In the 1/17 Zippy strip, Z confronts a pair of clay wraiths, lifeless in body and dead in soul, and tries desperately to interject fun — levity — into the conversation; to counterpose silliness, play, and sheer joy against the dead weight of the world’s pain, suffering, and injustice; to plead for humanity over humorlessness; to advocate for delight, even in the smallest everyday things:
In English, Belgium is a funny word, odd, darkly edgy, and absurd all at once; Lewis Carroll picked the name boojum for his ridiculously dangerous creature in The Hunting of the Snark to capture this strange blend of resonances.
Bill Griffith is a master at using his absurd characters, Zippy above all, to advance passionately held moral values, as here. He celebrates art and play, visual and verbal, in all places, but especially in public as part of everyday life. The Zippy spirit manifests itself in all kinds of art and play arrayed against the agents of despair and death, in street art, in music — playing, singing, dancing — in underground bunkers during bombing, in audacious joking outside the view of officialdom (lest you get tossed in jail). It’s all around us. and it celebrates life.