 Last time I gave this show I was talking into the mic I was in Santa Rosa a week or two ago Door opened up behind me in the middle of my slide presentation, and I assumed that there must be something wrong So I turned around to see who it was. There's a woman standing there, and she says do you need that microphone? It seemed like an unusual question for a bookstore person to be asking and I kind of looked at her for a second And there was they kind of thought about it and there there was a crowd of a hundred or so people and She went on to say we're having a meditation class, and we can hear every word you're saying So I said yes, I did need the microphone there oops It's just like being at home on my couch This is This is the galley to my first book. It's an advanced reading copy that comes out and If supplied us with a laser pointer, I've never used one of these we could do a bouncing sing-along if we wanted As you can see George Bush is fairly prominently placed This came out at a time when it was It's hard to remember now, but it there was a point when George Bush's re-election seemed pretty much a given and By the time the book came out George was relegated to the background It's time for another session with Zen master George One helps the poor come on everybody. Okay, not really by giving tax relief to the rich The LA riots were the direct result of social welfare programs The only thing disadvantaged minorities need to improve their lives are strong family values You see poverty can only be blamed on the poor themselves tune in next time for more incredible Contortions with Zen master George So I got a fair amount of material out of George This is a computer-generated photograph, of course, but This isn't That's that's Marilyn quail who once authored a book called embrace the serpent and She had some odd little book signing party that every bookseller in town Avoided but a friend of mine was a bookseller and I said well, of course we have to go so It was too scruffy looking people and a bunch of Republicans Hey kids, it's time for the mr. Bill show. Hello, mr. Bill. What's that you've got? Why this is my new health care plan Say what a coincidence. I'm from the insurance industry here Let me see that maybe I can make some helpful suggestions. Well, I'm not sure Excuse me, I'm from the AMA I'd like to look at your plan as well and I'm with the pharmaceutical industry perhaps I can be of some assistance No, wait, be careful. Oh Sorry, mr. Bill. Well kids, I guess these things happen when you're as malleable as mr. Bill Who's now going to be moving even further to the right to prove to everyone that he's a moderate? I mean it's pretty it's pretty pathetic when Bill Clinton has been defined as the far left in this country successfully This month tune in tomorrow examines the question on everyone's mind if the Clinton administration were an old TV show What show would it be? Why I myself have spent hours pondering that very topic as have I this comic strip certainly has a metaphorical finger on the Nation's pulse. This is actually out of spin magazine where I was work doing work for a while Maybe the original Star Trek for instance Al Gore would make a terrific mr. Spock though Bill Clinton doesn't exactly seem to have Captain Kirk's Decisiveness captain sensors indicate political turbulence dead ahead Well change course. No keep going fire phasers wait hold your fire abandon ship. No wait Or how about Batman though in that case we're not quite sure who would portray Robin But I thought I was your crime fighting sidekick you want to sleep on the bat couch tonight Batman Perhaps most appropriate would be the mod squad in which if memory serves a trio of baby boomers spoke of change and idealism While working diligently to uphold the status quo Like NAFTA is really groovy man and dig cutting the military budget extensively would be a real bummer right on man So I'm not exactly an apologist for the Clinton administration, but I still get all this mail pretty much accusing me of Cosponsoring the co-writing the Clinton health plan or something This modern world has been getting a lot of mail lately from conservatives who seem to be angry at us for things Bill Clinton has done They often lump us into the amorphous category of you liberals Which apparently encompasses anyone to the left of Bob Dole Sparky you're doing a great job spreading our radical left-wing propaganda Thanks, Bill. Listen. I've got a run. I'm meeting Lloyd Benson to discuss the overthrow of capitalism Of course, we can't blame readers of differing political persuasions for feeling threatened by this cartoon Sometimes we ourselves are a little overwhelmed by the awesome power we wield Bad news sir. Tom tomorrow has made our corporation the target of one of his bitingly clever cartoons Damn, we might as well give up now. We don't stand a chance against his caustic wit In fact, we have to admit it's pretty darned unfair that the nation's Corporate-owned media are so thoroughly dominated by left-wing voices such as ours Why conservatives can barely get a word in edge-wise Yes, it's certainly a one-sided debate Which is why as a public service to our long-suffering conservative readers We're happy to present the following ready-to-mail coupon denouncing this very cartoon dear editor How dare you print the opinions of Tom tomorrow? They are at variance with my own you liberals This is a portrait of the artist as a young consumer I Pretty much the strip started out more as a satire on consumerism the initial idea was to sort of use old appropriating advertising images to make fun of advertising and It was an easy segue into politics since they're both about people selling you things you don't really want or need Marketers rarely seek to fill needs but rather to create them for instance It is unlikely that there was really much demand for clear products prior to their introduction You know Marge my soft drink just has too much color Yes, so does my dishwashing liquid Nor was there a noticeable clamor for dry beer a product whose utter inexplicability was Sidestepped with an ad campaign ridiculing the need for explanations Why ask why just shut up and drink the damn beer and while few people seem to worry about stale cola Cans of diet Pepsi are nonetheless being stamped with expiration dates to ensure freshness Honey, do you think this is still good? I don't know better. Just pour it out and buy some more It is an ongoing process way at this very moment highly paid professionals are working diligently to develop even more useless Innovations you won't be able to live without how about fireproof potato chips? Maybe a combination TV hairdryer. I know edible laundry detergent And this is another one on the theme that I did a few years ago Billy. Did you clean your room? Uh-huh, excuse me young man I am an attorney for the Pepsi corporation and as you can see from this can of diet Pepsi the phrase Uh-huh is now the trademark property of Pepsi Co, Inc. We spent a lot of money formulating this catchy memorable slogan Billy and we intend to protect our investment So unless you want your family to lose everything they own in a lengthy and expensive trademark infringement suit I Suggest you use alternative affirmative phrases such as yes, you bet or sure thing. Okay, Billy. Uh-huh. I mean you bet That's a good boy The letter from Pepsi came in about three days later and It turned out to be a Some vice president in charge of idiotic slogans who wanted to buy the original art So I sold it to him So I spent a lot of time going through old magazines and have found some pretty bizarre old ads that I like to share such as He won't love you if you cough due to a cold which is kind of the essence of advertising I think Or what cigarette do you smoke doctor? More smoking docks Why do children crave candy? Because it's good for them that this idea was used as recently as the 60s The note to mothers on the bottom warns that exhaustion may be dangerous Especially to children who haven't learned to avoid it by pacing themselves exhaustion opens the door a little wider to the bugs and ailments That are always lying in wait sugar puts back energy fast Offsets exhaustion Whereas synthetic sweeteners put back nothing. So if you want your kids to be healthy no sweet and low just feed them pure sugar What can I say and I don't know about you But I don't know if I believe that Salvador dolly really said the scotch I drink his old Angus It's really tops it might have lost something in the translation Okay, sorry about that This is yeah Technology you don't even have to look where you're going electricity will drive the car you can just Zoom down the freeway playing dominoes Which is kind of a very trendy idea these days That we don't really have to Examine the political or social consequences of technology that it's just going to solve all of our problems. There are some Very popular magazines devoted to that premise. I just tend to think you should probably keep your hands on the steering wheel I'm cruising down the information highway and high gear Riding the waves of the digital ocean Exploring the uncharted regions of cyberspace Actually, you're sitting on your butt staring at a computer screen. Who asked you? So I've also been known to poke a little fun at our friends in the news media It's time for the local news. Good evening several hours ago a political rally was held in our city now for more on the story Let's go to Biff Williams who's standing by live Biff Thanks, Wanda. I'm standing here on the street where the rally was held earlier tonight As you can see everyone has long since gone home. There is absolutely nothing happening here now There's no reason for me to be here Wanda except to make use of our station's gimmicky mobile cam news van That's often the case Biff after all let's face it on the scene TV reporters like you usually do no reporting whatsoever But instead only recite wire service copy into the camera copy. We at the station have given you only moments before airtime ha ha Ha ha well anything for ratings a Wanda standing by live. I'm Biff Williams. Thanks, Biff We'll check back with you later snicker for another live update During a recent newscast cokey Roberts claimed to be on location while actually standing in front of a studio backdrop Boy, is it cold out here back to you Peter? New York Newsday recently published a computer generated front page photo of an event which had not yet occurred Hey, this is great. I can read the news before it happens Of course here in San Francisco. We don't get to read the news even when it does happen Of course news professionals would argue that the news must be presented entertainingly or no one will pay attention And now for a report on health care. We go to Connie Chung high atop the CBS news tightrope Without philosophy gaining dominance and with computer graphics growing ever more sophisticated Perhaps the evening news will soon become really entertaining Wow Bob Dole just turned into a laser blasting flying robot But look Bill Clinton is putting on his atomic-powered battle armor Which he's gonna need for Newt Gingrich. I think so this is I've been giving this talk in bookstores a lot and this is sort of an appropriate appropriate cartoon Hey, why buy that book from a locally owned independent bookstore when you can buy it somewhat cheaper at one of the many Corporate-owned chain stores popping up around town. I can Well, maybe not that exact book, but you'll certainly have your choice of many fine best-sellers and at very affordable prices, too Noom Chomsky never heard of him here. How about one by Michael Crichton instead? This one's our blue light special a terrific value. It's not really what I had in mind And if you've already read the latest best-sellers don't despair There's always the gift book section where you'll find the books arranged conveniently enough by cost Excuse me. I'm looking for a book in the $7 range first. I'll on your right So hurry on down to the nearest chain bookstore outlet where they understand that books are just another Consumer item and the only thing that really matters is unit price You're sure you don't have it ch o m s ky political analysis. Sorry, but if you like politics, how about Rush Limbaugh's book? It's a real bargain so the Northern California independent booksellers put that cartoon on a t-shirt Which if you want to have someone spending 10 minutes staring at your t-shirt reading it That's a good idea The conventional wisdom in comics is that people will only spend I think something like 2.6 seconds reading a comic strip But there are a few of us out there who sort of try to defy the conventional wisdom and of course Bill Griffith is another and we sort of We did a we collaborated on a cartoon once which sort of addresses that topic And I was going to ask Bill up on stage to read Zippy's parts Sunday morning at the Brainwash laundromat on Folsom Street You know is that most of these comics aren't worth the paper they're printed on they're all form and no content Hmm. I love the way newsprint smells. Do you get the family circus? It's just so surreal Sometimes I wonder where my strip fits in it defies easy Categorization is it postmodern political satire or satirically political postmodernism? Are my polka dots threatening to Iowa City if I shave will I gain acceptance and Boise? Do they have martinizing on Alpha Centauri? The strip is also verbose in the extreme editors complain, but I have faith in the readers after all That's why they're called readers, isn't it because they read America's not completely post-literate yet What do they want from me meaningless site gags infantile jokes about body odor? I have better things to mutter mutter mutter mutter. I love words I love the word word word world weird weird is that I before e or is it? Memorax and why do they call these things balloons? Are they filled with hot air? Am I a word processor or food processor? Is anybody reading this in Hayward or am I? Of course a meaningless site gag can helps off in a harsh and frightening message like the fact that the nation's banking system Is on the verge of collapse? Hmm a pleasant lemony tartness, but could use a tad more polysorbate 80 So without I think we have to pause for a moment while they change the carousels, but I'm turning it over to bill Are we having a lecture yet? I hope nobody's too disappointed that I'm I'm not dressed in a polka-dotted moomoo But I left it in the trunk this afternoon Well as a bit of background as to Where's it be might have come from this is a little piece of? History from 1957 that's me at the controls of that rocket ship My this was the cover of science fiction stories from September 1957 and my neighbor growing up in Leviton The ultimate planned suburban community was the only weirdo in Leviton Which may have had some influence on my future Anyway, he used our family's models for his cover. So that's me. I'm hijacking a rocket ship and my father Is telling me to get back this kind of sums up my relationship with with my dad for the next so many years Here's one of the things that was that was forbidden from my home along with Elvis Presley This this is what got mad magazine thrown out by my father This is a cover by the the well-known cartoonist Basil Wilburton And I think it had as it did for many people in my generation a major influence on warping my sense of humor Now this is getting to the origins of zippy and sprinting ahead of 15 years or so these are The sideshow so-called freaks from the movie freaks, which was a 1932 So-called horror film by the director Todd Browning. That's him in the center the tall guy and the the so-called pinheads Around him to the bottom the one he's hugging was named slitsie slitsie was a female and This is a movie. I saw when I was going to art school in 1962 and I had a major influence on me But I didn't know about it until about eight years later This is the other this is backwards. This is the other Circus sideshow pinhead that had a major influence on zippies Not only existence, but his name. This is zip the what is it zip the what is it was a Circus sideshow character exhibited by the Barnum and Bailey Circus from 1864 to 1926 Now the weird thing about this is I found out about five years after I started drawing zippy that this character is actual birth name is William Henry Jackson My birth name is William Henry Jackson Griffith So I kind of my jaw dropped and my book dropped and I decided it was it was a cosmic Meeting of forces. I was meant to do zippy This is the very first zippy strip. This appeared in 1970 in an underground comic book called real pulp comics And as you can see at the bottom where it says Danny, he wasn't even named zippy at the beginning And don't ask me Why I called them Danny, but by the end of this trip his name was was zippy So this one's called I gave my heart to a pinhead and he made a fool out of me This was a kind of parody of girls romance comics, which no longer exist And here is the second appearance of zippy you can see in the upper left on the cover of tales of toad number two This is from 1971 or two the 70s are kind of a haze to me, but Anyway, there's there's zippy second appearance where I had created him originally as a what I what I thought would be a one-shot character. I Realized that my major character mr. Toad who is is here One of his more typically hostile poses needed a little modifying So I thought I'd bring along a character who had absolutely no ego whereas mr. Toad was all ego and zippy was Was his sidekick within about a year. This is tales of toad number three a year or two later As you can see what happened within about a year Zippy had the driver's seat although mr. Toad is doing his best to to make sure he never gets anywhere So zippy literally began to take over the strip Here's zippy's very first comic. This is It took me a few years to actually do a solo zippy comic, but this is about 1977 78 I'm giving a little bit of a nod to the origins of zippy in that freak show pose Just Arbitrally skipping ahead a bit just to show you the most recent zippy This is something I'm doing right now that you may or may not be aware of The daily strips that I do in the papers are anthologized every three months into the zippy quarterly Here's a zippy as kind of the fool with Griffey in his Royal pose Now this is going back again. This is down number two now This is where zippy started to change when I first started doing zippy It was it was pretty much of a surrealistic Kind of experience for both me and the reader. I never knew what I was going to say next It just seemed like exploring that these mine was all I had to do But after a while it got a bit tiring to me and I think probably to the reader too So I started to make zippy have a little more of a satirical edge And this came out. This is a non zippy effort of mine from 1980 the Griffith Observatory This is where I was I was literally nothing but But a social crank which is where the Griffey character evolved from the one you're familiar with today the kind of I See zippy as kind of a the strip Griffey and zippy are kind of dual aspects of one personality People ask me am I zippy or my Griffey? And I said I basically take blame for both This is an example of the Griffith Observatory This I'm showing this because I think a lot of this strip which only ran for a couple of years Found its way into zippy and made made the zippy strip a lot different. This is called the cuteness syndrome Right where I maintain that cuteness is a worldwide problem of major proportions though cuteness has been with us for centuries It's most recent proliferation threatens to smother us in a plethora of plastic Snoopy pillows And then I go on to say as the heart of the at the heart of the cuteness impulse is the desire to trivialize everything to remove the Presence of real life and substitute it for a bland reassuring cleanliness So I show how an actual pig becomes porky the pig Which is kind of a lesson in cuteness because who would think that pig is particularly cute But Warner Brothers apparently found cuteness in everything At the bottom I say note adding a Y suffix to form the diminutive is an all-important cuteness requirement I'll skip ahead here One of the at the end this is one of the most painful things to watch is faked cuteness Two prime examples this member this trip is 1978 two prime examples of this phenomenon are Liberace who tries to be appealing But is only grotesque and Mary Tyler Moore who exudes a kind of desperation that cuteness only accentuates I'm still on a cuteness rampage Here's the zippy nuclear family or post nuclear however trend do you want to discuss it there's zippy at the top Is there being a his erstwhile wife who occasionally makes an appearance actually zippy has a family But he conveniently forgets them about every two or three months Is there being a saying disco duck is having my baby There's his two children fuel rod and meltdown fuel rod says don't hate me because I'm beautiful and meltdown says am I receiving satanic messages from the mr. Ed theme song Here's another a zippy quarter least this will segue into a little quick discussion of the the non making of the non movie That's that's been in the non works for about ten years This is a zippy quarterly number five in which I I went into an elaborate fantasy of what would have happened if the movie actually were made by the by the time I finished that strip. I realized it was probably best, but the movie never does get made Here's an example of why? One of the meetings we had in Hollywood we keep having these meetings even to this day. I'm still occasionally invited to go down there Was with the Walt Disney Organization and what happened was the guy that was our current producer for the movie or current hopeful producer Was the same one who had brought the world Pee Wee Herman The first Pee Wee Herman movie and he had brought the movie first to Disney and Disney had turned it down and later regretted it this was before Pee Wee did his thing in Florida and So they asked our producer would he bring zippy to Disney and have a meeting. So here's the meeting Real Hollywood meeting as reported to me recently by my producers Here's the Disney guy in his in his sort of accountants suit gentlemen The Disney Organization is very intrigued by your proposal I want you to know that up front and the producer says we think our movies are natural for you guys and Disney guy leans forward ominously. We don't want to miss the boat on this one But one question keeps nagging at me. Can you see zippy greeting visitors at Disneyland? He may frighten children, you know the stubble now. This is word-for-word real meeting At the bottom it says tomorrow zippy invades the Magic Kingdom. So here's my my Fantasy of what it would be like if zippy really did greet visitors at Disneyland The folks at Disney Studios want to know can zippy greet visitors at Disneyland. Let's listen in So there's the classic nuclear family and there's zippy with his big head. Hello everybody. I'm zippy an unsettling dream image Yeah, oh The father says don't touch him Jennifer Jason step back And zippy leans forward with a big grin. Let's speak in tongues and then send out for pizza Come on in. We'll confront our subconscious yearnings while satirizing current pop trends. My polka dots contain hidden messages And then particularly ominously at the end as they run screaming from Disneyland. Are we having fun yet? Run kids run for your life At the bottom my little post script. Maybe we should have tried Warner Brothers Which which we actually did and they also rejected us. Here's here's the poster for the non-movie This is a poster. We hired an airbrush artist to do you made zippy look a little antiseptic We ran this as a when I say we I mean, you know people who put up money for these things They this was run as a two-page Spread in variety about three years ago I think that cost thirty five thousand dollars or something to run this and at the bottom We had are we having fun yet in Japanese because we figured the Japanese were buying Hollywood and maybe they would finance our movie Needless to say it didn't work. I Also get a lot of offers to make zippy into some sort of Saturday morning kids animated cartoon by people who probably have never read zippy So here's an example of what might happen if that occurred This is called turn on tune in gross out So there's griffin zippy as Saturday morning cartoon characters griffy says. Oh now we've been now We've been transmogrified into repulsoid animated kids cartoons and zippy says every morning is Saturday morning And griffy says we have that impersonal non-specific look parents interpret as safe And zippy says we're post Disney and pre-sold And then the the camera pans down to their feet and griffy says we represent everything that's soulless and hateful in American pop culture And zippy says we've betrayed our roots and insulted kids imaginations at the same time There's those awful feet We've been neutered bottom-lined and sucked dry of all offending traits and zippy puts a gun to his head and says Yeah, I'd blow my brains out if I had him I Like to do these things to get it out of my system Rather than sign major deals and lose my copyright Here's I won't read this all straight, but this is just This I did shortly after the cone heads appeared on Saturday Night Live Remember the night they first appeared my phone was ringing off the hook with people telling me look what they did they ripped off zippy I Didn't quite interpret it that way although I did resent the movie a year or two ago I because I figured if that movie was a success Maybe we could make our zippy movie because Hollywood would say yeah tapered craniums. That's big Let's let's go find some more tapered cranium characters, but since it bombed, I guess that's that's it didn't quite work out Anyway, this is just me showing that it's zippy who actually writes the scripts for the cone heads And he's delivering the script just in time at the end so Dan acroyd as the end says relax relax all nerve endings zippy delivered this week's cone head script reward him with mass quantities No, Dan acroyd it would did not take too well to this trip Here's some examples of my Sunday strips Most people in the Bay Area probably only familiar with as if he has a Sunday event because then the Let's face it the examiner is the largest underground newspaper in America But I'll read the Christmas trip of a few years back which which Starts Christmas morning zippy and Jean Paul Sartre exchange presents. So there's Sartre. I Don't know holidays always make me nauseous And zippy's got a big present. He said what a Grinch Sartre continues here. I hope you like it though It's really a matter of total indifference to the universe he hands zippy a present and zippy takes it I hope it involves viewing crudely animated overly muscled computer imagery And as Sartre says Look at this elf. It is so hateful Zippy's looking at his present. He says Super Mario. Oh boy crudely animated plumbers from Italy to confuse me for hours on end Here's your present Jean Paul. I got it on sale Sartre says I will open it, but I tell you in advance. It disgusts me And he opens it and he says oh wow nothing this you shouldn't have and zippy says I didn't This is another thing I do occasionally every few months I do a strip on Sunday that I just sort of paced over the title of zippy I do a strip called random memories in which I just I Just do an anecdote looks like the end is cut off there. I'll try to read it, but the end is okay This is a memory of my father When I was a teenager, this is this is all real real events. I was 14. It was just after Easter We were returning from a family visit to Cape Cod and there's the family unit in the car Me dad my sister Nancy and mom My father was intently reading the New York Times as we approached New York City He looked up and saw an elevated subway line above the roadway stop the car what? He made what seemed to the rest of us. He totally surreal announcement He's talking to my mother here. You were Nancy drive home. I'm taking bill to the opera This is my five after two hours of complete silence. He says this I think this may be an inspiration for the way zippy's mind works. My mother says what? So she pulls over and lets us out With that he grabbed me by the arm and we dashed up the side of the road to the subway and into Manhattan And of course, I'm just kind of Confused and slightly terrified by this my father says we're going to see Carmen at the Met There's a bargain matinee in one hour. I Look at him Carmen. What is this? On the way he bought me a red silk tie He said I should put it on immediately A half hour into the third act he felt Fell asleep. He never mentioned the opera again as long as he lived Zippy Here's a fairly recent strip from last August Where I'm addressing the ever-shrinking attention span of the American public, of course It's to my advantage that this continues to happen So the first panelist sits kind of a Batman and the Superman kind of superhero panel And Griffey in his superhero outfit can the attention span of the average citizen get much shorter zip and zippy says I don't know what's next and they keep switching of course into different different cartoon characters throughout the strip The zippy and the Griffey characters now a little mouse He says the narrative impulse may be a casualty of instant access and the zippy's chasing him Oh, you're just my archetype and the third panel. They're just these kind of ziggie kind of Little Cartoonoid characters and groupie says hey get a storyline and zippy says haven't got the time Well as panel they become like romance characters and the top it says without continuity life has become just one long Roller coaster ride, but please God don't let it ever stop on Sunday the the The people that do the color I do a color guide with little numbers and I send it into this Syndicate and they have the color done somewhere and then it's sent out to the papers on the chart They give me they they list 125 colors. So one week. I decided to use all 125 And at the end that zippy says I left out 86 it clashed with my complexion There's another couple of examples of me playing with the medium a bit at the top here where just three panels of complete Surrealist imagery and then zippy says whoa, what was that and griffy says virtual reality isn't what it used to be At the bottom This will segue into something. I want to talk about a little bit which which Dan brought up a little too Which is getting responses from lawyers This is my strip in which hello kitty made an appearance. This is by no means the first time hello kitty made an appearance in a zippy strip At the end you can see Let's read it quickly. Oh geez it finally happened our worst fears realized how could he do it? It's the end of an era this could be bad for the whole industry He says it's seen he says the infusion of new capital will spur development. I hope there'll be no major changes I still can't believe it. Is it be sold out to the Japanese? And zippy says farford whatever that German word is for the Volkswagen. Anyway, there's hello kitty. So About a week later. I get this letter This is from the Sanrio corporation which owns hello kitty the lawyer As you can see the second paragraph here is kind of the main thing Sanrio attempts to promote improved happiness and human relations by encouraging respect trust and love of others Hello kitty and tuxedo salmon their family of characters as illustrated on gifts increased Opportunity for fellowship and social communications through gift-giving as a means of heartfelt personal expression We trust that you can understand our clients concerned about portraying hello kitty and tuxedo So I didn't use tuxedo sam in a negative light the furtherance of these girls Please refrain from using illustrations or or of or referring to these characters in your comic referring to your character Of course what I do when I get letters like this is I kind of lay low for about six months Then I do it again This I think appeared on the inside of one of the collections of zippy strips called pointed behavior. I ran a contest For my readers to draw zippy so these are some of the best Submissions and one of my favorite ones is the bottom right second from the end the zippy Garfield Kind of kind of a chilling image and actually my very favorite is this one here Is my laser pointer And the existential down-and-out residential hotel zippy, they're all kind of cool This was a calendar. I did a few years back which Solved the least well of all of my calendars, and I think I think I don't know I just it's my favorite, but it just didn't make it this is Zippy has the odalisque by Angra, and there's a little Demoiselle Devignon with pinheads at the bottom Here's an example of a vase from an ancient Hellenic culture, which was recently unearthed. They were apparently devoted to To shopping and watching their their world of mats go around and around and here's my tribute to Picasso's Guernica Kind of a kind of a 50s backyard barbecue version Drain drained of all emotion and anger and pain Zippy has been running for president consistently since I think 1980 and Whenever anybody asked me what happened. I always say well he won, you know It's been in the White House everything This is believe it or not zippy on the Berlin wall I got these two photographs about four years apart So on the left you can see the graffiti hasn't yet reached zippy and the right you can see is kind of getting covered I found out about a Few weeks after it happened that this section of the Berlin wall was actually Saw it into into this particular piece and sold for ten thousand dollars Of course, I didn't get a penny, but I did my bid for world peace Here's a book that May or may not be here tonight. I'm not sure it's my travel sketches Which it's a collection of travel sketches that I put together over a period of years whenever I take a trip I am being a workaholic. I compulsively sketch instead of taking pictures Which has gradually Brought me to the point now where the New Yorkers is using my stuff in that form I've done a few pieces for them this year and it seems like I'll continue that they put me in the artist at large Category and send me to wacky places like Espen, Colorado and Las Vegas and I report back on my findings Here's just an example of the kind of stuff that's in my travel sketches Just characters. I see this a guy with probably the world's most obvious two-page sitting up there at the top and Some elderly women watching looking at a show of etchings Deciding that since the lettering in the etchings is backwards. It must be Hebrew writing of course Most etchers lettered forwards and printed it backwards and I didn't want to break these people's spell Here's some sayings. Are we having fun yet is of course, you know, that'll be written on my tombstone probably Being Zippy's most famous saying here's some that didn't quite make it Laundry is the fifth dimension is one if you can't say something nice say something surrealistic I've actually seen this I've seen this on bumper stickers and This one never quite made it except provolone into your life this this I just put in because Christmas is coming and this ran in the examiner about five years ago or so and I I've reprinted it several times since and I've I've it's it's the the 12 days of Christmas written by Zippy I'll just read the last one Since it all builds up to that on the 12th day of Christmas Zippy gave to me 12 twins a twisting 11 surgeon surfing 10 tubs of topping nine robots wrestling eight preteens Printing seven velvet painting six pizzas cooling five Yellow molds for bowling balls three VCRs two leisure suits and will the Flintstone embedded in Brie Cute So are we having fun yet? What can I say? It was something I thought up in the mid 70s since then it's been claimed by bumper stickers and wall plaques from Hallmark to Ziggy to Carol Burnett Actually, Ziggy is the one that pisses me off the most Just because occasionally somebody very stupid will say oh, yeah, Ziggy. I love that strip. That's trip. You do Ziggy and And just to settle any arguments if you look at the current Bartlett's familiar quotations Are we having fun yet is finally given proper credit under my name? And here's the kind of punchline to probably my life as well as these people's life I think I may wind up like this probably sitting on a porch somewhere in Florida someday Turning to my wife and kind of wondering who she is and saying are we having fun yet? That's it. So this would be the wacky unstructured question and answer part of the show That one Dan and I earn our money different ways Dan is self-sindicated Which I used to be which means he has to mail out a strip every week and then be his own accountant and bill collector And yes, he makes a living as far as I understand Dan is in I think the most papers of almost any weekly cartoonist in America. I think he's in 80 papers I Syndicate through King features which came about because in 1985 Will Hurst of the examiner Asked if I do zippy on a daily basis for just the examiner and then about a year later King features approached me Since it's all in the Hurst company I send my strips to them every week and they send it out to the newspapers and they split the money with me That's how it works for all syndicated daily strip cartoonists except as you get more and more Famous and have more clout for instance Charles Schultz. His split is 95 5 95 and the 5% is still something like 10 billion dollars a week What's his name Jim Davis Jim Davis has 30 employees the Garfield guy Anything that you see stuffed animals of everywhere you go that that's who's making most money You know the one cartoonist is probably the one that people like here The most after hours is probably Calvin and Hobbes Calvin and Hobbes You'll see no merchandising whatsoever And that's a conscious decision on the part of bill waterson who refuses something like 25 million dollars a year in merchandising He just says he says it would dilute the message of the strip. He's crazy See nobody's made me any offers that's all Yes Margaret Keane's gallery Yeah, I've I've done a few keen keen-eyed tributes. Yeah art gallery is not exactly the word I would use for that place Maybe temple Worship I never asked them if I could parody them Every right to put it up there. Yeah, no the guy who runs the gallery actually has a sense of humor Margaret Keane herself. I don't think one's been discovered for her Well, it actually if you look in my most recent book, you'll discover that one spark He takes off his sunglasses. He does in fact have big round eyes I could say there's one little anecdote about Walter Keane, you know Walter Keane and his wife Margaret Keane did those big-eyed paintings It turns out that she did basically all of them and he took credit She they had a they had a paint off at iMagnon in 1964 where she challenged him to come and actually Do one and he didn't show up And she did it and proved that she was the artist they used to have the way they made it was they would In their gallery, which was on Columbus. No, no, it's on Grant in North Beach They would have crates in the gallery very obviously placed throughout the gallery with famous celebrity names on them As if they were paintings being shipped to those celebrities And that's how they that's how they got their prices up. This is it's a marketing thing, you know No, this is real Walter Keane said this in an interview Well, I wasn't dropped from the examiner I left the examiner because as Bill says It's the the what did you what is your line for it? Largest underground newspaper in America And if you're doing a strip seven days a week like bill is there's still a chance that people are going to see You know a few of them a week if you're in once a week Which I do one cartoon a week which you know as a political cartoon and takes a lot of thought and a lot of work And I'm doing my own syndication so You know the way I've got to set up the one a week is pretty much a full-time job But they were running that one a week during the week and no one ever remembered what day it was on or whatever and The only way I could get into the Sunday paper was by buying my way in with extra work Basically for no money and I'd went in and had a talk and explained it all to Will Hurst and said you know I'm really burned out if you would just run my syndicated strip on Sundays That would be good and he called me back the next day or one of his people did and said we want you to Do an extra cartoon you can stay in if you'll do an extra cartoon You know after I'd spent an hour explaining that that was why I had to quit so I just kind of gave up and went over to the Guardian I Think no one has ever accused examiner management of being particularly in touch with reality And I think that's being pretty much proven lately Wait a minute they Send me a check every week Yeah for zippy the pen I actually wonder every day why of all the syndicates in America King features I mean aside from the connection to the examiner why the one syndicate that's probably the most conservative the most Thought of is at least the most right wing or the rest family is a blondie Hagar the horrible family circus and zippy makes sense Right, I to this day. I really can't figure it out All I can figure is maybe I'm like the house weirdo and they can like you know point to me at parties and say Yeah, we're not square. We run this guy but I The only other parallel I see which I and I don't pretend to wear the mantle of George Harriman at all But King features used to run crazy cat for many many years Even though it was dwindling every week in the amount of papers that took it Hearst was just a big fan of the strip and he ran it So somebody whether it's will or somebody must be a big fan of my stuff and And that might might explain the whole thing Any more questions Like Yeah, if we're given an excuse, yeah, somebody somebody paid us to do that Do we expect to see Zippy on the spaceship Yeah, sure Any more questions Are you ever urged to Alter they focus somewhat and make it perhaps a little more explicit or less so or or a little less difficult to Spend a time Necessarily need it. Yes Yeah, you know with with all the things that are going on your work I should say at this time that I really enjoy your artwork quite a bit and I'm just wondering if you know folks don't like to dabble with that Chronicle examiner offices there somewhat and say hey, why don't you do it a little bit more like this? There's king. Aren't you dumb it down? You know, I like it, but Too enigmatic do any matter. I feel the enigmatic need Newspaper syndication. I created my own niche of confusion No, you know, the whole thing happened to me in such a long slow period like going going from Underground comics to being in the Washington Post every day was like a 20 year overnight success for me and all along the way I never specifically asked for these little Evolutionary moments to happen and when I started doing the daily strip my first Thought to King features was what why are you asking me? I'm I do this weird strip. Why? Why do you think America wants to read this? You know wordy Enigmatic strange strip and they said they you know, they just said let's give it a try and I said okay as long as you don't change anything I'm not going to change your thing My my thought about the whole process is that there's plenty enough cartoons out there that that cater completely to the reader And that go all the way and hand the reader the punchline on a silver platter I figure, you know, I've got the territory of asking the reader to come halfway to me And give them hopefully something a little more more nourishing than you know diet jokes or whatever So as a result, maybe I have become self-indulgent. It's possible. I try very hard not to be obscure But but I never read it. It takes too long This explanation is an example of the problem. Yeah, I get convoluted pretty easily and I I guess I just ask the readers to come along with me if they don't feel like coming along. That's okay No good good, so it's confusion is entertaining I guess I didn't understand you didn't understand my question. Okay. I was being defensive What I thought but what people that pull the strings on okay, what I see Well, let's say this in the entire What is it now? Eight nine years that I've been working for the the king features syndicate Which would be the only real place where any censorship would have happened in my career They have only called me. I think three times to ask me to change something One time I had Zippy going into a McDonald's And reciting all the ingredients of a Big Mac which they had published I don't know if you remember this maybe some years back They published a little pamphlet saying what's in a McDonald and Zippy's interpretation What was you have to recite those ingredients to get your hamburger? King features said we can't run this because McDonald's will sue us I said why and there was no reason but I ran that strip in one of my books, but I didn't run the strip a couple of times I've used damn or hell in a strip and been asked if I would change it and each time I've said no The first time I said no, I realized I could say no always and sets my attack now if they say can we change this I say no I don't I don't discuss it with them. I seem to win. I don't think they really they figure Zippy has a strange audience and Who cares? And I was that was just my my my dream No, I currently I can tell you though that the guy who wants to play zippy and I thought this would get us a movie deal But it didn't as a Michael Richards the guy that plays Kramer on son film Yeah, I think he's a good choice if only he was a bankable choice Anybody offered you any Yeah, my girlfriend maybe No, I mean, you know if only if only What I said mattered at all that anyone was willing to do that But you may have noticed that we don't have a single-payer system and that NAFTA passed with flying colors I I think my influence on the world If I weren't doing this cartoon, you know, I would still be needing to express myself probably out on a street corner at random Passers-by and a sort of haranguing tone of voice like I saw a guy on hate Street yesterday going Hey, Wilson, they reelected him, which you know, that would probably be me if I didn't have the car But it's you know, it's not I don't think it's going to you know affect anything in that that anyone's gonna be that worried about it I think we both found that usually when we level our most You know as it attacks on the targets they asked to buy the original art If you ever want to let a cartoonist know he hasn't gotten to you that's the way to do it You think boy, this is gonna piss him off. He wants to hang it on his wall I see one more question I guess Do we have any to Sure, I mean comics were actually born in Europe. You have to remember Wilhelm Busch who did Eventually did the cats and jammer kids. It's kind of the first narrative cartoonist During the early ages there was a lot of European comics that were reprinted here in the magazine raw And I think a lot of Americans got got a look at the kind of stuff Europeans do I Not being fluent in anything other than English and a little bit of French I Can't say I've read a lot of course in translation. I have But yeah, they mean the European comics the major influence. I think it's been on the graphics There's a lot of really interesting things going on in graphics in Europe, especially France There are a lot of European cartoons that I love. I don't know that they've specifically influenced what I do Let's let's take one more and then close it It's a common yeah, those those little dot patterns I sit through the magnifying glass and a little pittograph and stipple them and it's very very painstaking It's the reason I only do one a week and at that I'm working a hundred hours No, you know, it's it's a combination as I said what I explained at the beginning is that I Started out with this idea of you know working Appropriated images into my cartoons to saturize Advertising and they sort of took it over and became the look of what I do So it's a combination of collage and drawing and the the dot patterns You're talking about actually come on this film that you cut out and stick down in the background called zippitone Which with the advent of computers is is kind of like a medieval scribe copying the Bible by hand and in another Couple of years. I'm probably you know either gonna have to buy a computer or go with the dinosaurs. I'm not sure which You have anything to add or do you want to? Quit there It's hard to hate something so bland this car field No, I love the family circus Actually family circus is the only other surreal comic strip on the page as far as I'm concerned and Look in mid-December for a collaboration between the guy that has the family circus Bill Keen and me Three days where Zippy thinks he's Jeffy He actually enters the family circus world and Bill Keen draws the other characters That seems like a good note How can we top that