Since moving to Fast Company's, John Brownlee's been on a roll: everything he's written for them is ace. The latest is Quimps, Plewds and Grawlixes: The Secret Language of Comic Strips, a review of Mort Walker's obscure 1980s Lexicon on Comicana.
To Walker, understanding the design language of the comics was important. Cartooning is usually one of the first means of written expression a child learns, and for Walker, understanding the language of cartooning was the key to communicating with other people in an increasingly international world.