Zippy: The Dingburg Diaries

by Bill Griffith

Comprising a full two and a half years' worth of dailies and full-color Sundays, The Dingburg Diaries is the third Zippy book featuring tales of "Dingburg, the City Inhabited Entirely by Pinheads"--Zippy's home town. There's even a long series of "Historical Dingburg" strips, chronicling the pinhead population through the years, from 1840, when Dingburg's "Town Fool" accidentally invented disco, to 1958 when Dingburg Beatniks flourished in the town's Bohemian neighborhood. Like, Yowl, man. God also has his own chapter (and verse). In the guise of a clip art "author ity figure," he dispenses unwanted advice and conditional love upon the citizens of Dingburg. His tendency to cross-dress reaches new heights when he appears in a performance of "Swine Lake," wearing a tutu. Sacrilegious, yet sensitive. There are large chunks of Mr. The Toad, Zerbina, Little Zippy and the rest of Griffith's cast of characters throughout this expanded collection. Published in a larger 8" by 10" format, The Dingburg Diaries also features a big color section, showcasing Griffith's inventive palette. There are parodies of the paintings of Edward Hopper and Film Noir, and "Griffy's Top Ten List On Comics and Their Creation" a semi-serious mini-tutorial on everything (well, ten things) he's learned in over forty years at the drawing board.

Genres: Comics

224 pages, Paperback

First published May 1, 2013

About the author

Librarian Note: There is more than one author in the GoodReads database with this name. See this thread for more information.

Reviews

[Dave Schaafsma · Rating 4 out of 5]

Well, of course I know Zippy from strips over the years… and so I thought I would check out a collection of Zippy and his Dingburg friends and family. You see what they look like from the cover. That's somewhat what the stories are like. Like surreal hippy stand-up comedy, and you know, there are not many panels you can find that do not make you at least smile, and sometimes/often laugh aloud. Unbelievable that he has been doing this for decades at such a high level. You know this guy? If not, check him out, this volume or one of the many collections out there….The art is well done, especially for regular strips. The world is pretty hilarious, thoroughly done. Like a chemically altered vision of Americana, which he loves.

"Dingburgers all live in quonset huts, equipped with 24-hour skeeball lanes. They either work at the Glazeco donut factory, the Undico underwear factory or in cubicles at the Topknot Technologies office park in Dingburg's downtown Stubble Center-- They consume 12 60 oz Dr Peppers, 4 bags of Cheeze Doodles, 7 pounds ofAtomic Fireballs & 14 grams of BHT, scraped off the inner lining of 216 boxes of Lucky Charms Cereal.. each day." See?

And you get the array: Mr Toad, Zerbina, God, parodies of fellow comics throughout history, beatniks, bowling, Little Zippy!

[Alan · Rating 4 out of 5]

Ludwig Donath may well believe that "Hell is other Dingburgers" (p.224, very near the end of this collection), but for us roundheads, Dingburg is the topknot-heavy, Valvoline-laced heaven where Zippy the Pinhead, Zerbina, Mr. the Toad and their compatriots cavort and frolic for our 21st-Century amusement, just as they have done for more than 40 years. That's an amazing run for any comedic effort in any medium, and Bill Griffith is still going strong. The Dingburg Diaries, the 11th Zippy Annual, collects comics from 2010 through 2013 that are as pointed and poignant as any from the previous century, and Fantagraphics has as usual done an excellent job of compiling these strips with little if any loss of fidelity.

It did take me a rather long time to peruse The Dingburg Diaries, but that's because each meticulously-drawn panel of Griffith's work contains a wealth of detail that rewards careful attention. From topical pop-culture references (for two out of many, I especially enjoyed the strips about Zippy's cardboard iPhone and David Lynch's film The Straight Story) to self-referential surrealism (one of the many color strips from the center of the book has Griffy taking Zippy back through time to see his many incarnations), there's something here to tweak the noses of any readers too wedded to the obvious jokes.

It's not possible to encapsulate or reproduce the impact of Zippy in mere words, though... you have to take your own Wiffle® bat in hand, thwack your way through the pages of this book, and experience the sanity for yourself... Yow!

[Steve Kemp · Rating 5 out of 5]

It's Zippy !! How can you go wrong ?