Two from the January 29th New Yorker, a recent Bizarro, and yesterday’s Rhymes With Orange, all requiring considerable background knowledge to understand:
Archive for the ‘Linguistics in the comics’ Category
Four exercises in cartoon understanding
January 27, 2018Large Interior Form
January 20, 2018Today’s Zippy takes us once again into the world of public art:
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Zippy is contemplating Henry Moore’s Large Interior Form, 1953-54, though Zippy’s interpretation of the work is not the sculptor’s.
More George Booth
January 19, 2018A follow-up to my 12/29/17 posting “George Booth at 90: elephants and holidays”: five of my favorite Booth cartoons.
Out of the Inkwell
January 18, 2018Wednesday’s Zippy takes us back to a delightful animated meta-comic of almost a century ago:
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Check out the Koko Cartoon Factory animated short here. The character Koko comes out of an inkwell, drawn by a cartoonist, then himself creates other characters, erases some, confronts human antagonists, eventually returns to the inkwell. Dreamlike in the manner of Winsor McKay’s Little Nemo.
Attack of the custardy torus
January 15, 2018… in Palo Alto, in yesterday’s Zippy:
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Happy Donuts at 3916 El Camino Real, in the Barron Park neighborhood of Palo Alto, just south of the Stanford Industrial Park, itself just south of the College Terrace neighborhood (on the west) and the California Avenue shopping district (on the east), these being just south of the university (on the west) and downtown Palo Alto and the Professorville and Old Palo Alto neighborhoods (on the east). My neighborhoods.
The triumph of confidence over expertise
January 11, 2018A J.A.K. cartoon in the January 15th New Yorker:
Classic mansplaining, right down to the interruption.
Puns and metatheses
January 10, 2018Two recent cartoons: a Rhymes With Orange from the 8th, with a hall / howl pun; and a One Big Happy from December 13th in which Ruthie struggles with the word permanent:
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The clowns of death and the frogs of Wellsboro
January 9, 2018Two recent Zippy strips: the clowns of death on the 6th and the frogs of Wellsboro PA today:
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Two strips on sad themes of abuse and loss: the clown as death’s head, the commercial folk-art figure as exploited, untended, and decaying. In both: humor as an ultimately failing warding-off of decline and death. But on the way we laugh.
Exclamations
January 7, 2018The One Big Happy from 12/9:
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If she takes a (claw) hammer to your favorite toy truck, you’ll be likely to cry out. At the very least, something on the order of Oh, no! But quite possibly something stronger.
Two puns for Thursday
January 4, 2018A caption in yesterday’s New York Times (front page); and a Bizarro + Wayno cartoon: