Zippy the Pinhead is a fictional character who is the protagonist of Zippy, an American comic strip created by Bill Griffith. Zippy's most famous quotation, "Are we having fun yet?", appears in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations and became a catchphrase. He almost always wears a yellow muumuu/clown suit with large red polka dots, and puffy, white clown shoes. Although in name and appearance, Zippy is a microcephalic, he is distinctive not so much for his skull shape, or for any identifiable form of brain damage, but for his enthusiasm for philosophical non sequiturs, verbal free association, and pursuit of popular culture ephemera. His wholehearted devotion to random artifacts satirizes the excesses of consumerism.
Eightball is a comic book by Daniel Clowes and published by Fantagraphics Books. It ran from 1989 to 2004. The first issue appeared soon after the end of Clowes's previous comic book, Lloyd Llewellyn. Eightball has been among the best-selling series in alternative comics.
Peter Bagge is an American cartoonist whose best-known work includes the comics Neat Stuff and Hate. His stories often use black humor and exaggerated cartooning to dramatize the reduced expectations of middle-class American youth. He won two Harvey Awards in 1991, one for best cartoonist and one for his work on Hate. In recent decades Bagge has done more fact-based comics, everything from biographies to history to comics journalism. Publishers of Bagge's articles, illustrations, and comics include suck.com, MAD Magazine, toonlet, Discover, and the Weekly World News, with the comic strip Adventures of Batboy. He has expressed his libertarian views in features for Reason.
Manuel Rodriguez, better known as Spain or Spain Rodriguez, was an American underground cartoonist who created the character Trashman. His experiences on the road with the motorcycle club, the Road Vultures M.C., provided inspiration for his work, as did his left-wing politics. Strongly influenced by 1950s EC Comics illustrator Wally Wood, Spain pushed Wood's sharp, crisp black shadows and hard-edged black outlines into a more simplified, stylized direction. His work also extended the eroticism of Wood's female characters.
Joe Sacco is a Maltese-American cartoonist and journalist. He is best known for his comics journalism, in particular in the books Palestine (1996) and Footnotes in Gaza (2009), on Israeli–Palestinian relations; and Safe Area Goražde (2000) and The Fixer (2003) on the Bosnian War. In 2020, Sacco released Paying the Land, published by Henry Holt and Company.
Rocky is a Swedish autobiographical comic strip created by Martin Kellerman, focusing on an anthropomorphic dog, Rocky, and his friends in their everyday life in Stockholm.
The Ignatz Awards recognize outstanding achievements in comics and cartooning by small press creators or creator-owned projects published by larger publishers. They have been awarded each year at the Small Press Expo since 1997, only skipping a year in 2001 due to the show's cancellation after the September 11 attacks. As of 2014 SPX has been held in either Bethesda, North Bethesda, or Silver Spring, Maryland.
Basil Wolverton was an American cartoonist and illustrator known for his intricately detailed grotesques of bizarre or misshapen people. Wolverton was described as "Producer of Preposterous Pictures of Peculiar People who Prowl this Perplexing Planet." His many publishers included Marvel Comics and Mad magazine.
William Henry Jackson Griffith is an American cartoonist who signs his work Bill Griffith and Griffy. He is best known for his surreal daily comic strip Zippy. The catchphrase "Are we having fun yet?" is credited to Griffith.
Dave Cooper is a Canadian cartoonist, oil painter and animator.
Thomas Martin Spurgeon was an American writer, historian, critic, and editor in the field of comics, notable for his five-year run as editor of The Comics Journal and his blog The Comics Reporter.
Carol Tyler is an American painter, educator, comedian, and eleven-time Eisner Award-nominated cartoonist known for her autobiographical comics. She has received multiple honors for her work including the Cartoonist Studio Prize, the Ohio Arts Council Excellence Award, and was declared a Master Cartoonist at the 2016 Cartoon Crossroads Columbus Festival at the Billy Ireland Cartoon Library & Museum.
Trina Robbins is an American cartoonist. She was an early participant in the underground comix movement, and one of the first female artists in that movement. She is a member of the Will Eisner Hall of Fame.
Terry LaBan is an alternative/underground cartoonist and newspaper comic strip artist. He is known for his comic book series Cud, and his syndicated strip Edge City, created with his wife, Patty LaBan, a couples and family therapist.
John F. Ryan IV is an American alternative comics creator, writer, and animator. He created Angry Youth Comix, a comic book published by Fantagraphics, and "Blecky Yuckerella", a comic strip which originated in the alternative newspaper the Portland Mercury and now appears on Ryan's website. He also created Pig Goat Banana Cricket, a TV show made jointly with Dave Cooper that Nickelodeon picked up. He was the story editor for Looney Tunes Cartoons. In a throwback to the days of underground comix, Ryan's oeuvre is generally an attempt to be as shocking and politically incorrect as possible.
Rick Altergott is an American alternative cartoonist and illustrator. Altergott is best known for Doofus, a long-running low-brow, scatological series of strips which chronicle the misadventures of two small-town weirdos, Doofus and Henry Hotchkiss.
Krazy Kat is an American newspaper comic strip, created by cartoonist George Herriman, which ran from 1913 to 1944. It first appeared in the New York Evening Journal, whose owner, William Randolph Hearst, was a major booster for the strip throughout its run. The characters had been introduced previously in a side strip with Herriman's earlier creation, The Dingbat Family. Actually, Bill Blackbeard discovered two earlier appearances in the Herriman comic strip Baron Bean but almost all sources ignore this slightly earlier appearance. The phrase "Krazy Kat" originated there, said by the mouse by way of describing the cat. Set in a dreamlike portrayal of Herriman's vacation home of Coconino County, Arizona, KrazyKat's mixture of offbeat surrealism, innocent playfulness and poetic, idiosyncratic language has made it a favorite of comics aficionados and art critics for more than 80 years.
Fletcher Hanks, Sr. was an American cartoonist from the Golden Age of Comic Books, who wrote and drew stories detailing the adventures of all-powerful, supernatural heroes and their elaborate punishments of transgressors. In addition to his birth name, Hanks worked under a number of pen names, including Hank Christy, Charles Netcher, C. C. Starr, and Barclay Flagg. Hanks was active in comic books from 1939 to 1941.
Anders Nilsen is an American cartoonist who lives in Los Angeles, California.
Paul Karasik is an American cartoonist, editor, and teacher, notable for his contributions to such works as City of Glass: The Graphic Novel, The Ride Together: A Memoir of Autism in the Family, and Turn Loose Our Death Rays and Kill Them All!. He is the coauthor, with Mark Newgarden, of How to Read Nancy, 2018 winner of the Eisner Award for "Best Comics-Related Book". His work has appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post and he is also an occasional cartoonist for The New Yorker.
