Today’s Zippy, with our Pinhead surreally awash in preposterous names (though I can’t help suspecting that there might be actual models for these), cartooning, and Art:
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In reverse order, starting with the third panel:
Abrams. From Wikipedia:
Abrams, formerly Harry N. Abrams, Inc. …, is an American publisher of high-quality art and illustrated books, and the enterprise is a subsidiary of the French publisher La Martinière Groupe. Run by President and CEO Michael Jacobs, Abrams publishes and distributes approximately 250 titles annually and has more than 2,000 titles in print. Abrams also distributes publications for the Victoria and Albert Museum, Tate, Royal Academy, Vendome Press (in North America), Booth Clibborn Editions, Other Criteria, and 5 Continents.
Otherwise: the same Pop Art image, repeated again and again, brings us into the world of Andy Warhol.
Toilet humor. Contrary to the text in the second panel, toilet humor is immensely popular.
Any-Size Woodtank. Any-Size Woodtank, Licensed Pipefitter puts me in mind of graphic novelist Ben Katchor and his work on Julius Knipl, Real Estate Photographer, which is often described as a comic strip, but would be better described as graphic short stories. From Wikipedia:
Julius Knipl, Real Estate Photographer is a weekly comic strip written and drawn by Ben Katchor since 1988. It is published in The Jewish Daily Forward and various alternative weekly newspapers.
Katchor embodies his love of the fading small-business community of New York City in the title character, a small businessman who wanders the streets taking pictures and being sidetracked into surreal escapades. Strips often depict Knipl’s chance encounters with obscure, marginal businesses (e.g. a company that distributes newspaper weights to newsstands), eccentric hobbyists, and enigmatic details of the urban landscape. {Certainly a premise that would appeal deeply to Bill Griffith.] There is rarely continuity between the strips, and Knipl is the only recurring character.
… A collection of Julius Knipl strips was published in 1991 by Penguin Books (as a RAW One-Shot) as Cheap Novelties: The Pleasures of Urban Decay. Another collection was published in 1996 by Little, Brown and Company under the title Julius Knipl, Real Estate Photographer: Stories. Pantheon Books published a third volume of strips, The Beauty Supply District, in 2000. Each book includes one long story in addition to the self-contained weekly strips. Translated collections of the strip in French and Japanese have also been released.
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Since then: The Cardboard Valise (Pantheon Graphic Novels, 2011), Hand-Drying in America: And Other Stories (Pantheon Graphic Novels, 2013).
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