DANGER CAY: Chapter 82: Secrets of Danger Cay
“Flashback Dance Party!” my wife said looking over my shoulder as I was coloring this page. And yes she’s right: it’s another flashback scene.
The two rubes mentioned are Castor Oyl and Ham Gravy,, from the comic strip Thimble Theater, and the “magic chicken” is Bernice the Whiffle Hen, a magical bird who comes from Africa who can travel through the Fourth Dimension and can grant luck to anyone who rubs the feathers on her head. Castor was the original star of Thimble Theatre, but he quickly became overshadowed when his sister, Olive, met this squint-eyed runt of a sailor who first appeared in the “Dice Island” adventure.
Toot toot!
The name of the island, “Danger Cay,” was inspired by the title of one of the Doc Savage novels: “Fear Cay”. The word “cay” comes from the Spanish and means a small, low island, like the Florida Keys. In my head, I had always pronounced “cay” the way it was spelled; but part-way through the story I discovered that it’s really pronounced “kee”; and that “cay” and “key” are really the same word, but spelled differently.
I wanted to do a strip where Ginger and someone else have an Abbott & Costello-ish misunderstanding about “Cay” and “Key” and “Qué?” except I couldn’t figure out a good way to represent the joke in print and have it make any kind of sense, so I just dropped the idea. Pronounce it how you like; it’s fine with me.
this is off topic a man just posted, very seriously mind you, that he didn’t know that the US traded goods with Britain in the 19th century and I wanted to pound my head against something.