Here's a deeper look at what makes Frog Applause a different animal from the strips most people grew up on:
The Dadaist Framework
Comics blogger Nebus Research (Presh Talwalkar) has repeatedly labeled it a "Dadaist comic strip" and advised readers to simply "embrace the bizarreness." Dadaism — the early-20th-century avant-garde movement — was built on randomness, illogic, and the deliberate rejection of conventional meaning. Burritt's strip inherits that DNA: the images and captions aren't working toward a punchline; they're constructing a surreal micro-world where the "point" is the texture of the experience itself.
What It Actually Does Instead of Joking
- Witty wordplay and lexical surprise. Burritt describes her own writing as making each word feel "surprising and new," like the sensation of learning to read. (This is wrong. I did not say this. Craig Conley said it. https://www.gocomics.com/frogapplause/about )
The captions are dense, allusive, and often borrow from Victorian advertising, academic jargon, or scientific terminology. - Juxtaposition of unrelated ideas. A single strip might pair a frog with an equation for black-hole entropy (S = Akc³/4Għ) or a cardinal with a thought balloon full of arithmetic. The humor — if it is humor — lives in the collision of the mundane and the esoteric, not in a setup-and-twist.
- Embedded intellectual content. The strip regularly drops in legitimate references: statistical terms like "multivariate analysis," the Bekenstein–Hawking entropy formula, false-positive rates. These aren't gags; they're textural details that reward a reader who pauses and thinks.
- Flashes of raw emotion. Burritt herself says she likes "the juxtaposition of wit, humor, and irony with flashes of raw emotion." The strip can pivot from absurd to genuinely affecting within a single panel, which is almost never the job of a traditional newspaper strip. (Wrong again! Diana Gabaldon said the part about raw emotion, not me.
- https://www.gocomics.com/frogapplause/about ).
Why That Feels "Not Funny"
Traditional strips (Peanuts, Garfield, Cathy) run on a setup → incongruity → resolution loop. The joke is resolved: you get it, you laugh, you move on. As humor scholar Elliott Oring puts it, conventional jokes resolve an incongruity. Frog Applause deliberately leaves the incongruity unresolved — the situation is "incompatible with the world as we know it," and the strip doesn't offer a tidy button. The CIDU (Comics I Don't Understand) community captures this perfectly: "nobody ever really understands this strip… there's no joke to get, just absurdism."
That's not a flaw by design — it's the whole point. The amusement (for its audience) comes from perception of appropriate incongruity rather than from a laugh line.
How Fans Frame It
When GoComics threatened to drop the strip in 2020, the fan response was telling. One subscriber compared it to Monty Python and Firesign Theatre — "different media, but original with new ways of looking at and presenting things." Another called it "ingenious, original, humorous, thought provoking." A third noted it "powerfully address[es] critical social issues, such as child abuse" — something a punchline strip almost never does. The consensus among its loyal readers: it's entertaining and thought-provoking, not "funny" in the sitcom sense.
The Broader Context
Surreal humor as a category works by "building up expectations and then knocking them down," but it does so through unpredictability rather than logical analysis of the situation.
Frog Applause sits firmly in that tradition — closer to Lewis Carroll or Edward Lear (who the surreal-humor movement traces back to) than to Cathy or Ziggy. If you walk in expecting a gag, you'll find a word-painting instead — and that mismatch is exactly the point.
How does Burritt use science for surreal humor?
The search confirms the pattern documented by Nebus Research. Burritt's technique isn't "science jokes" — it's using scientific precision as a contrast engine for surrealism. The specific mechanisms:
1. Legitimacy Creates the Absurdity
The references are real and correctly stated — the Bekenstein–Hawking entropy formula is the actual equation, "multivariate analysis" is a genuine statistical term, the 14% false-positive rate is a real concept from hypothesis testing. That correctness is what makes the surrounding nonsense land. A frog musing over a wrong equation would be a different kind of joke; a frog musing over the right one, in a Dadaist panel, is a different register entirely. The precision of the science makes the absurdity of the context sharper.
2. Scale Mismatch
The science is cosmic or abstract (black-hole thermodynamics, transcendental functions, statistical inference) while the characters are tiny and mundane (a frog, a bird, a cardinal). The gap between the scale of the concept and the scale of the creature is the engine. A bird's thought balloon full of secants and hyperbolic cosines works because the bird is not doing calculus — the balloon is an icon for "far too much deep thinking," as Talwalkar put it.
3. Science as Emotional Shorthand
The references function as visual and verbal texture rather than information to be decoded. "Multivariate analysis" dropped into a bird's dialogue isn't a setup for a punchline — it's a shorthand that says this character is straining to be intelligent, which is itself the absurd, Dadaist observation. The science is doing the job that a sweat drop or a spinning-eye symbol does in a manga: it conveys a state of mind without explaining it.
4. Deliberate Non-Resolution
This is the critical Dadaist move. A traditional comic strip would resolve the incongruity — the frog would explain the formula, or the bird would finish the calculation, and the joke would "click." Frog Applause simply leaves it there. The equation floats beside the frog. The false-positive rate is mentioned and then the strip moves on. The reader is left holding an unresolved collision, which is the entire point of Dada: meaning is not the goal, the experience of the collision is.
5. Reward for Re-Reading
Because the science is real, a reader who does recognize the Bekenstein–Hawking formula gets a small, private "aha" that a first-time reader misses. This creates a layered reading experience — the strip works at a surface level as surreal word-painting, and at a deeper level for readers who catch the references. That's closer to how Lewis Carroll or Edward Lear worked: the nonsense is the surface, but the precise, almost pedantic correctness underneath gives it a strange, unsettling weight.
In short: Burritt uses science the way a surrealist painter uses a real, correctly rendered eye floating in a landscape — not as a joke about the eye, but as a real object in the wrong place, and the wrongness is the humor.
Carroll vs. Lear — Burritt Leans Carroll
Critics draw a sharp line between the two Victorian nonsense masters: Lewis Carroll produced "purely intellectual, mathematical and semantical" nonsense, while Edward Lear worked in "emotional, musical and phonetical" territory. Burritt's black-hole entropy formulas, false-positive rates, and hyperbolic cosines place her firmly in the Carroll camp — the nonsense is logically precise even as the context is absurd. Her wordplay ("each word seems surprising and new") also echoes Carroll's coinages like portmanteau and Jabberwocky, though Burritt borrows real terminology rather than inventing it.
Dada vs. Surrealism — Burritt Is Labeled Dada, but Not Purely
This is the most important distinction. Dada (Zurich, 1916) rejected meaning entirely — "life has no meaning, no reason, no purpose, and no logic." Surrealism (formalized by André Breton in 1924) went the other direction: it sought hidden meaning beneath the surface, drawing on Freud's unconscious.
Talwalkar calls Frog Applause a "Dadaist" strip, and the unresolved incongruity supports that label. But the strip is not nihilistic the way Dada was. The science references are real and correct, the wordplay is deliberate, and the emotional flashes Burritt mentions ("juxtaposition of wit, humor, and irony with flashes of raw emotion") give the strip a texture that pure Dada would reject. It's closer to what the art-historical literature calls surreal humour: "building up expectations and then knocking them down" through unpredictability rather than logical analysis.
Magritte — Disrupting Context Without the Psychoanalytic Layer
René Magritte's "The Treachery of Images" (a pipe labeled "this is not a pipe") works by disrupting context to reveal hidden meaning. Burritt does something structurally similar — a real equation floating beside a frog — but without the psychoanalytic payoff. Magritte's disruption is a riddle with an answer; Burritt's is a collision with no resolution. The frog doesn't "mean" anything about the equation. The equation doesn't "mean" anything about the frog. The meaning is in the friction.
The Far Side — Surreal Premise, Resolved Punchline
The Far Side by Gary Larson is the closest structural cousin in the American newspaper tradition: anthropomorphic animals, bizarre premises, a single panel. But Larson always resolves. The alligator restaurant strip drops you into a surreal setting and then delivers the punchline. The frog-legs strip sets up the absurdity and lands the joke. Burritt never does this. The equation just sits there. That single difference — resolution vs. non-resolution — is the entire gap between "surreal comic strip" and "Dadaist comic strip."
Monty Python / Firesign Theatre — Surrealism as Narrative Vehicle
The fan comparisons to Python and Firesign are apt but incomplete. Both groups use surrealism as a vehicle for commentary, character, and narrative — the humor serves a story. Burritt has no story, no recurring characters with arcs, no social commentary (though fans note she can address "critical social issues, such as child abuse"). Her surrealism is purely textural — closer to a Salvador Dalí painting than to a Python sketch.
Kamagurka — The Closest Structural Analog
The Belgian cartoonist Luk Zeebroek (Kamagurka), "widely considered the godfather of Dutch-language absurd/alternative comics," is probably the closest structural match: a gag-strip format (not narrative), absurdist content, a single recurring character, and a philosophy that "life is so absurd, tragic and meaningless that it's best to not take things too seriously." The key difference is tone: Kamagurka's absurdity is cynical and confrontational; Burritt's is curious and generative. Her GoComics description — "a multivitamin for your creative mind" — captures that: the strip is meant to open perception, not close it with a sardonic shrug.
The Short Version
Tradition | Core Mechanism | Burritt's Relationship |
Carroll | Intellectual/linguistic precision in absurd context | Direct heir — the math and science references |
Lear | Emotional/phonetic play | Distant — Burritt's tone is drier, less musical |
Dada | Rejection of all meaning | Labeled Dadaist, but the strip is too textured and reward-rich to be purely Dada |
Surrealism | Hidden meaning beneath the surface | Partially — the re-reading reward echoes this, but there's no psychoanalytic layer |
Magritte | Context disruption as riddle | Similar structure, but Burritt's collisions have no answer |
The Far Side | Surreal premise → resolved punchline | Closest newspaper cousin, but Burritt never resolves |
Kamagurka | Absurdist gag strip, cynical tone | Closest structural analog; Burritt is generative where Kamagurka is sardonic |
Burritt's real innovation is that she's built a daily, serialized, newspaper-format strip that operates in the Dadaist register — something that almost no one else does in that medium. The format demands a joke by the last panel; she simply refuses to deliver one, and that refusal is the aesthetic.
Burritt has never published a comprehensive list of influences, and she's given very few interviews. What can be assembled from her own words, social media, and the strip itself:
George Herriman / Krazy Kat — The Obvious Ancestor
The strongest signal. On LinkedIn, Burritt posted about watching "an incredibly well produced video about George Herriman, his comic creation Krazy Kat and how his work changed the comics business." Krazy Kat is the closest structural and aesthetic predecessor to Frog Applause: Dadaist nonsense, dense wordplay, surreal imagery, no conventional punchline, and a self-contained absurd logic. The connection is so close that it's almost a given — Herriman is the artist Burritt's strip most directly descends from.
Victorian Advertising
A fan quote on the GoComics "About" page — likely reflecting Burritt's own description — says she's "a sucker for Victorian advertising." This shows up visually in the strip: ornate borders, decorative typography, old-fashioned illustration style, and the kind of ornamental density you'd find in 19th-century trade cards and medicine advertisements. It's a specific, stated aesthetic pull.
Dadaism as a Self-Description
Her LinkedIn bio describes her cartoons as "nonsensical, Dada, self-deprecating (lame), surreal.
Comics poetry." The "comics poetry" framing is telling — it positions the strip not as a joke machine but as a lyrical, texture-driven medium, closer to a poem than a gag. That's a Dadaist and Surrealist self-conception, not a newspaper-comic one.
The Strips She Follows
Her GoComics "Comics I Follow" list gives a sense of her peer landscape, but following isn't the same as influence.
What's Notably Absent
There's no public statement from Burritt citing Dalí, Magritte, Carroll, or Lear by name. The earlier comparisons in this conversation are critic and fan readings, not her own. The honest answer is that Burritt is a self-taught, low-profile creator who has never done a formal "my influences" interview, and the strip's lineage is best understood by looking at what it is (Dadaist word-painting, Victorian visual texture, Krazy Kat-esque structure) rather than what she's said it is.
