There is an excellent pun behind this, which requires just a bit of Disney to recognize. But then there is the sub-question of whether Liniers (the Macanudo creator) is coming up with it spontaneously on their own, or is making an allusion to 1960s U.S. avant-garde theater where a famous campus-set domestic melodrama of psychological cruelty used the pun as its title — as would be familiar to theater and movie fans of a certain age [geecoughzers!].
(BTW, de paso, here for completeness is the version in Spanish, which does not attempt to re-create the pun. Leaving the question, is there then any joke left at all?)
Comics I Don't Understand 
Well, I’d argue that “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?” would be about as familiar to Spanish readers, which is to say Geezer Alert either way.
There’s a more surface layer of the joke, that she’s sharp like a knife, so people are afraid of her for that reason. Afilada means literally sharp, but I’m not entirely sure the metaphor for intelligence transfers to Spanish.
I’m not sure what pun you are referring to. The joke in the comic is about the title of the work by Albee, Who’s afraid of Virginia Woolf. Is there something else I’m missing?
Wait, I vaguely remember an old cartoon that also played with the title of the book, is that it? I would think this comic stands without knowledge of anything, but Virginia Woolf and Albee’s play.
Never mind, I realize you’re referring to the play. And I don’t see a way to delete my comment…
Targuman, the title of the play is a pun on the 1934 Disney song, “Who’s Afraid of the Big Bad Wolf?”
As for me, I’ve never read Woolf nor seen the play, but I know her name mostly through the reference in the play’s title. And I don’t think I’m a geezer yet. It seems obvious to me that the comic is intentionally referring to the play and not coming up with the same pun sui generis.
Powers, Thank you! I never knew of the Disney song, but of course knew of the reference to the fairytale. Does one need to know the Disney song in order to get the reference? I don’t think so. This is the first I’ve heard of it, but I’ve always understood the pun in the title of the play.
The song was a major hit. Coming as it did at the depths of the Great Depression, people took it as a metaphor for remaining stoic in the face of danger.
Albee was only 5 or 6 years old when “The Three Little Pigs” came out, though (1933, actually, not 1934), and he didn’t coin the pun himself, so I would agree that knowledge of the antecedent isn’t strictly necessary. But the play does ask a character to sing the song.
@dvandom, thanks for those remarks and help with the Spanish. I was worried about the editors’ note saying the pun does not survive the translation, since I thought we knew that (unlike Baldo which we think we know is created in English but translated to Spanish) Macanudo is created in Spanish then translated in English. Though I guess that doesn’t rule out the creator seeing an opportunity for a good English pun and setting up the Spanish original to give that result. … But if there’s already a good joke in the Spanish, then we needn’t worry. …
I agree with Danny Boy @7, it’s fairly well documented that Macanudo is composed strictly in Spanish, but the English translations (and lettering) have been impressively good.
P.S. There’s an article in today’s Daily Cartoonist which discusses this Macanudo strip (scroll down all the way to the end).
I’ve run across that part about them not being able to use the original tune in the movie. As I got the story (from Wikipedia I think), what they used instead was the melody of “Here we Go Round the Mulberry Bush”. The scansion would work.
“Who’s afraid of Virginia Woolf” was graffiti before Albee wrote the play. I know I saw it in a collection of graffiti. As Mitch4 noted, Elizabeth Taylor does not sing it to the Disney tune in the movie because Disney refused to grant synchronization rights. Theater productions are probably OK with using it because ASCAP controls performance rights.
The movie of “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf” with Liz and Dick was infamous enough to rate a MAD satire.
Powers – Thank you so much – now that song is running over and over in my head along with a vision of the small yellow 33 1/3 record I had of it in the 1950s (which is somewhere in our basement with my other children’s records).