I’ve never been able to articulate my thoughts about Zippy, which probably explains why I’m just now putting this stuff up on the page when I’ve had it since I started. Here goes: I like the stuff, really I do. It’s just… it’s the kind of thing that I like a lot more in theory than I do in practice. Kind of like that horrible new movie with Sean Penn playing the retarded guy. I want to believe that all he needs is love to raise his daughter, but I know that he’s retarded and all the heart-wrenching music in the world won’t change the fact that he’s incapable of it. Maybe that’s a bad analogy… Anyway, this is still one of the best daily strips running, if you can find it anywhere. It is, for reasons unknown, something that I don’t pick up when I see it sitting there in a comic store, and I don’t order it when I see it on the preorder page. The couple of things I have were purchased on incredibly cheap deals, otherwise I wouldn’t have any at all. What this says to me is that, no matter how much I protest to the contrary, I just don’t like it all that much. I liked his old Griffith Observatory stuff a lot, and there are a lot of genuinely funny things in here, don’t get me wrong. It’s just always left me kind of cold. I know I’m in the extreme minority on this one, so go on without me. Here’s his webpage, where you can find all kinds of samples and various other Zippy-related things. This book has Zippy turn into a beatnik, carve Jack Palance into Mount Rushmore, and talk to Ernie Bushmiller (the guy who started Nancy). You know, I wonder if I would have had the same opinion about this guy if Fox had approached him years ago instead of Matt Groening. I don’t know why I say bad things about this guy. Reading his stuff has obviously set my brain in a different direction that it usually goes…
