Wordology, Briffits and Dustups

Briffits are the clouds left behind when comic-strip characters speed off. They are most often found in the comic strips with hites, which are the horizontal lines streaking between a cartoon character and the briffit to represent speed.

Dustups are the clouds that obscure comic-strip fights.

Things that look like clouds, but are not, include various fumetti, such as word balloons and thought balloons (cumulus fumetti).

Incidentally, although storytelling with pictures and words had been around for hundreds of years and, until recently it was generally believed that the first comic was the Yellow Kid in 1896. However, Rodolphe Töpffer is considered the father of the modern comic strips. His illustrated stories of Histoire de M. Vieux Bois (1827), was first published in the USA in 1842 as The Adventures of Obadiah Oldbuck.