Sometimes, Comics References Just Call Attention to Themselves

So I'm reading Michael Chabon's Wonder Boys (haven't even seen the film yet, so shhhhh, just a 100 pages in), and I of course know from later work that he's a big genre and comics fan. But here in his first "hit" novel, I think he went a little far with a geeky reference. See if you can spot it:
I'm just wondering where Johnny's at. Or is Chabon a HERBIE fan?