Zippy the Pinhead: History and Key Facts

Zippy the Pinhead is the fictional protagonist of Zippy, an American comic strip created by Bill Griffith. Zippy's most famous quotation, "Are we having fun yet?", became a catchphrase. He almost always wears a yellow muumuu/clown suit with large red polka dots, and puffy, white clown shoes.

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.

Source and attribution

Text excerpted from Zippy the Pinhead by Wikipedia contributors, available under Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0. The extract is abridged and formatting has been adjusted; the adapted text on this page is shared under the same licence. Revision history.