i was today years old when i spotted this line in avengers annual #10 and soon learned that cowabunga didn& #39;t originate as a cool saying for michelangelo; it& #39;s a twice removed mispelling of kawa-bonga, a catchphrase for a racist howdy doody brownface character, chief thunderbird

there& #39;s a chicago tribune article from 1997 at the height of cowabunga& #39;s popularity that connected the dots from howdy doody to snoopy to michelangelo... the actual article link didn& #39;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">https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search...

here& #39;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">https://www.gocomics.com/peanuts/1...

even though i barely use it i& #39;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