"Too many taboos were being broken, too much satire was aimed at the establishment of the day. I'm very grateful to the alternative press of that time -- without it, I may have become an autoseat-cover salesman living on Long Island."
For some people the strip might be a bit confusing at times because of the US wordplay and cultural issues. But Griffith says, that while he draws and writes the strip mostly for a North American audience, he is also open to corresponding with readers overseas who have questions about the strange and wild antics of Zippy and company.
"I am always happy to respond by e-mail to confused readers," Griffith says. "My explanations are always sincere, but I always warn people that to explain humor is to kill humor."
Griffith, who was born in Long Island near New York City, and then lived in San Francisco for a long period before moving back to the East Coast, noted that for new Zippy readers there's a kind of learning curve involved.
"For the first six months, the strip seems like incomprehensible jabber. Then, if you keep reading, one day, suddenly, it all makes sense," Griffith said. "You've achieved what I call `Zippyconsciousness' and you're finally on Zippy's wavelength. Seriously though, I consider the Zippy strip to make fairly conventional punchlines in at least half of my syndicated strips. They're just not always in the final panel."
As readers know, America's "diner culture" is a big feature of Griffith's humor. Griffith said that for him, diners are the "anti-McDonald's" of America. he noted that diners are "non-corporate, individually-owned gathering places for people to eat slow food and relate to each other in a user-friendly environment. ... Plus, the cheeseburgers are much, much better."
When asked if Zippy ever deals with such thorny international political issues such as cross-strait ties between Taiwan and China, or famine in Africa or terrorism and the war in Iraq, Griffith said that he once visited Cuba for a magazine assignment and put much of what he learned into his drawings.
"Zippy (and I) visited one of the last remaining Communist dictatorships in the world a few years ago -- Cuba. I was there on an assignment for a magazine. My characters, Zippy and Griffy, had a lot to say about what they saw, much of it critical of the Fidel Castro regime."
"Zippy asks the reader to meet him halfway, unlike many other daily comic strips, which demand much less of their readers," Griffith said.
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