i was today years old when i spotted this line in avengers annual #10 and soon learned that cowabunga didn't originate as a cool saying for michelangelo; it's a twice removed mispelling of kawa-bonga, a catchphrase for a racist howdy doody brownface character, chief thunderbird

there's a chicago tribune article from 1997 at the height of cowabunga's popularity that connected the dots from howdy doody to snoopy to michelangelo... the actual article link didn't work for me but the google cache did: https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:smVQ0F91Gy4J:https://www.chicagotribune.com/news/ct-xpm-1997-05-21-9705210290-story.html

here's snoopy yelling cowabunga in the peanuts strip for august 8, 1965 which i assume is the panel that david wise was thinking of in that tribune interview https://www.gocomics.com/peanuts/1965/08/09

even though i barely use it i'm taking cowabunga out of my vocab completely because honestly i think we need to do whatever we can to kill the legacy of this kind of racist bullshit