See you in the Funny Papers: Cartoons and Social Networks

From time to time a branch of science captures the imagination of the public; it gets "hot." When that happens, references to the "hot" item appear in newspapers, in novels, in movies -even in cartoons. Forty odd years ago, for example, Ray Birdwhistell (1952) first introduced kinesics, the field concerned with the importance of non-verbal gestures in human communication. Very soon, Al Capp introduced a new character in his comic strip, Li'l Abner. Capp began a series of based on the activities of a "Professor Fleasong," a specialist in the study of "toe gestures."