Yes.
Are you talking about The Legend of Sleepy Hollow? The Headless Horseman emerging from a tree was in the 1999 Tim Burton movie Sleepy Hollow (starring Johnny Depp and Christina Ricci), not in the Washington Irving book, so it would not be a literary reference. In any case, smarter minds than I have it figured out: Catch-22.
Todays makes it one hundred percent certain. It’s a good old catch, that catch-22.
I can’t remember the previous ones, but ISTR them as being a lot more obscure than this one. Or am I getting smarter (as well as better looking) with each passing year?
The year he and Frazz did “The Old Man and the Sea” was very up-front. You knew the book, just not the costume.
I just saw this thread now. I guessed right based on today’s strip but couldn’t connect the graveyard tree to it. Now I get some of the earlier references. For those unfamiliar with the strip, here’s a link:
http://comics.com/frazz/2009-10-26/
The commentors here got it on the first day, btw.