Woodstalks

Back in 2020, Frazz creator Jef Mallett noted that he felt somewhat obliged to periodically recognize, within the context of his strip, the fact that none of his characters were wearing masks. It was pointed out in a number of comics around that time that masking the characters made it much more difficult to tell who was doing the talking, and that's why comics largely 'ignored' the pandemic. But to formally recognize and comment on that, in one strip, Mallett had Frazz and Caulfield uncharacteristically break the fourth wall for the day...

Does any of that look familiar? Does it remind anyone of some other comic strip character? Like, perhaps...

Mallett was using the same notation for unintelligble speech that Charles Schulz always used for Woodstock. This type of notation, as far as I know, had not been used outside of Peanuts but with two different strips using it now -- especially with one of them being by Schulz! -- I think it makes it an official comic shorthand and should be ranked up there with grawlixes, lucaflects, and swalloops.

We need an official name for it, though... I first proposed this back in 2020, but I haven't seen it catch, so I'll throw it out to the internet again: how about we call these individual marks that represent unintelligble speech "woodstalks"?

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