The world of comics has always had its own set of rules.
The laws of physics are dispensed with, animals can speak, and cartoonists even have their own vocabulary.
Mort Walker, the cartoonist behind beloved strips such as Beetle Bailey and Hi and Lois, captured this special language in his 1980 book The Lexicon of Comicana. If you’re lucky, you can still pick up a copy of this rare item.
Walker did the world a service, not only by giving names to common items that we see in many comic strips, but revealed universal illustration techniques.
See if these seem familiar to you:1
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.
