/26] strip “Tired Out”, with, oh dear, the alpha male theme made explicit; it is, in any case, all about (hyper)masculinity vs. inferior masculinity
(#2) The 6/2/17 strip “Rubber Fire”, showing (hyper)masculine contempt for analytic academics (I am, of course, the very model of the modern analytic academic, so eat my shorts, brute boy)
In all of this, the actual cartoonist, Bill Griffith, is mocking common attitudes towards masculinity and its manifestations in relationships between men, especially in the pop-cultural wolf-pack fantasy of a dominant alpha male (who gets to do the breeding with the females) and a submissive, supportive beta male.
Both strips have the character Griffy (G) addressing a gigantic fiberglass Muffler Man figure (M) who’s hawking a single steel-belted radial tire (in an unidentifiable commercial context).
It seems likely that the image is not an exact reproduction of any particular roadside Muffler Man, but it’s very close to a now-vanished one:
(#3) Wearing a knit cap and holding two tires, not just one, but otherwise on target
From the RoadsideAmerca.com entry on the Largo FL Muffler Man (now gone):
A bearded rooftop Bunyan [a Muffer Man that used to be Paul Bunyan holding an ax and then was displayed on the roof of the auto repair shop The Big Man Inc. in Largo] held two tires. One of the clan of fiberglass giants that brandish axes and auto parts across our great nation. 2014-2020 tips indicated he is no longer displayed; still MIA in 2025.
“Tired Out”. The exchange between G and M. With G in 3 panels, M’s dismissive response in the 3rd:
— panel 1: G: Gotta say, after listening to all your conversations with Zippy, I’m a tad intimidated! [AZ: note reference to earlier strips with exchanges between Zippy (Z) and M — for instance, in the strip “Armed Snobbery” in my 4/23/15 posting “Converstion with the Muffman”, with a beardless cowboy Muffler Man armed with a gun and afflicted with paranoia; from this posting: “Zippy fairly often engages Muffler Men (and other fiberglass figures) in conversation”]
— panel 2: G: I’m afraid that you’ll lash out and impugn my masculinity … I know I’m no alpha male! [AZ: the crucial pop-lupinological reference; see below]
— panel 3: G: So I brought this muffler as a token of my subservience. [AZ the symbolic value of the ring-like tire as a receptive sexual part (vagina or anus), vs. a muffler as a phallic symbol is hard to ignore, but how they get associated with dominance for M vs. submissiveness for G isn’t at all clear to me]
M: Thanks, but I’m already involved with a steel-belted radial!
On pop-lupinology. From my 1/14/22 posting “Folk ethology: wolves”:
So far, the metaphorical wolves in this posting appear as individuals. They are, as the idiom goes, lone wolves.
… This is not the typical state of wolves, which are pack animals. From NOAD on (the relevant sense of) the noun pack:
2 [a] a group of wild animals, [especially canids,] especially wolves, living and hunting together: a pack of wolves will encircle an ailing prey. …
About wolf packs there’s a considerable ethological literature, plus an equally considerable fund of folk-ethological story-telling, the key point of which is the structure of the pack, centered on a dominant male. Again a NOAD entry, now on the compound noun alpha male:
[a] the dominant male animal in a particular group: two of them trotted over to greet the alpha male, a black wolf with a graying muzzle. [b] a man tending to assume a dominant or domineering role in social or professional situations: two alpha males constantly competing to be the best. [the a sense going back at least to the 1930s, the b sense not prominent until the early 1990s; see OED3]
… Meanwhile, the alpha male notion in sense b above has worked its way into the world of pop psychology, leading to things like this book:
ALPHA MALE: 48 Rules of ALPHA MALE. Transform Yourself, Master the Dating Game and About Alpha Male Dominance by Tomas Martin
“Rubber Fire”. In my 6/2/17 posting “Macho Muffler Man vs. the elite geek”,
[a] Zippy [strip “Rubber Fire”] pits Griffy against a familiar figure in the strip, a Muffler Man roadside fiberglass figure — in this case a lumberjack figure, selling tires rather than mufflers, but still part of an automotive theme
… Not just selling tires, but presenting himself as hypermasculinely disdainful of analytic academics.
… What make the last panel especially delicious is the complexity and specificity of the two nominal expressions in it: the direct object steel-belted radial (note use of radial ‘radial tire’ as a M(ass) N [in taste steel-belted radial]); and the address Nominal over-analyzing culture geek. When MachoJackMan speaks, he’s far from laconic.
See my riposte to M, above: eat my shorts, brute boy.
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