Cartoonist Bill Griffith’s “Zippy” is a very strange strip. I read it and sometimes don’t get it-although it is often absurdly funny. Why is the strip obsessed with diners? Zippy and the other characters are often portrayed eating in diners, being crazy, or on the road to a diner. What’s the significance?
Here is my refrigerator full of FLANK STEAK…and over there is my UPHOLSTERED CANOE…I don’t know WHY I OWN them!
You can’t explain Zippy. Zippy just is.
Bill Griffith always had a fondness for American pop culture, of which diners are a quintessential exemplar.
The two characters in the diner…arguing over who will eat the last blueberry muffin…is…so profound!
Winner, winner, chicken dinner.
I have no idea, but I was all excited to see the Charcoal Pit again the other day- it’s one of the precious few things I miss from Delaware. That’s three times that it’s been in the strip.
The strips where Griffith memorializes the New York of the past and such are just beautiful. Zippy is Zippy, though.
Scott Adams responds to Bill Griffiths’ criticisms:
http://dilbert.com/strips/comic/1998-05-18/?CmtOrder=Rating&CmtDir=DESC
http://dilbert.com/strips/comic/1998-05-19/
Bill shoots back:
http://zippythepinhead.com/Merchant2/merchant.mv?Screen=PROD&Product_Code=20-Sep-98&Category_Code=sun1998&Product_Count=37
I’ll take Zippy every time…