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This month's LitVision
Gallery features the work
of Bill Griffith, creator of
Zippy the Pinhead!
I've been a Zippy fan since i was a kid. My dad bought
me Zippy books (and Mad magazines) to read during
my formative years. Great idea Dad! Anyway, enjoy
what you see here and check out Bill's website. -Pat
www.ZippyThePinhead.com
These pieces will all be part of an upcoming
gallery show in New London CT, info below:
GALLERY SHOW: Bill Griffith will be exhibiting a dozen
major pieces (Zippy and others), spanning several
decades, at the ALVA GALLERY in New London CT
as part of "The Illustrious Cartoon" show. Other
cartoonists featured include children's book
author/illustrator (and occasional Zippy jam
artist) Jon Buller and "Zits" cartoonist Jim Borgman.
January 29 - March 11, 2005.
54 State St., New London, CT. 860-437-8664.
Gallery hours: Tues.-Fri., 11AM to 5:30PM and by
appointment.
Opening Reception: Saturday, January 29. 6:30 PM.
Bill Griffith will be there.
A BILL GRIFFITH BIO:
"Are we having fun yet?" This non sequitur utterance
by the clown-suited philosopher/media star Zippy the
Pinhead has become so oft-quoted that it is now in
Bartlett's Familiar Quotations. Zippy has in fact become
an international icon, even appearing on the Berlin Wall.
Zippy's creator, Bill Griffith, began his comics career in
New York City in 1969. His first strips were published
in the East Village Other and Screw Magazine and
featured an angry amphibian named Mr. The Toad. He
ventured to San Francisco in 1970 to join the
burgeoning underground comics movement and made
his home there until 1998. His first major comic book
titles included Tales of Toad and Young Lust, a
best-selling series parodying romance comics of the
time.He was co-editor of Arcade, The Comics Revue
for its seven issue run in the mid-70s and worked with
the important underground publishers throughout the
seventies and up to the present: Print Mint, Last Gasp,
Rip Off Press, Kitchen Sink and Fantagraphics Books.
The first Zippy strip appeared in Real Pulp #1 (Print
Mint) in 1970. The strip went weekly in 1976, first in the
Berkeley Barb and then syndicated nationally through
Rip Off Press.
In 1980 weekly syndication was taken over by Zipsynd
(later Pinhead Productions), owned and operated by
the artist. Zippy also appeared in the pages of the
National Lampoon and High Times from 1977 to 1984. In
1985 the San Francisco Examiner asked Griffith to do
Zippy six days a week, and in 1986 he was approached
by King Features Syndicate to take the daily strip to a
national audience.Sunday color strips began running in
1990. Today Zippy appears in over 200 newspapers
worldwide. There have been over a dozen paperback
collections of Griffith's work and numerous comic
book and magazine appearances, both here and
abroad. He became an irregular contributor to The New
Yorker in 1994. Griffith's inspiration for Zippy came
from several sources, among them the sideshow
"pinheads" in Tod Browning's 1932 film Freaks. The
name "Zippy" springs from "Zip the What-Is-It?" a
"freak" exhibited by P.T. Barnum from 1864 to 1926.
Zip's real name was William Henry Jackson, born in
1842. Coincidentally, Griffith (as he discovered in 1975,
five years after creating Zippy) bears the same name.
He was born William Henry Jackson Griffith (in 1944),
named after his great-grandfather, well-known
photographer of the Old West William H. Jackson
(1842-1941). Griffith presently lives and works in East
Haddam, Connecticut with his wife, cartoonist Diane
Noomin.
