Back in the early 2000s (because I can’t bring myself to say “oughts”), I used to play a little online game with celebrities called “5 for the Famous.”
Back then it was easy to get people’s email addresses (before all of you became stalkerish creeps). I used to write and ask random celebrities to play along. They would get 10 questions and had to choose 5 to answer.
Here is one of those interviews:
August 15, 2003
Bill Griffith
“Are we having fun yet?”- Zippy the Pinhead.
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 has worked with the important underground publishers throughout the seventies and up to the present.
The first Zippy strip appeared in Real Pulp #1 (Print Mint) in 1970. Zippy also appeared in the pages of the National Lampoon and High Times from 1977 to 1984.
In 1986 Bill 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. He became an irregular contributor to The New Yorker in 1994.
The 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. The real cool part is that, 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.
Taking a few moments from the skewering of pop culture, visiting roadside attractions and just living life in Connecticut, Bill took a shot at five questions:
Out all of the Roadside Attractions you have drawn, which one would you want to be buried next to?
My dream is to buy a giant Doggie head (the giant dachshund head on a pole from the defunct “Doggie Diner” restaurant chain in San Francisco) and have it installed in a hydraulic underground silo in my backyard (so it could rise up for special occasions but not always be there to gross out the neighbors). When I meet the Big Meatball In The Sky, I’d like my ashes installed inside his big bulb nose.
If you did Young Lust now, how different would it be?
Kind of like the ways I’m different compared to when I did Young Lust in the 70s–less sex-obsessed and more interested in depressing reality.
Give me an anagram for your name.
Glib Fir Filth
What is the best reality show on television right now, aside from the Nightly News of course?
All reality shows are mind-numbingly boring. The best show on TV right now is Curb Your Enthusiasm.
Do you ever just do a Zippy strip and just laugh because you know 50% of the readers won’t get it?
I make it a point honor and respect to my readers to never consider their needs or abilities. Anyway, I know eight people who always get Zippy. That’s plenty.
