| Character Name: | Zippy the Pinhead |
| Publisher: | Print Mint Last Gasp King Features Syndicate Dutton Fantagraphics |
| Debut: | Real Pulp Comics #1 (Print Mint, March 1971) |
| Creators: | Bill Griffith |
| Species: | human or possibly alien or possibly android |
| Homeworld: | Earth or possibly another planet; also Dingburg |
| Partners: | Zerbina |
| Powers: | philosophical non sequiturs, verbal free association |
| Sortkey: | Zippy the Pinhead |
Zippy the Pinhead is a fictional character who is the protagonist of Zippy, an American comic strip created by Bill Griffith. Zippy's most famous quotation, "Are we having fun yet?", appears in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations and became a catchphrase. He almost always wears a yellow muumuu/clown suit with large red polka dots, and puffy, white clown shoes.[1] (Other forms of attire may be seen when appropriate to the context, e.g. a toga.) Although in name and appearance, Zippy is a microcephalic, 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 ("All life is a blur of Republicans and meat!"), verbal free association, and pursuit of popular culture ephemera. His wholehearted devotion to random artifacts satirizes the excesses of consumerism.
The character of Zippy the Pinhead initially appeared in underground publications during the 1970s. The Zippy comic is distributed by King Features Syndicate to more than 100 newspapers, and Griffith self-syndicates strips to college newspapers and alternative weeklies. The strip is unique among syndicated multi-panel dailies for its characteristics of literary nonsense, including a near-absence of either straightforward gags or continuous narrative, and for its unusually intricate artwork, which is reminiscent of the style of Griffith's 1970s underground comix.
Zippy made his first appearance in Real Pulp Comics #1 in March 1971, published by Print Mint.[2]
In a 2008 interview with Alex Dueben, Griffith recalled how it all began:
The strip began in the Berkeley Barb in 1976 and was syndicated nationally soon after (by Rip Off Press),[3] originally as a weekly strip. When William Randolph Hearst III took over the San Francisco Examiner in 1985, he offered Griffith an opportunity to do Zippy as a daily strip. Several months later it was picked up for worldwide daily distribution by King Features Syndicate in 1986, appearing in 60 daily papers by 1988. The Sunday Zippy debuted in 1990. When the San Francisco Chronicle canceled Zippy briefly in 2002, the newspaper 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 has developed a cult following[4] and continues to be syndicated in many newspapers.
Zippy's original appearance was partly inspired by the microcephalic Schlitzie, from the film Freaks, which was enjoying something of a cult revival at the time, and P. T. Barnum's sideshow performer Zip the Pinhead, who may not have been a microcephalic but was nevertheless billed as one.[5]
Griffith has never committed himself to a set origin story for Zippy; no fewer than five have appeared:
Griffith also never committed himself to any set time period or home location for Zippy.
Griffith compares the creation of the strip to jazz: "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."[6]
Zippy's favorite foods are taco sauce and Ding Dongs.[7] He sometimes snacks on Polysorbate 80.
Zippy's signature expression of surprise is "Yow!" Zippy's unpredictable behavior sometimes causes severe difficulty for others, but never for himself. (For example, drug dealers tried to use him as a drug mule, but lost their stash or were jailed.)
He is married to a nearly identical pinhead named Zerbina, has two children, Fuelrod (a boy) and Meltdown (a girl), both apparently in their early teens, and owns a cat named Dingy. His parents, Ebb and Flo, originally from Kansas, live in Florida. Zippy's angst-ridden twin brother Lippy also frequently appears. He is portrayed as Zippy's total opposite, often dressed in a conservative suit, thinking sequentially, and avoiding his brother's penchant for non-sequiturs. In a daily strip dated 8 March 2005, he is depicted as being deeply moved by the poetry of Leonard Cohen, the landscape paintings of Maxfield Parrish, and the music of John Tesh.[8]
He has four close friends:
A humanoid toad, Mr. Toad (less commonly "Mr. the Toad") who embodies blind greed and selfishness, appears occasionally (along with his wife, Mrs. Toad, and their children, Mustang and Blazer), as do The Toadettes, a group of mindless and interchangeable amphibians, who pop up here and there; and the Stupidity Patrol, described by Bill Griffith as "cruising the streets of L.A., correcting the behavior of insensitive louts".[9] (Mr. Toad first appeared in underground strips done by Griffith in 1969.)[10]
Another occasionally occurring character is God, appearing either as a disembodied head or a head superimposed on various peoples' bodies. He is depicted as either conversing with Zippy on various philosophical topics, or commenting on humanity in general.[11]
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; Zippy also frequently participates in his long-running conversation with the giant fiberglass doggie mascot of San Francisco's Doggie Diner chain (later, the Carousel diner near the San Francisco Zoo). For a while the Zippy website encouraged people to send photos of interesting places for Zippy to visit in the strip.
In 2007, Griffith began to focus his daily strip on the fictional city of Dingburg, Maryland, Zippy's "birthplace" which, according to the cartoonist, is located "17 miles west of Baltimore."[12] Griffith said:
In regard to Zippy's famous catchphrase, at the 2003 University of Florida Conference on Comics and Graphic Novels, Griffith recalled the phone call from Bartlett's:
Following rumors of a Zippy movie project that was never consummated, Griffith devoted dozens of strips to his real and imagined dealings with Hollywood. An animated television series, to be produced by Film Roman and co-written by Diane Noomin, was in negotiations from 1996 to 2001.
On July 9, 2004, Zippy made his stage debut in San Francisco in Fun: The Concept at the Dark Room Theatre. Bill Griffith approved of the adaptation, though he did not work on the project. Fun: The Concept was adapted by Denzil J. Meyers with Jim Fourniadis.
A collection of about 1,000 Zippy quotes was formerly packaged and distributed with the Emacs text editor. Some installations of the "fortune" command, available on most Unix-type systems, also contain this collection. This gives Zippy a very wide audience, since most Emacs users can have a random Zippy quote printed on their screen by typing "M-x yow" and most Linux or BSD users can get a random quote by typing "fortune zippy" in a shell. However, as a result of a decision by Richard Stallman prompted by FSF lawyer Eben Moglen, motivated by copyright concerns,[13] these quotes were erased in GNU Emacs 22.[14] Zippy under emacs now will only say "Yow! Legally-imposed CULTURE-reduction is CABBAGE-BRAINED!".[15] Zippy can be restored by replacing the yow file with one from an older Emacs.
After Griffith criticized Scott Adams' comic Dilbert for being "a kind of childish, depleted shell of a once-vibrant medium,"[16] Adams responded a year and half later on May 18, 1998, with a comic strip called Pippy the Ziphead, "cramming as much artwork in as possible so no one will notice there's only one joke... [and] it's on the reader."[17] Dilbert notes that the strip is "nothing but a clown with a small head who says random things" and Dogbert responds that he is "maintaining his artistic integrity by creating a comic that no one will enjoy."[18]
Zippy also makes an appearance in the 1995 round-robin work The Narrative Corpse where he takes the stick figure protagonist to Croatia for "peace and quiet". Another appearance can be found in the Ramones' comic book-themed 2005 compilation Weird Tales of the Ramones, consisting of Zippy asking to play "air glockenspiel" for the band.
Zippy appears in several issues of the Red Anvil Comics 2011 comic book series War of the Independents.