Like the comics art it dissects, Mort Walker’s legendary Lexicon of Comicana is unseriously serious. It is a lighthearted, profusely illustrated breakdown of the visual language of comics, the tropes, conventions, conceits, cliches that artists use to communicate a range of emotions and personalities at a glance. NYRB Comics has reissued this hard-to-find 1980 classic with a ton of supporting material from Chris Ware and Brian Walker. It is a must-have for anyone interested in the medium.

The book is such a joy to peruse, its pleasures so self-evident, that I am tempted to recite rather than review it. Most famously, Walker attaches silly but fitting terminology to basic cartoon expressiveness. “Oculama” is the designation he gives to the different cartoon eyes that express anger, surprise, unconsciousness, etc. “Emanata” is a broad category of marks around a character or object that can indicate motion (“hites”), asterisk-like “squeams” for drunkenness, he cloud-like “briffit” at the opening of a swinging (“Swalloop”) punch. He lists the varieties of “lucaflects” that reflect reflecting objects. He catalogs the iconography of stereotypes and how we can distinguish. A tramp from a professor in the nanosecond we glance at a panel. And then there is the kinetic classic, the “blugit” stroboscopic effect that multiply the image of an object to signify super speed.

None of my descriptions are remotely funny, because, again, Walker’s is a cartoon lexicon that embodies what it describes; the humor depends on the marriage of image and text. You will grin at the familiarity of every entry.

While Walker breaks down the comic arts into laughable visual conventions, he is an artist after all who respects the individuality of his peers. The book uses examples of real-life cartooning to underscore the indelible individuality of each artist’s use of the conventions. Schulz, Browne, Barks, Smythe, Raymond, Gould and many others get sampled here. In fact my favorite page of the book isolates the idiosyncratic cross-hatching techniques of 15 legendary artists.

All of which is to say that this cartoony romp is surreptitiously serious – again, as is cartooning itself. Walker is outlining the visual letters and phrases of a simple language that can express the full range of human experience and emotion in the right hands.

Along with the original 1980 book, this NYRB reprint adds generous addenda from Mort’s son and eminent comics historian Brian Walker. We get the evolution of the Lexicon, beginning with a 1966 article Mort created for the cartoonists’ society. As well, we get many pages illustrating the Lexicon with examples with a veritable history of comics, Happy Hoolligan to Jiggs, Krazy Kat to Calvin and Hobbes.

But I forget myself. I promised to recite rather than review.

“Waftarom” – aroma lines

“Maladicta” – swearing symbols

“Fumetti” – speech balloons

“Neoflect” – lines indicating brand-spanking-newness

But you really have to see it to get the jokes. And you should.