By one definition, “4th wall comic refers to a comic book where characters become aware of their own fictional existence and address the audience directly. This concept, known as the Fourth Wall, separates the characters from the readers, allowing them to comment on the narrative and its limitations.” By that definition, not all of these fit. In some of these, it’s that the cartoonist lets us acknowledge the cartoonist’s existence, while the characters remain unaware. Is there a separate term that should be used for that?
Comics I Don't Understand 
Wikipedia says “metalepsis” is general literary fourth-wall breaking(*)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fourth_wall#Literature
For the specific case of acknowledging the cartoonist, how about “metaPastis” in honor of Pearls Before Swine where it happens often?
(*) Always thought fourth-wall should be reserved for theatre and third-wall for two-dimensional comics…
Oh, heck… the challenge is “while the characters remain unaware”… Not PBS, at all since Rat is usually threatening Pastis with a beatdown.
Post in haste, repent at leisure.
Metalepsis is subtly different from fourth-wall breaking, although most fourth-wall breaks are examples. It requires a character to undergo a narrative shift.
Take, for example, the narrator in There Is No Game. He and the player are fully aware throughout that he’s a video game narrator, so his fourth-wall breaks are not metaleptical.
Metalepsis can also include stuff like when a narrator introduces a book from a different perspective than their narration. Sometimes narrators are omniscient or reliable in an introduction or postscript but not in the body of the work, and that shift is metaleptical.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meta-reference — the lede is pretty dense but looks like it fits what we’re looking at here pretty closely
Luann’s “How is that funny?” sounds like the motto here.
“Visual gimmickry” is always good if it includes Hobbes the tiger.
Pooch Cafe on GoComics is all crossovers this week. FC, Mutts, PBS & DT so far
Sonething I’ve been pondering.
Can you break the Fourth Wall in a round room?
:-)
Here’s a lengthy list of meta comics.
Meta Webcomics – TV Tropes https://share.google/6lJJYD6ekcLsdd9MP
Grawlix (8): You ought to ask Jeff Keane, since Family Circus often uses a circular space.