The 2002 collection of Bill Griffith's "Zippy the Pinhead" strip, Zippy Annual, (Fantagraphics) opens with a sequence that shows the cartoonist at his most playful. In it, a tearful retro comic strip femme - redolent of the kind of kitschy figures Griffy used to parody in his Young Lust underground days - mysteriously appears in the panels of the "Zippy" strip. Who is she? Neither our microcephalic lead nor his creator know, so the cartoonist decides to search through the "few remaining 'realistic' strips in the newspaper," walking through such dinosaurs like "Rex Morgan, M.D." and "Mark Trail," only to be rebuffed by their straight-laced leads. Unsuccessful, Griffy returns to his own strip to discover that the teary woman isn't from the funny pages at all - but a seventies romance comic book. "I hope it isn't too late to save Zippy from her politically incorrect enticements," he says before racing off to rescue his lovestruck hero.
Periodically, I marvel at Zippy's continued life on the mainstream comics page. The strip remains a model of everything that "typical" comics readers are supposed to hate: a decidedly uncuddly muumuu-clad lead, non-liner storytelling, intellectual in-jokes, plus a point of view that embraces rigorous critical thought (even as it recognizes its limitations). Doesn't Griffith know that we're an anti-intellectual culture? Who does he think is the audience for this concatenation of cross-cultural japery, anyhoo?
Actually, the cartoonist tells us, "all the non-sequitars . . . all th' obscure references . . . the convolution . . . th' 'giant beings'" are for one person: Grace Sturm. Who is Grace Sturm? "If I knew the answer to that, big guy," Griffith tells the questioning pinhead, "I'd save thousands in shrink bills!"
Turns out that Miz. S. is a newspaper editor who "occasionally understood" Zippy. This li'l factoid is revealed in a "pindex" at the back of the annual (a typical Griffith touch: who else would deign to annotate a daily comic strip so compulsively?) The rest of us, most likely, just let Griffith's comically surreal blend of cultural critique & lowbrow fetishizing wash over us. Nuthin' wrong with that, of course. It's what Zippy'd do.
Article comments
1 - Steve Rhodes
There is a Zippy website.
I went to the protest when the SF Chron dropped Zippy. The editor who made that unwise decision is no longer with the paper.
2 - Bill Sherman
Thanks, Steve. I should've included the link in the article: I see on the site, by the way, that Griffy himself is being interviewed on a Travel Channel special devoted to giant roadside attractions (it's on tonight, 11/14, and Saturday, 11/17).