Given that google and urbandictionary both say that this is New Wave Of British Heavy Metal, I have to assume this is a joke about the elements used to create the golems (similar to the Titanium Elementals in oots 423 http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0423.html ). Not quite convinced I've grasped it though.

Were the umlauts on the golem really necessary? For me they distracted a little, but maybe I'm missing something about the hebrew origins of the word.

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I think it's simpler than hebrew origins. Umlauts are just metal. Y'know, like Mötley Crüe.

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Ah, now it's starting to fit together. The four golems are a heavy metal rock group.

Of course, last.fm helps fill in the gaps:

http://www.last.fm/artist/golem

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Hehe, umlauts are from German, not from Hebrew. But good guess!

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Thanks for the heads-up, but it's because I'm a fluent German-speaker that it bothered me. In German Golem is written "Golem", not "Gölem". In Czech too (the most popular Golem legend comes from Prague) the word is written and pronounced "Golem".

After checking it out on wikipedia last week I learnt that the word was originally Hebrew. I don't know how it might have been pronounced in Hebrew, so I supposed that the umlauts might have come from there.

As is abundandtly clear from today's strip, I'm looking in completely the wrong place for the humour. Rob's jokes are much more pop-culture based than what I was thinking, and certainly cleverer. The fluid stepping into AYB in todays strip almost brought a tear to my eye - excellent work!

Finally, since I haven't said it for a while, I love Erf, and the new strips are the highlight of my week. Keep up the excellent work!

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