Grawlixes Past and Present

Gwillim Law

Mort Walker wrote, in "Backstage at the Strips", Mason/Charter, New York, 1975, pp. 26-30:

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.

According to Wikipedia, the NCS meeting took place in 1964. It would be nice to go into the This Week archives and find the Charlie Rice columns cited.

I have an extensive collection of comic strips from the Yellow Kid to Get Fuzzy, and I thought it would be interesting to try to find out where grawlixes started and how they developed. By "grawlixes", I mean icons obviously representing unprintable words, occurring within speech balloons belonging to characters who are agitated. The images below are almost all handmade copies from the originals. They are quite faithful to the originals. American comics are shown in chronological order, followed by French comics also in order. A few comics were undated (n.d.) in the sources I consulted, and I've tried to put them in about the right spot.

It appears that the earliest grawlixes were dashes and asterisks. That suggests that they may have been derived from 19th-century typographic conventions for unprintable language. Five-pointed stars were already being used in comics of the 1890s as a symbol of pain. They also appear in early grawlixes.

When researching this page, I had to hunt far and wide to find grawlixes. There are about 250 comics in a week's run of a local newspaper, but only one or two of them will have examples, and in many weeks, none at all. A clear majority of comic strips never use them. The more serious adventure strips, like "Terry and the Pirates" or "The Phantom", are too high-toned. Strips noted for their creativity, like "Krazy Kat", "Pogo", and "Calvin and Hobbes", usually find other ways to express anger. Gentle strips like "Peanuts", "Skippy", and "Rose is Rose" don't have enough anger to require them. Even some of the more raffish strips usually avoid them. Those strips that do employ grawlixes tend to spread them out to avoid going stale.

1911-09-03Katzenjammer Kids
1922-07-17Barney Google
1924 Salesman Sam
1924 Wash Tubbs
1924 Wash Tubbs
1924 Wash Tubbs
1925 Texas Slim
1925 Wash Tubbs
1925 Wash Tubbs
1925-09-01Wash Tubbs
1925-09-07Wash Tubbs
1926 Moon Mullins
1926 Texas Slim
1928 Little Orphan Annie
1928 Moon Mullins
1928 Moon Mullins
1928-02-09Thimble Theatre
1928-02-09Thimble Theatre
1928-02-09Thimble Theatre
1929 Moon Mullins
1929 Moon Mullins
1929 Moon Mullins
1930-11-16Barney Google
1934-03-10Mickey Mouse
1934-03-15Mickey Mouse
1934-03-30Mickey Mouse
1934-04-10Mickey Mouse
1934? Dan Dunn
n.d. Aladdin
n.d. Pete the Tramp
1935 Moon Mullins
1935-05-12Dick Tracy
1935-05-14Dick Tracy
1935-09-05Mickey Mouse
1935-09-10Mickey Mouse
1939-01-06Dick Tracy
1939-02-07Smilin' Jack
1941-11-30Boots
1944 Texas Slim and Dirty Dalton
1949? Li'l Abner
1949? Li'l Abner
1956-01-08Little Orphan Annie
1956-01-08Little Orphan Annie
1959 B.C.
1959 B.C.
1959 B.C.
1967-01-01Dick Tracy
1967-03-05Beetle Bailey
n.d. Beetle Bailey
1971-01-04Beetle Bailey
1971-07-03Beetle Bailey
1972-08-10Broom-Hilda
1973-02-06Beetle Bailey
1973-11-14Eek and Meek
1974-03-11Beetle Bailey
1980-09-07Blondie
1985?? Shoe
2006-05-06Mother Goose and Grimm
2006-06-17Beetle Bailey
2008-03-28Beetle Bailey
1950 Tintin
1951 Spirou
1951 Spirou
1951 Jo, Zette, et Jocko
1958 Tintin
1958 Tintin
1961 Oumpah-Pah
1961 Oumpah-Pah
1961 Oumpah-Pah
n.d. Gaston Lagaffe
n.d. Gaston Lagaffe
1970 Spirou
1971-10 Lucky Luke
1974 Iznogoud

Last updated: 2008-05-04