Written and illustrated by Bill Griffith. Collects various Zippy the Pinhead comic strips with some added exclusively for this release. Softcover, 8" x 5", horizontal format, B&W.
Zippy the Pinhead is an American underground comic strip character created by Bill Griffith in 1971. Zippy is instantly recognizable for his cone-shaped head, polka-dotted muumuu, and nonsensical catchphrases like “Are we having fun yet?”—a line that became part of the American cultural lexicon.
Zippy was inspired by real-life circus performers with microcephaly (notably those in Tod Browning’s 1932 film Freaks) and took his name and look from the old sideshow term “pinhead.” But Griffith’s Zippy evolved from exploitation roots into something far more surreal and postmodern.
Zippy is not a traditional character with linear motivations or consistent logic. Instead, he wanders through American culture, engaging in disjointed conversations with inanimate objects, advertising mascots, and confused suburbanites. He embodies absurdism, pop culture overload, and anti-commercialism, making him a critique of modern life through nonsense.
Zippy debuted in underground comix (like Real Pulp) before getting picked up by newspapers in the mid-1980s, eventually becoming syndicated by King Features. Griffith’s daily strip still runs in select papers and online. The strip is known for its dense panels, cluttered word balloons, and references to arcane pop culture ephemera. It often switches between Zippy's antics and meta-commentary from Griffith himself.
Though Zippy has always been a cult favorite rather than a mass hit, the strip's influence is notable in the alternative comics movement, and its critique of mass media and reality has been studied in both pop culture and academic circles. Griffith himself is a respected figure in comix history, also known for his autobiographical graphic novel Invisible Ink and Three Rocks, a biography of Ernie Bushmiller (creator of Nancy).
In essence, Zippy the Pinhead is an ongoing dadaist monologue disguised as a comic strip—part satire, part stream-of-consciousness art piece, and always weird.
