Two One Big Happy cartoons recently in my comics feed. Originally from 1/29, a strip in which Ruthie misunderstands “Randi with an “I””, taking it to be “Randi with an eye”. And originally from 1/25, a Sunday strip in which Ruthie misunderstands “pole dance”, taking it to be “Pole dance”.
Archive for the ‘Linguistics in the comics’ Category
Ruthie misunderstands
February 21, 2021Today in couples therapy
February 19, 2021Today’s Wayno/Piraro Bizarro, with yet another instance of the Ahab and the Whale cartoon meme:
(If you’re puzzled by the odd symbols in the cartoon — Dan Piraro says there are 2 in this strip — see this Page.)
Moby and Ahab certainly are a troubled couple. Wayno’s title for the strip: “Captain Clingy”.
Lobster bands, and other restraints
February 19, 2021(The kinky sense of band — ‘restraint’ — in the Rhymes cartoon drifts into some hard-core sex between men, so that partway through, this posting becomes no longer suitable for kids or the sexually modest.)
The Rhymes With Orange cartoon from yesterday (2/18) has two lobsters arranging a hookup for some kinky sex with lobster bands:
(#1)
The elastic bands in question are rubber or silicone bands referred to commercially as lobster bands. They function as restraints on the lobsters’ ability to use their claws — so that they’re roughly analogous to the cuffs / bands / restraints of bondage sex, hence the kinkiness in the cartoon.
The Grammar Police and the Corrections Officer
February 18, 2021An alert on Facebook by John Gintell on 2/15, to this Reality Check cartoon by Dave Whamond from 10/14/16:
But wait! Just what is being policed and corrected here?
The brain health product
February 15, 2021Yesterday’s Doonesbury has Mike (Doonesbury) and (his wife) Kim (Rosenthal) listening to a mock Prevagen® commercial in which the dietary supplement is openly hawked as a useless (but expensive) placebo for treating mild forgetfulness (with a digression in the 5th panel on a secret ingredient in it derived from the fabulously memorious jellyfish):
Slip and pipers
February 14, 2021Today’s Bizarro offer some transposition (spooneristic) word play, involving the exchange of the initial syllables of the two accented words in the clichéd expression pipe and slippers — giving the eminently depictable slip and pipers:
(If you’re puzzled by the odd symbols in the cartoon — Dan Piraro says there are 9 in this strip — see this Page.)
Now what?
February 13, 2021In the 2/15&22/21 issue of the New Yorker, this cartoon by Kaamran Hafeez and Al Batt:
(#1)
“Now that we can talk, we have to have meetings.”
In the larger domain of Emergence of Language cartoons, this is a subspecialty — on the Now What? theme:
We’re learned to speak / talk / write. We’ve invented language. Now what?
Taming the bull
February 13, 2021In the New Yorker issue of 2/15&22/21, the winning caption to a drawing by Joe Dator:
(#1) ‘Twas commissions tamed the bull
Well, yes, the cartoon has the bull talking and taking orders and handling money and all that, but this is CartoonWorld, where animals routinely do such things. What’s remarkable is that the bull has given up a core aspect of his bull nature: aggressiveness (an especially troublesome characteristic in a creature of such size).
Celebrating Valentine’s Day 1: the baleen whales
February 12, 2021Chacun à son goût on Valentine’s Day. Here’s cartoonist Lars Kenseth’s take on sentimental gift-giving among the baleen whales (from the 2/15&22/21 issue of the New Yorker):
A swarm of krill! How did you know?”
The allusive shark shack
February 11, 2021Today’s Zippy has Zippy and Claude strolling in a fantasy city not unlike San Francisco (note the analogue of the Transamerica Tower) and remarking on an advertising display, a shark fin extolling “Joe’s seafood shack [or possibly Joe’s Seafood Shack] on the waterfront”, a fantasy eating establishment:
(#1)
Now, Zippy strips are often about/in specific diners (and motels and fast food restaurants and casual dining places and bowling alleys etc.), places that (with some work) can be tracked down (from their names and/or locations) and depicted (there’s a Page on this blog on my postings about these strips.
But #1 is different. Pretty clearly, it’s not about some actual seafood shack (or Seafood Shack) that advertises with a shark fin, but spins a little fantasy on such eating places as a type.
However, it might still be a (suggestive) allusion to one such specifc place, especially if there’s (just) one that’s well-known over a wide area. An allusion doesn’t have to be exact in detail; close will do.