Today’s Zippy, on media of communication:
The incursion of electronic media into the domains of paper media is a recurrent theme in Zippy.
Some details:
1. The strip starts with Griffy reporting on what he sees on train rides into the city. That gives us a hook to Railroad Bill (the title of the strip).
From the Encyclopedia of Alabama:
The legend of Railroad Bill arose in the winter of 1895, along the Louisville and Nashville (L&N) Railroad line in southern Alabama. Based loosely on the exploits of an African American outlaw known as “Railroad Bill,” tales of his brief but action-filled career on the wrong side of the law have been preserved in song…, fiction, and theater. (link)
The folksong “Railroad Bill” has been recorded by various artists.
2. Then, Griffy and Zippy are riding / flying on a book with Nancy and Sluggo and Ernie Bushmiller on the spine. Nancy and Sluggo are the main characters in the cartoon Nancy, originally drawn by Bushmiller. Discussion of Nancy on this blog here.
3. Flappy Bird is a 2013 mobile game, developed by Vietnam-based developer Nguyễn Hà Đông (Dong Nguyen) and published by .GEARS Studios, a small, independent game developer also based in Vietnam. The game has a side-scrolling format and the player controls a bird, attempting to fly between rows of green pipes without coming into contact with them. (Wikipedia link)
April 28, 2014 at 9:30 am |
[…] 2. Flappy Bird is a reference we’ve seen before on Zippy, here. […]
May 9, 2014 at 8:19 am |
Vietnamese game developer Dong Nguyen created the game, and it was then published by GEARS Studios, a small game developer also out of Vietnam. In their most recent acquisition, Facebook purchased virtual reality gaming company Oculus earlier this week for $2B. Though many imitations of Flappy Bird had popped up quickly, Apple and Google have now started to take a harder stance on developers creating similar games.