Bill Griffith

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Bill Griffith (born William Henry Jackson Griffith in Brooklyn, NY 1944) is a popular cartoonist in the United States. He grew up in Levittown, Long Island. He is best known for his panel cartoon Zippy the Pinhead. Griffith was a prominent cartoonist in the underground comics movement based out of San Francisco in the late 1960s, and along with Art Spiegelman, Griffith co-founded the comics anthology Arcade. 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. He presently lives and works in East Haddam, Connecticut, where he lives with his wife, Cartoonist Diane Noomin.

"Zippy" made his first appearance in the Underground comic, "Real Pulp #1" (1971). The often-used catch phrase, "Are we having fun yet?" was credited to Griffith in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, Sixteenth Edition, 1992.

The one-row format Zippy strip debuted in the Berkeley Barb in 1976 and continues in weekly newspapers to this day. The daily Zippy strip (syndicated by King Features to over 200 newspapers worldwide) started in 1986. Griffith co-created (with cartoonist Jay Kinney in 1970) the best-selling Underground comic series, "Young Lust". He has also contributed comics and illustrations to the National Lampoon, High Times, The New Yorker, the Village Voice and the New York Times, among others. Zippy books and comics are currently published by Fantagraphics Books in Seattle WA.

[edit] Quotes

"When I'm doing a Zippy strip, I'm aware that I'm weaving elements together, almost improvising, as if I were all the instruments in a little jazz combo, then stepping back constantly to edit and fine-tune. Playing with language is what delights Zippy the most." [1]
"I also dislike Calvin and Hobbes. I think it's nothing much more than a re-hash of formula kid strips. Everyone says Calvin and Hobbes is about a real kid, but to me there's nothing real about it; it's clearly the voice of an adult in a kid's body. It doesn't make much sense to me." [2]
"Some people believe that I'm stupid, or possibly mentally retarded. I have no comment on this."