INTERVIEW CORNER #11: Bill Griffith

Comment Written by Θωμάς Παπαδημητρόπουλος on September 7th, 2010 – 09:06

Η επικαιρότητα είναι δύσκολο πράγμα να ακολουθήσεις. Όταν ξεκίνησα αυτή εδώ τη στήλη, ξεκαθάρισα στον εαυτό μου ότι θα αναζητούσα και θα παρουσίαζα καλλιτέχνες που με τον ένα ή τον άλλο τρόπο βρίσκονται στην επικαιρότητα τις ημέρες που θα δημοσίευα τις συνεντεύξεις τους. Ακούγεται δύσκολο, αλλά δεν είναι και τόσο.

Κυρίως, γιατί η επικαιρότητα είναι αυτό που εμείς οι ίδιοι θέλουμε να είναι. Εμείς οι ίδιοι μπορούμε να επιλέξουμε τα νέα που μας ενδιαφέρουν και να κατατάξουμε ψηλά ή χαμηλά τα γεγονότα που επιθυμούμε. Με ένα προσωπικό ξεκαθάρισμα στα νέα που έρχονται στα μάτια μου ή τα αυτιά μου καθημερινά, θεωρώ ότι έχω καταφέρει να κρατάω τη στήλη αυτή επίκαιρη.

Το ίδιο καταφέρνει εδώ και περισσότερα από 30 χρόνια και ο καλεσμένος αυτή της εβδομάδας, ο Bill Griffith, με το καθημερινό strip του, ZIPPY THE PINHEAD. Χάρη στο ZIPPY, το οποίο δημοσιεύεται σε περισσότερες από 200 εφημερίδες σε ολόκληρο τον κόσμο, ο Griffith καταφέρνει καθημερινά να σχολιάζει την επικαιρότητα με το δικό του τρόπο, δημιουργώντας τη ουσιαστικά ο ίδιος.

Για το ZIPPY δε νομίζω ότι έχω πολλά να πω. Ο πρωταγωνιστής του, ένας pinhead που ζει στον κόσμο του, καταφέρνει να σχολιάσει τα πάντα μέσω της αφέλειας και της υπέρμετρα οπτιμιστικής του διάθεσης. Πραγματικά, αν δεν έχει πέσει στα χέρια σας, αξίζει να το αναζητήσετε, ακόμη και στο site του δημιουργού, όπου βρίσκονται όλα τα strips.

Σταματάω, λοιπόν, την προσπάθεια να περιγράψω το strip του Griffith και να γράψω obscure προλόγους που μπορεί να βγάζουν νόημα, μπορεί και όχι, και σας αφήνω να διαβάσετε τις ενδιαφέρουσες απαντήσεις του θρυλικού δημιουργού για το comic του, την επικαιρότητα, τις νέες τεχνολογίες, αλλά και τα μελλοντικά του σχέδια.

What were your main influences in your earlier days?
I started doing comics without much of a comics background. As a kid, I read mostly SCROOGE McDUCK, LITTLE LULU and MAD Magazine. Then, in 1968, I saw the first ZAP COMIX in New York. I loved Crumb’s work instantly. A year later, I began drawing my own comics, but I had very little skill at first, since I had lost interest in comics from the age of 12 until I was 25 in 1969. I learned how to make comics “in print”.

ZIPPY is a comic strip in which you can do almost anything. How do you take advantage of that? Is there anything you have yet to try doing?
Yes, Zippy is a very flexible character. There are very few things he cannot do or say. He can even travel in time or temporarily become a superhero (“Z-Man”). When I first created him (1971), he was a “sidekick” (friend) of my main character then, Mr. Toad. Zippy was Mr. Toad’s opposite. Where Toad was egocentric, Zippy had no ego. Where Toad was angry, Zippy was accepting. Where Toad was cruel, Zippy was innocent. I keep trying to surprise myself with the daily ZIPPY strip. Zippy’s “discovery” of his hometown, “Dingburg”, where everyone is a pinhead like him, has taken the strip in a new direction for the last few years. It’s still a lot of fun for me to explore all the different pinhead personalities in Dingburg.

What inspired you to create Zippy and what inspires you to continue daily to this day?
My “inspiration” for Zippy was a suggestion from a cartoonist friend in 1970, Roger Brand, that I do a story for his comic book REAL PULP #1, in the vein of my YOUNG LUST comics, but “make it weirder”. So I did the first ZIPPY story with no idea I would ever do another. I based the way Zippy looks on photos of “Schlitzie”, a pinhead who had also appeared in the 1932 movie FREAKS.
I keep doing ZIPPY because it’s all I know how to do at this point. I use my strip to satirize today’s pop culture and politics. I also feel as if my daily strip is a kind of diary, a record of what I’m thinking about and my reactions and opinions of life around me.

You have described the ZIPPY strips as jazz songs or painting surfaces, where there is no linear approach or positioning of the elements. Is this an easier or a more difficult way for you to tell your stories?
I just do what comes naturally. We all think in a non-linear fashion. Our inner thoughts are a jumble of media input and voices of other people, as well as the many voices of our subconscious mind. Zippy just doesn’t try to make rational sense out of all this turmoil. He delights in immersing himself in it, swimming in it. He’s really very brave. If we did this, our brains would explode. When I write Zippy dialog, I feel a little like I’m playing a saxophone. The rhythm and flow of the words is as important as the meaning. In fact, the meaning often enters through a side door, unexpectedly. It’s not so much “easy” for me, as it is natural. It’s a little like creating poetry.

Zippy the Pinhead may be a surreal character but he also has a bond with reality and today’s society. Which are the things you enjoy criticizing the most?
Zippy is not surreal. Life is surreal. I guess I enjoy mocking pop culture the most. Fashion, music, TV, movies, all the manufactured trends that come and go in our media-soaked society. Occasionally, I go after the “ruling class” and world leaders, especially if they already act like cartoon characters. George Bush and Ronald Reagan were lots of fun to satirize. Obama not so much.

Are there any parts of yourself in the characters of ZIPPY?
When I created the “Griffy” character in 1976, he very consciously represented me—especially the critical, neurotic part of me. Griffy is an even better “sidekick” for Zippy than Mr. Toad. I use the Zippy/Griffy relationship as a way of exploring the two aspects of my own personality. The rational and the irrational. The unhappy and the happy. The critical and the accepting.

Have the new technologies affected your life as an artist? Do you think that they will further change the way comics are made and read?
Not too much. I do color in Photoshop and the ZIPPY website has been a major income provider and way of connecting with readers. Same with Facebook.
But I still draw my strip every day in pen and ink on paper. I like the satisfaction of having produced a real thing at the end of the day. Paper will last longer than pixels, as the years go on. Most of the comics created on the computer today will be unavailable to readers decades from now. Technology is changing so rapidly, what is made electronically now will be impossible to access in the future. Paper, on the other hand, if it is properly preserved, will be there to look at for centuries.

What are your plans for the near future?
I’m putting together a book now of most of my underground comics from 1970-1994. It will also include a “memoir” of my years in San Francisco, as part of the “first wave” of alternative cartoonists. What we did in the 1970s paved the way for the explosion of comics that has been going on ever since. I want to show my small part of that in this book.