Yes, just as you suppose, this did appear on Talk Like A Pirate Day.
And more off the mark…
And a date-topical OY:
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The kid in Todd the Dinosaur isn’t reacting (directly) to the circumflex and accent, his issue is with the British and/or pseudo-French pronunciation (see the linked article).
P.S. I would have liked the pirate crossword better if it had not contained so many repeated words.
Kilby, I think the challenge of the Todd the Dinosaur may be even more subtle or roundabout than you are suggesting. Sure, in a realistic world the kid could not be reacting to the printed diacritics, but only to the sounds… since realistically he could hear the sounds but not see the spellings — which we do see but not hear. But look at what he says, there in panel 2. Though he does reference the diacritic markings, his objection is phrased as “Todd, if you said that with…” (italics added). And Todd’s response is about the pronunciation, which had to be spelled out pseudo-phonetically for us to know what he is saying. But why would he need to inform the kid of what his pronunciation had been, when the kid was right there to hear it? No, they are in some ways in the same position as we the readers, privy to the spellings more than to the sounds.
I took the emphasized “PAY-per ma-SHAY” in the third panel to mean that Todd was knuckling under to the kid’s intolerance of anything “un-American”, and retroactively changing his way of saying it.
I read comics a couple of weeks at a time, which I’m thinking of changing because some comics just don’t measure up.
Yesterday the very last one I read was the sorry-I-missed-you one, and I laughed so hard I scared the cats. Although you might have to be a woman to realize it’s not an Oy, it’s a Joy.
That anonymous vote of approval led me to look at the card comic again, and I discovered that I had not noticed the double-barrelled shotgut she is holding. Ooops.
Comics I Don't Understand 
The kid in Todd the Dinosaur isn’t reacting (directly) to the circumflex and accent, his issue is with the British and/or pseudo-French pronunciation (see the linked article).
P.S. I would have liked the pirate crossword better if it had not contained so many repeated words.
Kilby, I think the challenge of the Todd the Dinosaur may be even more subtle or roundabout than you are suggesting. Sure, in a realistic world the kid could not be reacting to the printed diacritics, but only to the sounds… since realistically he could hear the sounds but not see the spellings — which we do see but not hear. But look at what he says, there in panel 2. Though he does reference the diacritic markings, his objection is phrased as “Todd, if you said that with…” (italics added). And Todd’s response is about the pronunciation, which had to be spelled out pseudo-phonetically for us to know what he is saying. But why would he need to inform the kid of what his pronunciation had been, when the kid was right there to hear it? No, they are in some ways in the same position as we the readers, privy to the spellings more than to the sounds.
I took the emphasized “PAY-per ma-SHAY” in the third panel to mean that Todd was knuckling under to the kid’s intolerance of anything “un-American”, and retroactively changing his way of saying it.
I read comics a couple of weeks at a time, which I’m thinking of changing because some comics just don’t measure up.
Yesterday the very last one I read was the sorry-I-missed-you one, and I laughed so hard I scared the cats. Although you might have to be a woman to realize it’s not an Oy, it’s a Joy.
That anonymous vote of approval led me to look at the card comic again, and I discovered that I had not noticed the double-barrelled shotgut she is holding. Ooops.
Shotgut? Messy.
No, missed…