Type Z Personality

Subscribers to newspapers that run Zippy the Pinhead should be grateful for just how wonderful their world is. Every day they can open up the funnies and among formulaic strips read about a freak (of the Tod Browning variety) in a muu-muu who helps us comprehend our pop culture—soaked world in a most postmodern way. It's rare to find something so smart that's so accessible. To help newcomers get a handle on the strip, this collection opens with the six-part series Understand Zippy. Zippy and Griffith's cartoon alter—ego, Griffy, explain the philosophy of the strip, declaring that the boundary between high and low art shall not be observed and the absurd in life will be appreciated to the fullest. The rest of the book lives up to its promises with most of the strips revolving around Zippy speaking to roadside attractions—when he isn't speaking to works of cubism, that is. Griffith draws his characters in a stylized manner, but the real-life attractions (catalogued in the "Pindex" found in the back of the book) are drawn photorealistically. They blend together so well because of the compatible meeting of the bizarre. This is a strip that thrives on the mix between the real and the unreal. (Mar.)