The Blood and Cartoon Lineage of Bill Griffith
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Sally Madden for The Comics Journal interviews cartoonist Bill Griffith with particular emphasis on Griffith’s newest graphic biography of his great-grandfather and on the Zippy comic strip and his cartooning background. I do like Madden’s style here of ignoring the questions and just relaying Bill Griffith’s words.
Some of Bill Griffith’s words:
When I was first aware of my great grandfather’s photographs, all I knew, and all most people knew, were his 19th century photographs of the Western United States. But I found out even as a teenager by reading his autobiography that he had a whole other photography career…
…I have a moment like that every Tuesday. I go into New York to teach at the School of Visual Arts…
I went to art school, Pratt Institute in Brooklyn. Because I was snotty and arrogant and I thought they couldn’t teach me anything more, I took my student loan, dropped out of college, and went to Europe. This is 1964. After I got back from Europe, I had no money and needed to work…
I’ve always been very interested in the whole idea of cuteness. In my first graphic novel, Invisible Ink, I talk about what Zippy would have looked like had I taken the how-to-draw-a-cartoon course that my mother’s boyfriend [Lawrence Lariar] offered…
There’s a reflection of jealousy I feel towards Zippy. Whatever else is going on, he is at peace with himself…
[Diane Noomin] was a terrific editor. I’m in the middle of a little sequence in my memoir where I’m just leaving behind the showbiz chapter. I’m creating a scene that sort of happened of Diane and me talking. We often talked in bed, you know, which was usually referred to as pillow talk
feature image is a detail from Photographic Memory by Bill Griffith
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