The Messerschmitt symbol

Greetings!

Yes, these strange characters do have a name. When used in English to denote anger, cuss words, frustration and irritability, or something otherwise unprintable, they are called dingbats.

A dingbat is an ornament or spacer used in typesetting, sometimes more formally known as a "printer's ornament". They have been used in cartoons, comics, etc... since early in the 20th century.

That's true, dingbats are the various odd little symbols and wingdings that serve a variety of purposes in typesetting.

However, the particular device I had in mind is called Cross-Popping Veins. When especially muscular people such as body-builders show off their magnificent muscle mass, the veins that feed them routinely bulge beneath the skin. This phenomenon was ported into manga and anime as a means to visually convey extreme effort and physical exertion.

Not long afterward, the bulging vein device appeared as one or two nodes on a character's head to denote fury or passion or rage. Of course, on bald characters such as sumos or samurai, the vein nodes could appear almost anywhere on the head. Characters with a full head of hair were limited to one node on the forehead or temple. For female characters, though rare, the node was drawn on one cheek. It wasn't until much later, after anime began to filter into the American media market, that someone thought to put the bulging vein node atop the hair. At this point, the Cross-Popping Veins had become the visual shorthand device for any severe emotion or exertion, and could "float" in space anywhere on or near the character.

~ Hey, oneuglybunny!

I would be remiss if I didn't mention that these graphical icons deleveloped independently on their own in Japanese comics and animation. Manga artists and anime filmmakers have created some spectacular typography for sound effects and accent notes based on kanji and hiragana logotypes. Beautiful stuff! In addition to that other conventions are used. In american comics a thought ballon showing ZZZZZ's and maybe a log being sawed in half would mean the person is asleep. In manga comics they might show tiny bubbles coming of the chararcters nose! It's fascinating stuff!