Zippy visits Japan, again!
For the third or fourth time in recent years, Bill Griffith, the famous US cartoonist who writes and draws the popular ZIPPY comic strip that is published around the world — including in the Daily Yomiuri and the Taipei Times in Asia — has situated one of his daily strips in, yes, Japan.
The last time he put his cartoon characters in Japan was last fall when Zippy was waiting for a bus at a watermelon-shaped bus stop in Ishagaya City.
This time (the comic appeared worldwide in over 200 newspapers on March 20) Griffith used a photo of frog-bedecked bridge in Japan, which appeared in a Japundit article by Ampontan.
Here is the actual strip as it appeared on Thursday.
If you look closely, you will see some kanji written into the comic, too, and this might mark the first time an American comic strip has printed kanji in an English-language 3-panel strip.
Ampontan noted earlier in the year: “Long-time friends of Japundit will remember that the cartoon character Zippy the Pinhead visited Isahaya, at Japundit’s invitation last year, to see a watermelon-shaped bus stop that later appeared in a worldwide ZIPPY comic strip. Maybe we should invite Zippy back to Japan to see the Frog Bridge in Inami-cho, Wakayama Prefecture.”
And now, yes, Zippy DID come back to Japan, to visit that bridge that Ampontan blogged about. Nice. And I have heard that Zippy will be visiting Taiwan on April 17, again in a comic strip published worldwide, after seeing a photo of a giant soy sauce bottle on Japundit earlier this year. Zippy sure does get around, and he certainly seems to enjoy reading Japundit, too! Bienvenue, Zippy!
April 3rd, 2006 at 1:31 pm