Archive for the ‘Understanding comics’ Category
March 18, 2026
In the Wayno / Piraro Bizarro for 3/16/26, two characters from Disney animation commiserate in a bar: Dopey (the least of the Seven Dwarfs in Disney’s telling of the Snow White tale from the Brothers Grimm) with a mug of beer, Goofy (the canine companion of Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck in a long series of short features) doing shots. If you don’t recognize who they are and what their names are, the cartoon is incomprehensible, because the dwarf and the dog are sharing their regret at the names their parents gave them:
What kind of parent would name their son Dopey or Goofy? Those are epithets, not ordinary names, and while the names of all seven dwarfs are actually (evocative) epithets, Goofy hangs with his buddies Mickey and Donald (who have alliterative, but not epithetic, names), so he can feel especially aggrieved (if you’re puzzled by the odd symbols in the cartoon — Wayno says there are 3 in this strip — see this Page)
The Seven Dwarfs are a band of miners, in both the Grimm and Disney telling of the tale of Snow White, and though they all must have had parents, we know nothing about them; the dwarfs just materialize in their little house, in need of a housekeeper’s touch. The Disney comic animals have vaguely delineated, largely unseen families; about them we know little. Goofy appears to be the screw-up child in his family. And ended up getting called by an epithet.
Well, Goofy began life as Dippy Dawg, again with an unflattering epithet. (My father, with whom I shared a name, sailed through his adult life addressed by an epithet, not his name: the positive-vibe epithet Zip, alluding to his pleasant energy.)
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Posted in Linguistics in the comics, Names, Nicknames, Understanding comics | 2 Comments »
March 17, 2026
On the heels of my 3/14 posting “Seeking a penguin caption” (in which the birds are ubiquitous), there come two penguin cartoons in the April 2026 issue of Funny Times: one by Bill DeMain in which the birds are iconic, one by Vaughan Tomlinson in which they are (memically) indistinguishable.
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Posted in Books, Cartoonists, Comic conventions, Linguistics in the comics, Logos, Penguins, Signs and symbols, Understanding comics | Leave a Comment »
February 26, 2026
The Wayno / Piraro Bizarro strip for 2/25: Mr. and Mrs. Potatohead with their Potatohead dog:
The toy: Mr. Potatohead and his detachable-bodypart family; the potato: the russet; the dog: the Jack Russell terrier (note russet as a potato-pun on the dog name Russell) (if you’re puzzled by the odd symbols in the cartoon — Wayno says there are 5 in this strip — see this Page)
To understand this cartoon, you need to recognize it as an instance of the potatohead cartoon meme, based on the toy. Now, some details.
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Posted in Comic conventions, Language and animals, Language and plants, Linguistics in the comics, Puns, Toys, Understanding comics | Leave a Comment »
December 5, 2025
Today’s Wayno / Piraro Bizarro is an advanced exercise in cartoon understanding: a wordless strip (no speech, no caption) in which a tuxedoed performer takes a bow, next to a toy piano:
Ah, he seems to be a pianist, and the tiny piano, no more than a foot long, must be his instrument; at that point, you are baffled — unless you’re familiar with a classic walk-into-bar joke (if you’re puzzled by the odd symbols in the cartoon — Wayno says there’s only 1 in this strip — see this Page)
In this variant of the classic joke, that piano is in fact 12 inches long, a 12-inch piano, so the performer is a 12-inch pianist. This is the status conferred on him by a genie when he wished for a 12-inch penis. Whoops.
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Posted in Jokes, Language and the body, Language of sex, Linguistics in the comics, Music, Understanding comics | 10 Comments »
October 9, 2025
The 10/7 Wayno / Piraro Bizarro strip, posted here because it’s sweetly bizarre (true to the strip’s title), multifariously playful, cleverly goofy. Something to enjoy for a moment in the midst of terrible times.
(#1) It’s all about the original Star Trek tv series (if you have somehow missed learning about the show, the cartoon will be incomprehensible to you); the top-level joke is in the title: the flannel frontier, a silly pun on the final frontier — but there’s a lot more (if you’re puzzled by the odd symbols in the cartoon — Wayno says there are only 2 in this strip — see this Page)
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Posted in Clothing, Comic conventions, Gender and sexuality, Jokes, Language play, Linguistics in the comics, Masculinity, Movies and tv, My life, Puns, Understanding comics | 2 Comments »
October 6, 2025
Say the secret word, and a prop duck made in the image of Groucho Marx drops down, to riotous applause and blaring horns — and you get prize money. That was American tv’s You Bet Your Life from 1950 to 1961 (roughly, my teenage years). And then in a Pearls Before Swine comic strip from 2006:
(#1) Another self-referential strip by Stephan Pastis (it’s one of his specialties) — the secret word is the idiomatic (originally biblical) phrase (cast) pearls before swine — turning on shtick that disappeared from live tv about 65 years ago (but apparently lives on in pop-cultural consciousness, or at least in Pastis’s)
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Posted in Comic conventions, Linguistics in the comics, Movies and tv, Pop culture, Understanding comics | Leave a Comment »
September 1, 2025
🐇 🐇 🐇 rabbit rabbit rabbit to bring September in (also to bring in the first fall month in the northern hemisphere) and, this year, to celebrate (US) Labor Day (recognizing the union movement and honoring workers) — so that I bring you (cartoon) rabbits in hard hats:
(#1) Lola and Bugs Bunny, in an HBO Max series from 2023, Bugs Bunny Builders: Hard Hat Time
Which takes me to September cartoons from the New Yorker, beginning with a scene-setting item from 2022:
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Posted in Comic conventions, Events and occasions, Holidays, Language and animals, Language and the body, Language of sex, Linguistics in the comics, Movies and tv, Phallicity, Pop culture, Understanding comics, Work | Leave a Comment »
August 24, 2025
I’m barely getting through my days, but now suddenly there are five new things on my plate (and dozens of other postings I’ve failed to follow up on). I’ve picked the thing of most immediate interest, since it follows up on my posting yesterday “Yo soy Johnny Peso”, where I wrote about this cartoon:
(#1)
In the 8/22 Bizarro strip, Wayno presents us with Johnny Peso, an intricately constructed Mexican-Spanish and Mexican-culture counterpart to Johnny Paycheck as a performer on the Grand Ole Opry stage. If you don’t know about Johnny Paycheck and the Grand Ole Opry, you’re doomed; the cartoon will be incomprehensible. If you know who they are, you’ll get the joke; and the more you know about them, the more you’ll see in Wayno’s cartoon (I suspect there are still more things that I’ve missed). And then there’s a lot to say about the way Johnny Peso introduces himself [with the stiff and Englishy yo soy Johnny Peso].
Then came the objections. In a Facebook comment from David Preston and this blog comment from Geoff Nathan:
— GN: Are you sure it isn’t a reference to Johnny Cash?
— AZ > GN: A point also made on Facebook by David Preston. Yes, surely peso is a rough (metonymic) translation of cash, so Johnny Peso would be a Mexican Johnny Cash. But I made a case in this posting that Johnny Peso is a Mexican Johnny Paycheck. The answer is that in the world of cultural allusion, both things can be true. I’ll expand on this idea in a separate posting [the one you’re reading right now].
Shimmer is both a floor wax AND a dessert topping.
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Posted in Art, Identities, Linguistics in the comics, Music, Spanish, Understanding comics | Leave a Comment »
August 23, 2025
In the 8/22 Bizarro strip, Wayno presents us with Johnny Peso, an intricately constructed Mexican-Spanish and Mexican-culture counterpart to Johnny Paycheck as a performer on the Grand Ole Opry stage. If you don’t know about Johnny Paycheck and the Grand Ole Opry, you’re doomed; the cartoon will be incomprehensible. If you know who they are, you’ll get the joke; and the more you know about them, the more you’ll see in Wayno’s cartoon (I suspect there are still more things that I’ve missed). And then there’s a lot to say about the way Johnny Peso introduces himself. The cartoon:
(#1) The joke in the cartoon comes the two bilingual puns: Spanish peso punning on English paycheck, Spanish olé punning on English vernacular ole; the puns are, in addition, what I’ve called (semiotically) satisfying puns (if you’re puzzled by the odd symbols in the cartoon — Wayno says there are only 2 in this strip — see this Page)
And then there’s a lot more.
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Posted in Bilingualism, Clothing, Hats, Interjections, Linguistics in the comics, Movies and tv, Music, Names, Puns, Spanish, Understanding comics | 7 Comments »
August 22, 2025
In the New Yorker issue of 8/25/25, a typically goofy-clever cartoon by Sam Gross, offering SG’s proposal for how Jesus walked on the Sea of Galilee:
(#1) No miracle! But, wait! SG’s account relies on a different kind of miracle — the Octopus of God, gliding supportively underwater, foot to foot, carrying Christ across the sea; that’s the goofy part, God’s really mysterious ways, as the fish have it
(I especially admire SG’s depiction of Jesus as a magical Jew, deep in thought as he navigates.)
Now, for background, the account of Jesus’s aquambulation in the Christian Bible, a collection of texts Christians think of as the New Testament. (I note that SG, a Jew, assumed his readers would be familiar with the story, as part of the common culture of our society; for this, no one involved here has to believe anything.)
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Posted in Cartoonists, Language and religion, Linguistics in the comics, Understanding comics | 3 Comments »
