Dagwood Bumstead is the hapless husband of the lead character in the newspaper comic strip Blondie  by Chic Young. Dagwood was the subject of a McLuhan essay in his 1951 book, The Mechanical Bride, Folklore of Industrial  Man  (1951). In it McLuhan wrote that, "Dagwood is seedy, saggy, bewildered, and weakly dependent," a model of the "frustration of the suburban commuters of our time."