Zippy the pinhead
Zippy the Pinhead is the main character in the comic strip of the same name, created by Bill Griffith.
Publication history
Zippy made his first appearance in Real Pulp Comix #1 in March 1971. The comic strip began in The Berkeley Barb in 1976 and was syndicated nationally soon after, originally as a weekly strip; it has been a daily feature since 1985.
The Zippy comic strip has a cult following of devoted readers; however, many people find nothing humorous in Zippy and cannot comprehend the strip. This antagonism and confusion is so common that the official Zippy website contains a tutorial on understanding the comic strip. When the original home of the Zippy daily strip, the San Francisco Chronicle, cancelled it briefly in 2002, the Chronicle received thousands of letters of protest, including one from Robert Crumb, who called Zippy "by far the very best daily comic strip that exists in America". The Chronicle quickly restored the strip, but dropped it again in 2004, leading to more protests as well as grateful letters from non-fans. The strip continues to be syndicated in other papers.
The strip is unique among syndicated multi-panel dailies for its near-absence of either straightforward gags or continuous narrative, and for its unusually intricate artwork, which is only slightly simplified from the style of Griffith's 1970s underground comics.
Characters
Zippy's original appearance was partly inspired by Zip and Pip (Elvira and Jenny Lee Snow), the microcephalic twins in the film Freaks, which was enjoying something of a cult revival at the time. However, he is distinctive not so much for his skull shape, or for any identifiable form of brain damage, but for his enthusiasm for philosophical non sequiturs, verbal free association, and the pursuit of pop culture ephemera. His wholehearted devotion to random artifacts satirizes the excesses of consumerism. Zippy's unpredictable behavior sometimes causes severe difficulty for others, but never for himself. His character is partly inspired by P.T. Barnum's sideshow freak, Zip the What-is-it.
Zippy always wears a yellow muumuu with large red spots, and clown shoes.
He is married to a nearly identical pinhead named Zerbina, and has two children, Fuel-Rod and Meltdown. He has two close friends: Claude Funston, a hapless working man, and Griffy, a stand-in for Bill Griffith who often appears in the strip to complain about various aspects of modern life. A humanoid toad named Mr. Toad appears occasionally, embodying blind greed and selfishness.
In his daily-strip incarnation, Zippy spends much of his time traveling and commenting on interesting places; recent strips focus on his fascination with roadside icons featuring giant beings.
His most famous quote is "Are we having fun yet?"
