9781560976189
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Zippy: From Here to Absurdity (Zippy Annual Series), Vol. 5 share button
Bill Griffith
Genre Fiction Books & Literature
Format Paperback
Dimensions 8.60 (w) x 11.00 (h) x 0.40 (d)
Pages 127
Publisher Fantagraphics Books
Publication Date December 2004
ISBN 9781560976189
Book ISBN 10 1560976187
About Book

America's last great newspaper strip, presented the way it should be read!

Bill Griffith's Zippy the Pinhead is a pop culture icon. The surrealist-leaning character is one of the most recognizable figures on the newspaper pages, seen by tens of millions of people a day. Syndicated by King Features since 1986, Zippy is read in hundreds of daily newspapers across the country, while the Pinhead's trademark non-sequitur, "Are we having fun yet?," has become so often repeated it's in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations. His likeness has been grafittied on the Berlin Wall and aped for Saturday Night Live's classic "Conehead" sketches. This new Zippy collection features approximately a year's worth of strips, from November 2003 through November 2004, including full-color Sundays. Follow Zippy as he weaves in and out of "Bushmiller Country" (the land formerly inhabited by Ernie Bushmiller's classic Nancy comic strip) and as if things weren't strange enough he suddenly begins spouting Japanese, French, Russian, Farsi, Hungarian, Greek, Finnish and Latin! Zippy meets aliens, revisits Levittown (his birthplace) with Griffy, confronts the evil "Ziggy" and frolics with advertising icons like Reddy Kilowatt, Mr. Bubble, Colonel Sanders and the long-forgotten Unifax Astroboy. Oh, yeah, and he takes a long, hot bath (without Mr. Bubble). Unlike most newspaper pages, the book sports top notch reproduction worthy of Griffith's master draftsmanship. Part satire, part philosophy, and part surrealism, Zippy is one having fun pinhead and the perfect antidote to the real world.

Reviews

Publishers Weekly

For all of Griffith's jeers at the predictability of the funny pages, he hints a few times in this collection of strips from 2003 and 2004 that all he's ever wanted is to be as reliable as Nancy (which he parodies on the front cover) or The Family Circus: a faithful daily chuckle for people who know exactly what they're getting. In the context of a newspaper comics page, Zippy and its pinheaded protagonist often seem like a hot blast of highbrow/lowbrow ridiculousness. Read a bunch of strips in a row, though, and it's clear Griffith has settled into a handful of formulas. This volume has sections devoted to particular themes: vintage diners, grotesque roadside statuary and odd little cartoon characters of the past. Sometimes Griffith's stand-in, "Griffy," gets to play straight man to Zippy's non sequiturs or exchange puns with him; other times Zippy just rattles on about nothing in particular for a few panels. Oddly, Griffith's heart doesn't seem to be in his humor-there's more rote wisecracking than actual joke making-or perhaps his particular brand of absurdity has worn out its power of surprise. His drawing, on the other hand, has rarely shown more care-the nature scenes and tourist traps through which the muumuu-clad Zippy strolls are rendered with the engagement and wit that's missing from the gags they support. (Dec.) Copyright 2005 Reed Business Information.
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