I haven’t seen Katrina, Queen of the Trees, in a long while. I’m not even sure that her name is Katrina. She only appeared for a few weeks. She was too much mammal in a strip about too-much frog.
This daily is noteworthy to me because I cursed in a mild and indirect fashion. Buddy, the frog yelling, “Bull,” is looking for Bull, another frog character. His final “Bull!” makes me laugh. It’s like yelling BULL in a crowded family-oriented theater, with no one noticing.
Or, perhaps it was noticed, and considered unremarkable. When you’re writing a strip, you never know for certain what’s allowed, until it isn’t.
Bull, as profanity goes, is tame, domesticated, Bowdlerized, nearly invisible. But in a family strip — that’s how it was sold; I never thought of Spot the Frog as family-oriented — yelling Bull! felt subversive. I wrote a lot of subversive dailies in Spot, but few noticed.
Mark Heath cartoons 