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  Who says a sourdough can't learn from comics?Jan 25, 2017 2:31 AM PST | url
 
Added 1 new A* page:I'm still working away at my little project of reading through all the comics in Marvel's online "Marvel Unlimited" service chronologically, starting at their beginning in 1939—with Marvel Comics #1!—up through oh 1990 or so. They've got about 4,500 comics online between those date ranges, so this will keep me busy for a while, especially considering that usually I manage to flit through just one or two a day, tops. But I'm up to May, 1963! 323 comics down! : D Of course they also scan more old issues into their archives every week, so I guess some weeks I actually lose ground in terms of how many comics are left to get through in this quest.
 
Anyway I bothered you with that boring story because in the comics from the '40s, I was noticing that characters, instead of saying "what's going on here" when they came across an odd situation—which happens frequently in these comics, you know—would say what Vincent says in today's A* comic: "What goes on here?"—or some variant, like "What goes?" or "What goes on?" or maybe "what transpires here?" or, well, other permutations I can't remember right now, but definitely NOT "what's going on here," as we modern, upright-walking humans of today would put it.
 
And then as I progressed in my reading through their comics of the '40s and into the '50s, it was interesting to see how the phrase gradually did start to inch its way toward the modern version, until by the late '50s or so I stopped noticing the difference, which I think means someone must have hit upon "what's going on here" by then.
 
And that's how modern speech came to be. ]_]
 
 
 
 
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