Are We Having Fun Yet?
Last week I went over to a Bill Griffith book signing at Politics and Prose
Politics & Prose Bookstore and Coffeehouse which is only a few blocks from my sister Ann's house. Griffith is the author and artist of the comic strip Zippy
Zippy the Pinhead - Wikipedia. He was in town for a comics convention. Since he was due to speak the next day and had a presentation all prepared for that, things were limited to a question and answer session which was pleasantly informal. Griffith grew up in Levittown, NJ (born in Brooklyn I think). He began drawing in New York City before moving to California in the late 60's. Though I hadn't known it, a neighbor of his growing up was Ed Emshwiller the pulp sci-fi illustrator of the 50's and early 60's. Who would occasionally use the Griffith family as models
Bill Griffith - Wikipedia. The writer of science fiction short stories Carol Emshwiller was married to Ed Emshwiller. 
Griffith always struck me as a comic strip artist who had been to art school, and he is listed as a graduate of the Pratt Institute
Pratt Institute - Wikipedia. They have a motto: "Be true to your work and your work will be true to you." (I wonder if it is possible to be true to copy cataloging library books. I have the most sincere 852 fields in the patch.) Along with Bill Griffith the Pratt Institute has graduated Jules Pfeiffer, Peter Max, and (if Wikipedia can be believed) Rob Zombie. Mr. the Toad was perhaps his earliest reoccurring character and predates Zippy [who first appeared in Real Pulp comix #1 Mar 1971]. Early Zippy's stuck pretty close to the blank seeming menace of the the pinhead microcephalic Schlitze who was in Todd Browning's movie Freaks, which I have seen though I can't remember when. Zippy's unsettling charm was to combine this menace with the ability to lead a fully actualized life centered on interrogating pop culture ephemera. Where Griffy, Griffith's alter ego character, struggles to keep ironic distance and skepticism, Zippy embraces all teleudaemonistically.
Griffith seemed very much like I expected him to be. For some reason this surprised me at the time. He was friendly and engaged, free of the aloofness and bitterness one might attribute to a counterculture critic. He seemed a familiar person. Which I attribute to there being a lot of himself in the Zippy strips. He was asked about fellow comic artist Dan O'Neill... This brought out a quick review of the Air Pirates saga. Comics in an anarchistic vein. Griffith was there and knew all these people. Events which have passed into American legend. The topic shifted to the copyright issues involved with a comic that exists to make fun of corporate pop culture. Hello Kitty, Bobs big boy, Nancy and Sluggo have all pleased or alarmed Zippy, and they have all fired back with broadsides of lawyers.
I name one Randi Schaffer as being the person who brought Zippy first to my attention. This was before any Washington area outfit was carrying his stuff. I still think of Randi as being Scott Schaffer's little sister, though surely she was more than that. She was in her youth a comic book connoisseur. What sold me on Zippy was the line Griffy uses to describe him: "mind like a UHF channel selector", Always loved that line I've remembered it all these years. Though its hard to communicate to people in this age of multiplexing TV, DVD, and TIVO remotes.
Randi also tried to sell me on Cerebus who was an aardvark of sorts. This seems to be considered more an alternative comic. The underground comics movement
Underground comix - Wikipedia of which Zippy is part is best exemplified by R. Crumb. It is to a big degree inseparable from the hippie counterculture movement it sprang from. There was a comic which involved a small blue creature, I guess, he was mostly hat, who concluded most if not all episodes by kicking one or more of his friends in the nuts. (and they wonder why my generation revolted against the hippies). Then there were the Fabulous Furry Freak brothers. The era of true underground comics petered out, it's said, when head shops were outlawed roughly the period between when "Wish you were Here" and "Animals" came out. Or in the great alternate calendar about when the Ramones started up. In the period that followed the post underground, and self published movement started. These were comics like: Eight Ball by Daniel Clowes who also did Ghost World, Art School Confidential and who also went to the Pratt institute. There were comics like Tank Girl by Jamie Hewlett, these days doing that Gorillaz thing (Feel good inc. etc.) with Damon Albarns. I also recall a comic which seemed to be drawn entirely with triangles and involved its protagonists falling from one gothic drama into another. A series of implausible and extremely unfortunate events (Which could also describe Love and Rockets).
Another comic I remember though the enthusiasm of a particular person is Reid Fleming : Worlds Toughest Milkman that a former college housemate Dan Searing liked. This was a canadian comic by
David Boswell that ran in a Vancouver weekly. While I've never been the comics consumer that some people I've know have been I'm not unaware of the medium. Whether it's one panel masters like H.T. Webster, Charles Adams. Or the classic newspaper panel strip like Zippy or Winsor MacCay's Little Nemo in Slumberland. When Griffith was asked what other strips he like he named Ferdinand. I remember Ferdinand in a vague non remembering sort of way. He was a little King I think. I can't recall now whether that ran in the Boston Globe the Herald or the Framingham Daily News. The other strip he named was Ernie Bushmiller's Nancy. Nancy was about the gag, always a gag - at least on Ernie's terms. I applaud this choice, because the Ernie Bushmiller who drew it was my grandfather, Paul Ernst Bushmiller's, 2nd cousin. They were both children of a group of three brothers who all emigrated from Dusseldorf in the 1880s. Something about a Kaiser and rampant militarism, it's no longer all that clear.
Bill Griffith doesn't like Bill Waterson's Calvin and Hobbes because it's not a real child's voice but an adults voice full of regrets and recrimination. I liked that strip. It never occurred to me to take it as anything but the musings of a wistful adult. I thought it made sense within its own highly artificial terms. It was one of the least natural comics to run in a newspaper, I feel the same way about the Leviathan. I am at a loss when my 6 year old nephew takes it on as his design for living. I like the classic four panel strip. You can present something and get two takes and double take out of it. Of course there is the obligation to be funny or observantly wry. To have an inclination towards this at least. I know Art Spiegleman has shown comics can go beyond this, but I shouldn't think a little humor now and again would hurt anything.
12:12:54 AM  ;;
|
