Arnold Zwicky's Blog

Today’s (1/2/21) Zippy strip, set in a diner tucked away in a corner of the small rural town of Hillsville VA:

(#1) Virgil is the counterman at the Hillsville Diner; the other speaker is an unnamed (and flatly drawn) Dingburger customer

Note that Bill Griffith’s drawing of the Hillsville Diner is perspectival, as his drawings generally are. The shift to a flat line drawing half-way though the strip is jarring.

Hillsville and its diner. Hillsville is a small town (pop. 2,681 in the 2010 census) in the Blue Ridge mountains of southwest Virgina (very close to the North Carolina state line). Then from the Diner Hotline Weblog, “Virginia’s Hillsville Diner still going strong” from 4/21/10:

The Hillsville Diner is a 1920’s vintage Jerry O’Mahony diner [opened in Hillsville in 1946] and was originally called the Mount Airy Diner (its first location was in that North Carolina city [not far from Hillsville]). In fact legend has it that a young Andy Griffith had patronized the diner when it was in Mount Airy (his hometown).

Two images of the diner. First, in an October 1986 photo by Larry Cultrera:

(#2)

Then in a 2015 photo, from a different angle:

(#3)

The place is definitely a survivor — still around in this unlikely spot since 1946.

Perspectival vs. flat cartoons. Zippy cartoons are typically meticulously drawn, with an attention to detail and strikingly perspectival, as in this cartoon of Dingburg’s main street:

(#4)

The contrast is with flat line drawing, as in this cartoon by Baloo (Rex F. May):

(#5)

 

This entry was posted on January 2, 2021 at 6:40 am and is filed under Art, Diners, Linguistics in the comics. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.