The Lexicon of Comicana

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The Lexicon of Comicana is a book that was written in 1980 by American cartoonist Mort Walker. It was intended as a tongue-in-cheek look at the devices cartoonists utilize in their craft. In it, Walker invented an international set of symbols called Symbolia after researching cartoons around the world. In 1964, Walker had written an article called "Let's Get Down to Grawlixes," a satirical piece for the National Cartoonists Society. Walker 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 fact.

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

Examples from Symbolia include:

1 Plewds
2 Briffits
3 Squeans
4 Emanata
5 Grawlixes
6 Waftaroms
7 Agitrons
8 Blurgits, swalloops
9 Hites
10 Lucaflect
11 Dites
12 Solrads
13 Vites
14 Other Terms
15 A Gallery of Symbolia
16 Sources

[edit] Plewds

Plewds are the flying sweat droplets that appear around a character's head when working hard or stressed.

[edit] Briffits

Clouds of dust that hang in the spot where a swiftly departing character or object was previously standing.

[edit] Squeans

Little starbursts or circles that signify intoxication, dizziness, or sickness.

[edit] Emanata

Lines drawn around the head to indicate shock or surprise.

[edit] Grawlixes

The typographical symbols that stand for profanities, which appear in dialogue balloons in the place of actual dialogue.

[edit] Waftaroms

Wavy, rising lines used to represent steam on hot or smelly objects

[edit] Agitrons

Wiggly lines aroung an object that is shaking

[edit] Blurgits, swalloops

Curved lines preceding or trailing after a character's moving limbs

[edit] Hites

Horizontal straight lines trailing after something moving with great speed, or indicating reflectivity (puddle, glass, mirror). Likewise, up-hites would be lines above an object falling.

[edit] Lucaflect

A shiny spot on a surface of something

[edit] Dites

Diagonal, straight lines drawn across something flat, clear, and reflective, such as windows and mirrors.

[edit] Solrads

Radiating lines drawn from something luminous like a lightbulb or the sun.

[edit] Vites

Vertical straight lines indicating reflectivity (compare dites, hites).

[edit] Other Terms

Additional Symbolia terms include whiteope, sphericasia, that-a-tron, spurls, oculama, crottles, maledicta balloons, indotherm, farkles, doozex, staggeration, boozex, digitrons, nittles, quimp, and jarns.