Talk:The Lexicon of Comicana

Deeper background

Mort Walker wrote:

In a rather pedantic presentation I made to the members of the National Cartoonists Society called "Let's Get Down to Grawlixes," I wrote:

As the world begins to recognize that cartooning is an art form, I have become increasingly aware of the world's lack of knowledge about our profession. They are exhibiting our work now in the Louvre, the Smithsonian, and the Metropolitan, and they are discussing cartoons in broad flowing terms such as "social significance," "illuminated narrative," and "primitive commentary," but not one of them knows the difference between such basic comicana as the "waftarom" and the "indotherm."

Walker goes on to discuss various forms of iconography: first, lines that contribute to the reading of the image; next, talk balloons. Then he continues,

Charlie Rice, of This Week magazine, is one of the few serious students of comicana around. One of his first contributions was to catalog briffits. Encouraged by the enthusiastic reception, he then tackled squeans, which he categorized as "a loose-jointed asterisk." ...

He also touched on the plewd, which is among the most useful cartoon symbols. Plewds are the little drops of sweat that shoot off people to indicate exertion, embarrassment, fear, or what-have-you.

A variety of acceptable curse words are at the cartoonist's disposal. He may throw in a new one from time to time, but the real meat of the epithet must always contain plenty of jarns, quimps, nittles, and grawlixes, as shown.

The margin contains illustrations showing scribbles, spirals (round and angled), a saturn, a crescent, an asterisk, a star, and a squean, all without labels. The way I read it, Charlie Rice should be credited with briffits, squeans, and plewds, but Mort Walker is responsible for all of the other words mentioned.

Unfortunately, the book doesn't mention the date of the NCS meeting (1964 according to the "Lexicon of Comicana" article), nor of the Charlie Rice column. It seems to me that some of this information should be incorporated in the article, and some enterprising Wikipedian could do a great service by looking up the This Week column.

Gwil (talk) 03:56, 2 April 2008 (UTC)

I think that the word is waftarom, not wafteron, the final four letters derived from "aroma."WHPratt (talk) 18:37, 5 August 2009 (UTC)
That's the way that Mort Walker spells it in his book. The cited source may disagree, and I don't know whether introducing a difference of opinion here is wise. WHPratt (talk) 17:42, 30 December 2017 (UTC)

I investigated and this is really cut and dried. The cited source (a 'blog which, despite being affiliated with a newspaper, was presumably not vetted the way a news article would be) in turn cites its source, another 'blog that had published a facsimile of the relevant page of Walker's book, which makes it clear that the word is indeed waftarom, though it might be carelessly misread as wafteron. Aside from reproducing the spelling corruption, the Wikipedia article introduced a further error by assuming that "the wavy lines suggesting scent or heat" were identical in shape, whereas Walker's illustrations make it clear that this is not the case.

Because these errors appear in an incidental remark on the entry for indotherm, rather than a standalone entry for wafteron, I think it's simplest to just delete the remark entirely, as it's based on the misconception that the two terms denote the same shape. JudahH (talk) 17:21, 25 January 2018 (UTC)

References

Sources

* http://www.flickr.com/photo_zoom.gne?id=44101073&size=o
* http://www.dashshaw.com/symbolia.html

Mathglot 09:07, 5 February 2007 (UTC)

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BetacommandBot (talk) 23:01, 13 February 2008 (UTC)

Other conventions

I don't know if the book mentions these, but since childhood I have always been curious about the cartoonist's use of the reflection of a paned – glass window in some curved and reflective surface. Also of course, there are the stars circling someone's head after they have been knocked down. Myles325a (talk) 10:11, 17 June 2010 (UTC)

The implication is that there's a sky-lit window somewhere in the background ... —Tamfang (talk) 20:38, 18 June 2010 (UTC)

That's called a lucaflect. Mathglot (talk) 18:12, 4 January 2012 (UTC)

Unicode characters

User:Qwfp reverted an edit of mine tht added illustrations with appropriate Unicode characters to the definitions saying:

There were no emojis in 1980 and many or most of these emojis are not based on these devices used by cartoonists

On the contrary I'd say that many of the emojis are based on the cartoon devices. Now we don't have illustrations of the symbols.

My editions were:

• Briffits: clouds of dust that hang in the wake of a swiftly departing character or object (💨)
• Grawlixes: typographical symbols standing in for profanities (🤬), appearing in dialogue balloons in place of actual dialogue.
• Hites: horizontal straight lines trailing after something moving with great speed (🌠); or, drawn on something indicating reflectivity (puddle, glass, mirror)
• Indotherm: wavy, rising lines used to represent steam or heat (♨️, ☕)
• Plewds: flying sweat droplets that appear around a character's head when working hard, stressed, etc. (💦, 😓, 😰, 😪, 😥, 🥵, 😅)
• Solrads: radiating lines drawn from something luminous like a lightbulb or the sun (☀️, ☼, 🗦, 🌟, ✨, 💖, ⚟, 🗤, 🗧, 🗥, )
• Squeans: little starbursts or circles that signify intoxication, dizziness, or sickness (💫)

--Error (talk) 02:56, 10 February 2020 (UTC)

Ok well to comment more fully on a few of those additions:

• Grawlixes are typographical symbols . 🤬 is not a typographical symbol. #@$%* are typographical symbols.
• Hites are horizontal lines. 🌠 contains no horizontal lines.
• Plewds: are sweat droplets around a character's head. 😓, 😰, 😪, 😥, 🥵, 😅 have tears shown on a head. 💦 could be sweat droplets (could also be a splash) but aren't around a head.
• Solrads are radiating lines from something luminous. Of the symbols you gave, only ☼ and 🌟 appear to satisfy that definition.

Qwfp (talk) 19:34, 12 February 2020 (UTC)

* 🤬 shows grawlixes standing for profanities.

* 😓 is Face with Cold Sweat. Microsoft previously depicted multiple beads of sweat from around the smiley’s forehead.

Other sweating emojis don't usually have the drops around.

* 😰 is Face with Open Mouth and Cold Sweat

* 😥 is Disappointed but Relieved Face but it is described as from which a single bead of sweat drip

* 🥵 is Overheated Face described as beads of sweat, as if overheated from high temperatures.

* 😅 is Smiling Face with Open Mouth and Cold Sweat

* 💦 is Splashing Sweat Symbol. Resembles plewds, stylized sweat droplets used in comics and animation to show characters working hard or feeling stressed.

* ☀️ is Black Sun with Rays

* 🗦, 🗤, 🗥 and 🗧 are three rays in different positions.

--Error (talk) 00:49, 17 February 2020 (UTC)

References