The Lexicon of Comicana explained

The Lexicon of Comicana
Author:Mort Walker
Country:United States
Language:English
Subject:Reference
Publisher:iUniverse (2000)
Pub Date:1980, 2000
Media Type:Print
Pages:108
Isbn:0-595-08902-X

The Lexicon of Comicana is a 1980 book by the American cartoonist Mort Walker. It was intended as a tongue-in-cheek look at the devices used by comics cartoonists. In it, Walker invented an international set of symbols called symbolia after researching cartoons around the world (described by the term comicana). In 1964, Walker had written an article called "Let's Get Down to Grawlixes", a satirical piece for the National Cartoonists Society. He used terms such as grawlixes for his own amusement, but they soon began to catch on and acquired an unexpected validity. The Lexicon was written in response to this.

The names he invented for them sometimes appear in dictionaries, and serve as convenient terminology occasionally used by cartoonists and critics. A 2001 gallery showing of comic- and street-influenced art in San Francisco, for example, was called "Plewds! Squeans! and Spurls!"[1]

Examples

Additional symbolia terms include whiteope, sphericasia, that-a-tron, spurls, oculama, crottles, maledicta balloons, farkles, doozex, staggeratron, boozex, digitrons, nittles, waftaroms, and jarns.

Comics scholar Maggie Thompson has noted that these symbols were originally described and named by Charles D. Rice in the 1950s; Thompson further observed that, although Walker did cite his sources ("Charlie Rice of This Week magazine") in his 1975 book Backstage at the Strips, "many [including Thompson herself] (...) assumed [that this] was [Walker's] joke about an imaginary scholarly attribution."[3]

See also

Bibliography

Notes and References

  1. http://www.stretcher.org/posts/plewds_squeams_and_spurls/ "Plewds! Squeams! and Spurls!"
  2. Web site: Language Log » Obscenicons a century ago. Languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu. 30 December 2017.
  3. https://www.comic-con.org/toucan/maggies-world-009-research-obsession-and-obsessive-research Maggie's World 009: Research, Obsession, and Obsessive Research