1947 citing in Archie Comic of "butthole." What did it mean?

[Baker, John]

The transcription error theory assumes a lot.  It's certainly possible that Bob Montana, the Archie artist, had someone else do his lettering.  I would guess (but don't know) that Montana inked the strip himself, but lettering is a specialized and, to most cartoonists, rather boring skill.  For example, Carl Barks, who otherwise  created the Donald Duck and Uncle Scrooge comic book stories from scratch, had his wife do the lettering.  If Montana had any kind of artistic assistant at all, that person would have done its lettering.  Most cartoonists today use computer fonts.  But consider the following assumptions implicit in the theory:

1. It assumes that the letterer would have seen some other word and instead lettered "butthole," a word that at the time was vanishingly rare and, under this assumption, would have made no sense in context.

2.  It assumes that Montana did not even look at the strip before it was sent off to the syndicate.  That can't have been normal procedure.

3.  It assumes that there was no question from the syndicate or from the carrying newspapers (except maybe in Zanesville).  I would think that the syndicate may well have asked Montana about the word, possibly even by long distance telephone.  Presumably he had some satisfactory explanation of the word's meaning (unfortunately unobtainable to us).  As for the carrying newspapers, there were 700 of these, according to Wikipedia, and each had an editor.  The 700 number is probably from when the strip's popularity was at its height, but I expect that was around 1947.  In many small towns, of course, the comic strips would have been run without further review, and probably there had never been any trouble from Archie, which was not a transgressive strip, but larger newspapers would know from sad experience that every strip had to be reviewed.

So, while I don't mean to eliminate a transcription error as a possibility, I think the theory raises more questions than it answers.


John Baker




-----Original Message-----
From: American Dialect Society [mailto:ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU] On Behalf Of Jonathan Lighter
Sent: Sunday, April 29, 2012 7:47 PM
To: ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU
Subject: Re: 1947 citing in Archie Comic of "butthole." What did it mean?

"Dullville" is a good guess, but AFAIK the adjective isn't recorded till
the beatnik era. (The 1951 exx. I see are nouns, e.g., "runs from Boreburg
to Dullville" [Walter Winchell].)

*If* it existed in 1947, it might have been the sort of word that teenagers
would use.

It's a big *if,* however.  And  "Dullsville" has always been far more
common.


JL

On Sun, Apr 29, 2012 at 5:46 PM, Douglas G. Wilson <douglas at nb.net> wrote:

> ---------------------- Information from the mail header
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> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       "Douglas G. Wilson" <douglas at NB.NET>
> Subject:      Re: 1947 citing in Archie Comic of "butthole." What did it
> mean?
>
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> The word "dull[s]ville" suggests itself.
>
> I see "Dullville" in more-or-less appropriate figurative use as early as
> 1951. It could have been in existence -- although likely infrequent and
> not universally familiar -- as early as 1947.
>
> Whoever inked the strip's text could have copied this word wrong, for
> any of several reasons (perhaps even intentionally), e.g., in tracing or
> transcribing a partially illegible draft.
>
> ----------
>
> The defacement of "butthole" in the Zanesville paper is interesting. To
> my eye, this is extremely unlikely to be fortuitous: I believe someone
> disliked the word and scrubbed it out. Is it possible to guess when/how
> this occurred? I picture some reader (in 1947, or maybe in [say] 1987)
> simply defacing a copy, the copy which was digitized for N'archive,
> which appears to be labeled "Ohio State Museum / Newspaper Division".
> Might it be possible to review a different copy (in a different library
> or whatever)?
>
> ----------
>
> Has somebody already noted the date of the item? Maybe set up for print
> on 1 April, I suppose? Do strange things appear on the same date in
> other years?
>
> (In the Elyria paper I find "Archie" from 2 April 1946, without anything
> stranger than "chippin' your gums". The 1 April 1946 installment is
> devoted to Archie's friends playing a trick on him [but Jughead seems to
> take the medicine instead]. I don't find anything explicit for the
> special day in 1947.)
>
> -- Doug Wilson
>
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