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The creator of Zippy the Pinhead traces his path from fine-art student at Pratt Institute through the San Francisco underground comix scene to mainstream recognition. Describes how Zippy evolved from a pinhead character in a 1970 romance parody, inspired by Tod Browning's film Freaks — and reveals a remarkable coincidence: the original circus pinhead "Zip, the What-Is-It" was named William Henry Jackson, born in 1842, the same name and birth year as Griffith's own great-grandfather. Discusses Zippy's appeal as a "fun-house mirror" for 1980s anxieties, his "poetry of nonsequiturs" reflecting media overload, and shares stories about John Belushi's fan letter wanting Zippy to host Saturday Night Live and Dan Aykroyd developing the Coneheads after reading Zippy Stories in a van. Offers a bleak assessment of current newspaper cartooning as "a vast wasteland" of "formula-ridden pablum" and reflects on the underground comix market's decline from 20,000-30,000 print runs to a state where 10,000 copies counts as a major success.