Zippy: Nation of Pinheads

Zippy: Nation of Pinheads by Bill Griffith
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Zippy: Nation of Pinheads is a collection of Zippy strips from 1981 and 1982 starring Zippy the Pinhead.

I was aware of Zippy the Pinhead for years but never read any until I found this for 6 bucks.

Zippy is a microcephalic in a polka dotted muumuu that Bill Griffith uses to make sport of 1980s culture using observations and non-sequiturs. That's pretty much all I can say. It's a bizarre strip.

Bill Griffith is a talented draftsman. He uses a lot of cross hatching and black to give his strips depth. What I'm trying to say is the strip is surprisingly detailed and isn't a Garfield strip that takes an hour or two to knock out a day's page. Griffith's sense of humor shows through using Zippy as his mouthpiece, poking fun at pop culture in almost every strip.

I'm sure this strip wasn't meant to be read in a book like this and I'm equally sure it hit differently forty years ago when it was new. Four decades later, the references in almost every strip are dated. I think if you were born after 1990, most of the references will go right over your head. I'm pushing 44 and I had trouble with some of them.

Zippy: Nation of Pinheads is a fun collection of strips featuring everyone's favorite pinhead. I'm not sure I'll read another one, though. Three out of five stars.

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