''The Lexicon of Comicana'' is a 1980 book by the American

cartoonist A cartoonist is a visual artist who specializes in both drawing and writing cartoons (individual images) or comics (sequential images). Cartoonists differ from comics writers or comic book illustrators in that they produce both the literary and g ...

Mort Walker Addison Morton Walker (September 3, 1923 – January 27, 2018) was an American comic strip writer, best known for creating the newspaper comic strips ''Beetle Bailey'' in 1950 and ''Hi and Lois'' in 1954. He signed Addison to some of his strips. ...

. It was intended as a

tongue-in-cheek The idiom tongue-in-cheek refers to a humorous or sarcastic statement expressed in a serious manner. History The phrase originally expressed contempt, but by 1842 had acquired its modern meaning. Early users of the phrase include Sir Walter Scot ...

look at the devices used by comics cartoonists. In it, Walker invented an international set of

symbol A symbol is a mark, sign, or word that indicates, signifies, or is understood as representing an idea, object, or relationship. Symbols allow people to go beyond what is known or seen by creating linkages between otherwise very different conc ...

s 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 The National Cartoonists Society (NCS) is an organization of professional cartoonists in the United States. It presents the National Cartoonists Society Awards. The Society was born in 1946 when groups of cartoonists got together to entertain the ...

. 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 A dictionary is a listing of lexemes from the lexicon of one or more specific languages, often arranged alphabetically (or by radical and stroke for ideographic languages), which may include information on definitions, usage, etymologies, ...

, and serve as convenient terminology occasionally used by cartoonists and critics. A

2001 The September 11 attacks against the United States by Al-Qaeda, which killed 2,977 people and instigated the global war on terror, were a defining event of 2001. The United States led a multi-national coalition in an invasion of Afghanist ...

gallery showing of comic- and street-influenced art in

San Francisco San Francisco (; Spanish for " Saint Francis"), officially the City and County of San Francisco, is the commercial, financial, and cultural center of Northern California. The city proper is the fourth most populous in California and 17t ...

, for example, was called "''Plewds! Squeans! and Spurls!''"

Examples

*''Agitrons'': wiggly lines around a shaking object or character. *''Blurgits, swalloops'': curved lines preceding or trailing after a character's moving limbs. *''Briffits'' (💨): clouds of dust that hang in the wake of a swiftly departing character or object. *''Dites, hites and vites'': straight lines drawn across flat, clear and reflective surfaces, such as windows and mirrors. The first letter indicates direction: diagonal, horizontal and vertical respectively. Hites may also be used trailing after something moving with great speed. *''Emanata'': lines drawn around the head to indicate shock or surprise *'' Grawlixes'' (#, $, *, @): typographical symbols standing in for profanities, appearing in dialogue balloons in place of actual dialogue. *''Indotherm'' (♨): wavy, rising lines used to represent steam or heat. *''Lucaflect'': a shiny spot on a surface of something, depicted as a four-paned window shape. *''Plewds'' (💦): flying

sweat Perspiration, also known as sweating, is the production of fluids secreted by the sweat glands in the skin of mammals. Two types of sweat glands can be found in humans: eccrine glands and apocrine glands. The eccrine sweat glands are distrib ...

droplets that appear around a character's head when working hard, stressed, etc. *''Quimps'' (🪐): A special example of the grawlix, a symbol resembling the planet

Saturn Saturn is the sixth planet from the Sun and the second-largest in the Solar System, after Jupiter. It is a gas giant with an average radius of about nine and a half times that of Earth. It has only one-eighth the average density of Earth; h ...

. *''Solrads'': radiating lines drawn from something luminous like a lightbulb or the sun. *''Squeans'' (💫): little starbursts or circles that signify

intoxication Intoxication — or poisoning, especially by an alcoholic or narcotic substance — may refer to: * Substance intoxication: ** Alcohol intoxication ** LSD intoxication ** Toxidrome ** Tobacco intoxication ** Cannabis intoxication ** Cocaine in ...

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

References

Bibliography

* Steve Edgell, Tim Pilcher, Brad Brooks, ''The Complete Cartooning Course: Principles, Practices, Techniques'' (London: Barron's, 2001), pp. 50–51,

External links

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Lexicon of Comicana, The 1980 books Books about comics Cartooning Comics terminology Constructed languages Linguistics books Symbolism Symbols

Examples

See also

References

Bibliography

External links