Archive for the ‘Linguistics in the comics’ Category

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Commercial Christmas 2021: DJ’s third quarter

January 6, 2022

(Well, men’s homo-underwear ads, featuring what are intended to be alluring male bodies, and skirting the line of outrageous lewdness. Clearly not to everyone’s taste.)

Following up on yesterday’s Twelfth Night posting (“Three days of commercial Christmas”), about the Daily Jocks treatment of the second quarter of the 12 days of commercial Christmas — Days 4 (12/16, calling birds), 5 (12/17, golden rings), and 6 (12/18, geese) — for Epiphany itself today, the DJ treatment of the third quarter: Days 7 (12/19, swans), with fetishwear; 8 (12/20, maids), with traditional jockstraps; and 9 (12/21, ladies), with — hiss, boo — a mystery jock offer, nothing to see here.

Nothing says Christmas like harnesses and old-school jockstraps.

In any case: a quick tour of DJ’s Days 7 and 8, then a survey of Epiphany on this blog.

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Posted in Art, Facial expressions, Gender and sexuality, Holidays, Linguistics in the comics, Underwear | Leave a Comment »

Three days of commercial Christmas

January 5, 2022

(On the first of these three days, this posting gets right into details of men’s bodies and sex between men, in very plain language, so it’s out of bounds for kids and the sexually modest.)

In the current world, it’s 1/5/22: it’s Twelfth Night (Epiphany Eve) on the Christian calendar. Celebrated in this cartoon from a Liz Climo series (originally on Tumblr in 2013):


(#1) From Liz Climo’s 12 Days of Christmas, as depicted in exchanges between a bear and a bunny — on Day 1, from Bear: “The partridge flew away, and I ate all of the pears”

But back in the Commercial Christmastide of 2021, from Daily Jocks, it’s Day 4 (12/16, Beethoven Austen Day in the real world; Pure for Men in DJ’s Homoland, which will take us right into the down and dirty of sex between men, behind Pure’s veil of “all-natural cleanliness”), Day 5 (a disappointing 12/17, nothing but DJ gift cards), and Day 6 (12/18, Amplify x Circuit underwear from DJX, finally some male bodies to appreciate!).

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Posted in Holidays, Language and the body, Linguistics in the comics, Underwear | 5 Comments »

Adventures in a balloon

January 2, 2022

In today’s (1/2/22) Bizarro, the Old Balloon Peddler hawks his wares in the park:


(#1) And thought balloons too! Take a word or thought ride in one of these sturdy inflatable delights (If you’re puzzled by the odd symbols in the cartoon — Dan Piraro says there are 5 in this strip — see this Page.)

The Magical Adventure Balloon Ride
— a private basket adventure exclusively for thrill seekers

He gives the kids free samples
Because he knows full well
That today’s young innocent faces
Will be tomorrow’s clientele

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Posted in Comic conventions, Linguistics in the comics, Music, Play | 1 Comment »

Our frugal cartoonists

January 1, 2022

🐇 🐇 🐇 + 🐇 🐇 🐇 (three for the new month, three for the new year)

It’s about re-using resources. In particular, re-using cartoon artwork for fresh purposes — a regular practice in (among the strips I follow regularly) Zippy the Pinhead and Bizarro. In Zippy, it’s mostly re-texting an old strip; but in Bizarro, it’s mostly assembling a strip from a collection of standard components arranged in a standard abstract pattern — rather like a syntactic construction.

The topic for New Year’s: assembling a Bizarro Psychiatrist strip.

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Posted in Comic conventions, Linguistics in the comics | Leave a Comment »

Dreams of a flitter mouse

December 30, 2021

(The posting veers almost immediately into the world of sex between men, sometimes in very plain terms, so it’s not suitable for kids or the sexually modest.)

Today’s Wayno/Piraro Bizarro finds Batman on his therapist’s couch, reporting bat dreams — but who knows what flying and insect-eating really stand for in the dreams of a flitter mouse?


(#1) Gm. Fledermaus (literally ‘flitter mouse’) and similarly in other Germanic languages, including, according to OED2, in English cites of flittermouse, flitter-mouse, flutter-mouse, and flitter mouse from 1547 through 1872 (If you’re puzzled by the odd symbols in the cartoon — Dan Piraro says there are 7 in this strip — see this Page.)

Clearly, we have to understand both flying and eating insects as dream substitutes, screening Batman’s true anxieties: his shame about being gay (concealed by a veneer of macho posturing); his constant fear that his secret life as a famously effeminate enthusiast of fellating other men in the sexual underworld of Gotham City will be exposed; and his deep regret for years of being in sexual thrall to his younger, dominant, and more masculine lover, Robin the Boy Wonder (“I wish I knew how to quit you”, he sobs in dismay).

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Posted in Comic conventions, Language and animals, Linguistics in the comics, Movies and tv, Taboo language and slurs | Leave a Comment »

The saurus with a chorus

December 26, 2021

A chorus of semantically related words — synonyms, antonyms, hyponyms, hypernyms, derivatives — organized in a book by concept. In today’s Zippy strip, such a book literally embodied in a saurus (‘lizard, reptile, dinosaur’) very much resembling a Tyrannosaurus rex. A saurus that Griffy-daddy is cajoled into letting Zippy-boy keep as a pet:


(#1) … so long as he keeps his pet Thesaurus in his room

Not, as it turns out, the first Thesaurus rex joke out there. There’s my 10/7/12 posting “Thesaurus rex” (which I’ll get to in a while, along with a couple of Thesaurus rex books); memic Thesaurus rex t-shirts, mugs, and the like; and even an “Oh crap! It’s a Thesaurus.” sub-meme.

But first, notes on thesaurus and the jokey thesaurus rex.

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Posted in Books, Linguistics in the comics | Leave a Comment »

Bizarros of the Solstice, Festivus, and Christmas

December 25, 2021

Wayno/Piraro Bizarro cartoons for the 21st (Winter Solstice), 23rd (Festivus, for the airing of grievances), and 25th (Christmas Day). The first two are Christmas-related, but today’s is not (at least in any way I can see), so in a spirit of holiday orneriness, I’ll start with that one.

12/25: the Fritz Carlton:


(#1) Ritz on the fritz (If you’re puzzled by the odd symbols in the cartoon — Dan Piraro says there are 6 in this strip — see this Page.)

Fritz Carlton: an erratic portmanteau of on the fritz ‘not functioning’ and Ritz-Carlton the luxury hotel chain. (Note: the desk clerk is a supercilious Frenchman, an imagined present-day César Ritz.)

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Posted in Comic conventions, Holidays, Idioms, Linguistics in the comics, Phrasal overlap portmanteaus, Poetry, Portmanteaus, Slang | 2 Comments »

Barsotti, Diogenes, and getting laid

December 24, 2021

(Obviously, some sexual vocabulary is coming, with discussion of the acts referred to in plain language, so not suitable for kids or the sexually modest.)

Arrived at my house a little while back: the excellent collection The Essential Charles Barsotti (compiled and edited by Lee Lorenz: Workman, 1998), a review of the life and work of cartoonist Charles Branum Barsotti (1933-2014) up to that point, with an appreciation and (affectionate) interview by New Yorker cartoonist and art editor Lee Lorenz. Out of all that, my attention was caught (on p. 58) by a Barsotti cartoon about the ancient Greek philosopher Diogenes, who was perhaps most notorious in the lore of the ancients for his stunt of carrying a lamp during the day, claiming to be looking for an honest man:


(#1) How do you solve a problem like Diogenes? / How do you catch a cloud and pin it down?

This cartoon was drawn for Playboy magazine, and it shows.

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Posted in Art, Language of sex, Linguistics in the comics, Philosophy | Leave a Comment »

How much myrrh can one man use?

December 23, 2021

(for Christmas Eve Eve)

Not to mention frankincense. The gold can at least be traded for useful supplies, but otherwise it’s bulky and heavy and of little utility to carpenters, shepherds, and fishermen, not to mention itinerant prophets.

All this by way of introduction to today’s Wayno/Piraro Bizarro, a Psychiatrist cartoon in which one such itinerant prophet, Jehoshua (known as Josh to his roadies), is unburdening himself to his therapist, unloading his disgruntlement at  being shortchanged in the birthday gift department because he was born on Christmas:


(#1) Yeshua, That’s My Baby (If you’re puzzled by the odd symbols in the cartoon — Dan Piraro says there are 8 in this strip — see this Page.)

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Posted in Comic conventions, Movies and tv, Music | Leave a Comment »

Masculinity comics 8

December 19, 2021

Now in my comics feed, a 11/22 One Big Happy strip mostly about what home is, but with its first two panels on masculinity for boys (I’ll show you the whole strip at the end of this posting):


(#1) Guy stuff, no glitter — ’cause that would be gay stuff

Another item in my “Masculinity comics” series. From the first, on 10/5/21:

I’ve been accumulating comic strips having to do with boys and masculinity, in particular about what they’ve picked up about normatively masculine behavior and attitudes by the age of 8 or so: the age of the character Joe in the comic strip One Big Happy, who’s the older brother of Ruthie, age 6, who’s the central character of the strip. … To judge from the comics (and my recollections of boyhood), an 8-year-old has an extensive and pretty fine-grained command of the cultural norms of masculinity within his social group.

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Posted in Clothing, Fashion, Linguistics in the comics, Masculinity, Underwear | Leave a Comment »

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