Bill Griffith

Bill Griffith – Life, Career, and Famous Quotes

Explore the extraordinary life and career of Bill Griffith, the American cartoonist known for Zippy the Pinhead and the phrase “Are we having fun yet?” — from underground comix roots to lasting legacy, plus his most memorable quotes and lessons.

Introduction

William Henry Jackson “Bill” Griffith (born January 20, 1944) is a pioneering American cartoonist, best known as the creator of the surreal and enduring comic strip Zippy the Pinhead. Over a career spanning decades, he has blended absurd humor, social critique, personal memoir, and alternative-comics experimentation. Griffith’s work remains relevant today—his voice continues to challenge conventions in cartoons, culture, and identity.

Early Life and Family

Bill Griffith was born in Brooklyn, New York.

He was the great-grandson and namesake of the photographer-artist William Henry Jackson, a pioneer of Western visual documentation. This lineage may have given him a sense of artistic inheritance, even if indirectly.

His family history was complicated. Griffith’s mother, Barbara, maintained a long secret affair (over sixteen years) with cartoonist Lawrence Lariar—a fact Griffith explored in his graphic memoir Invisible Ink: My Mother’s Secret Love Affair with a Famous Cartoonist. The revelations added emotional depth, tension, and artistic reckoning to his life story.

Youth and Education

As a child, Griffith was drawn to drawing and comics. A significant influence was his neighbor, science-fiction illustrator Ed Emshwiller, who sometimes used Griffith and his parents as photographic models for cover art.

In 1963, while attending Pratt Institute in New York, Griffith saw Freaks (1932) and became fascinated by its portrayal of “pinheads,” which inspired part of the conceptual seed for Zippy.

It was during his formative years that Griffith absorbed underground-comics culture, avant-garde art, and the countercultural ferment that would drive much of his future work.

Career and Achievements

Entering Underground Comix

In the late 1960s, Griffith entered the underground comix movement, working alongside figures like Kim Deitch, Art Spiegelman, Jay Lynch, and others. East Village Other and Screw, and he began featuring a character named Mr. The Toad in those early explorations.

He moved to San Francisco around 1970 to immerse himself in the thriving underground-comics scene. United Cartoon Workers of America, along with Crumb, Spiegelman, Spain Rodriguez, and others.

Griffith also co-founded the satirical anthology Young Lust (1970) with Jay Kinney, which parodied romance comics and became a landmark of underground satire. Rip Off Comix.

Birth & Evolution of Zippy

The first Zippy story appeared in Real Pulp #1 (Print Mint) in 1971. Freaks (Schlitzie) and sideshow “pinhead” lore (like Zip the Pinhead) to craft his oddball character.

By 1976, Zippy began appearing weekly (originally in the Berkeley Barb), and then was syndicated via Rip Off Press. Griffy into the strip—Griffy is neurotic, opinionated, and contrasts with Zippy’s zen absurdity.

Over time, Zippy evolved from pure surreal randomness into a vehicle for social commentary, satire, and philosophical musing, always filtered through absurdism and wit.

orial & Publishing Contributions

In 1975, Griffith and Art Spiegelman launched Arcade: The Comics Revue, an ambitious anthology blending comics with literary, political, and visual-art content. Arcade folded after seven issues, it is often credited with helping bridge underground and alternative comics and influencing Raw, Spiegelman’s later anthology.

Griffith has published numerous collections of his Zippy work (e.g. Zippy Stories, Are We Having Fun Yet?, The Dingburg Diaries, etc.). He has also produced deeply personal graphic works:

• Invisible Ink (2015): a memoir unpacking his mother’s affair and family secrets.

• Nobody’s Fool: The Life and Times of Schlitzie the Pinhead (2019), a graphic biography of the sideshow figure associated with Freaks.

• Three Rocks: The Story of Ernie Bushmiller, a biography of the Nancy cartoonist, published in 2023.

• The Buildings Are Barking (2023): a comic memoir of his marriage to Diane Noomin, released after her passing.

Recognition & Awards

Griffith received the Inkpot Award in 1992. Reuben Award, the highest honor from the National Cartoonists Society.

His catchphrase “Are we having fun yet?” has achieved cultural resonance—and is even credited to Griffith in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations (16th edition, 1992).

Historical Milestones & Cultural Context

Griffith came of age artistically in the era of 1960s counterculture, underground press, anti–Vietnam War activism, and rising skepticism of mainstream media. His entry into underground comix placed him squarely in a movement that rejected conventional comic norms and embraced taboo, experimentation, politics, and alternative voices.

In the 1970s and 1980s, as the comic-strip industry shifted toward commercial syndication and strips focused more on safe humor, Zippy remained defiantly offbeat—mixing absurdity with critique. Over time, Zippy found a following within alternative press, college newspapers, and niche comic venues.

Griffith has also engaged with evolving technology: he has spoken about how digital tools could replicate his style, though he resisted surrendering control to a team. He has navigated publishing changes, from underground print runs to syndication to digital media, always adapting while retaining his voice.

His biographies of real comic figures (Lariar, Bushmiller, Schlitzie) serve not only as personal works but as interventions in how comic history is written—blurring memoir, criticism, and archival rescue.

Legacy and Influence

Bill Griffith’s influence is felt across multiple spheres:

• As a bridge between underground comix and alternative/indie cartooning, Griffith’s experiments helped expand the boundaries of what comics could do.

• Zippy the Pinhead endures as a daily strip with cult following. Its weirdness, philosophical undercurrents, and social satire have inspired many younger cartoonists.

• His graphic memoirs push the boundary between comics as entertainment and comics as serious literary-art work.

• Griffith has been a curator of comic history: by writing about forgotten or marginalized figures (Lariar, Schlitzie, Bushmiller), he intervenes in how the medium’s heritage is preserved.

• His phrase “Are we having fun yet?” has entered popular cultural vocabulary as a wry rhetorical question.

In sum, Griffith’s legacy is not just in one strip, but in his continuous reinvention, his probing of personal and cultural histories, and his insistence that comics remain a medium of surprise, reflection, and challenge.

Personality and Talents

Griffith is often described as both irreverent and deeply introspective. His alter ego Griffy in Zippy expresses a cranky, judgmental, hyperanalytic side, balancing Zippy’s detached absurdism.

He has shown emotional honesty in tackling family secrets and personal loss—his memoirs are candid, raw, and thoughtful.

Artistically, Griffith is precise. Even when his work seems chaotic, he's meticulous in layout, lettering, and pacing. He often retains hand-lettered subtitles above Zippy strips, resisting typographic standardization.

He is intellectually curious, bridging high and low culture, weaving in philosophy, pop culture, politics, psychology, and more into absurd setups.

Griffith has also demonstrated stamina: sustaining a daily or weekly strip over decades—and periodically reinventing his approach—is rare in cartooning.

Famous Quotes of Bill Griffith

Here are some of Bill Griffith’s memorable sayings, which reflect his artistic sensibility and worldview:

• “What I do is draw but if you make an animated feature … it takes a whole team of people …”

• “I guess if you take yourself seriously as an artist there starts either the problem or the beauty of doing good artwork.”

• “Questions for Griffy” (various interview remarks) — a series of reflections on art, culture, and identity.

• “I just became one with my browser software.”

• “Are we having fun yet?” — His most famous catchphrase, attached to Zippy, often quoted in cultural contexts.

These quotations encapsulate his blend of humor, existential questioning, artistic frustration, and playful distance.

Lessons from Bill Griffith

1. Embrace ambiguity and absurdity
   Griffith’s work shows that complexity and contradiction can be fertile ground for creativity. He invites readers to dwell in unresolved spaces.

2. Use personal history as material
   By integrating his family secrets and emotional experiences into his graphic memoirs, he demonstrates that the personal can become universal when approached with honesty.

3. Persist through change
   Griffith’s ability to adapt—from underground print to syndication to digital contexts—shows flexibility anchored by a strong voice.

4. Blend genres and traditions
   He mixes memoir, biography, satire, cultural criticism, and surreal humor. His career shows that boundaries in art can be porous.

5. Curate one’s own heritage
   By resurrecting obscure figures from comics history, Griffith teaches that artists can be active in shaping their medium’s memory and legacy.

6. Cultivate a paradoxical mindset
   Through Zippy, Griffith holds the tension between serious thought and nonsense, critique and play. Creativity often lives in that tension.

Conclusion

Bill Griffith stands as a rare figure in cartooning: one who has endured, evolved, and probed the inner and outer dimensions of the form. From underground comix beginnings to daily Zippy strips, to graphic memoirs and historic biographies, his career affirms the rich possibilities of comics. His catchphrase, “Are we having fun yet?” remains playful, provocative, and revealing of his restless curiosity.

If you enjoy this exploration, I encourage you to dive into Invisible Ink, Nobody’s Fool, Three Rocks, or any Zippy collection—and revisit how one cartoonist transformed absurdity into meaning.