Bill Griffith, creator of the long-running Zippy comic strip and the recently published Three Rocks: The Story of Ernie Bushmiller: The Man Who Created Nancy, was honored by the National Cartoonists Society with their Reuben Award at their annual meeting on September 7.

Griffith, who began his career in underground comics (after a brief stint as an artist for Wacky Packages), created Zippy in 1971. He started drawing a weekly Zippy strip for the Berkeley Barb, an underground newspaper, in 1976, and in 1986 it was picked up by King Features Syndicate as a daily strip. He also collaborated with Art Spiegelman to edit the short-lived anthology Arcade, the Comics Revue, in 1975-76. More recently, he has shifted to full-length graphic novels, with Invisible Ink: My Mother’s Secret Love Affair with a Famous Cartoonist (see “Bill Griffith’s First OGN”), for which he won the Eisner Award for Best Writer/Artist; Nobody’s Fool: The Life and Times of Schlitzie the Pinhead, which explored the life of the sideshow performer who inspired Zippy (see “Spring Titles from Abrams ComicArts”); and Three Rocks, which was published on August 29, 2023 (see “Bill Griffith to Tell the Life Story of Ernie Bushmiller”). He was inducted into the Eisner Awards Hall of Fame this year. Griffith was married to the late cartoonist Diane Noomin (see “R.I.P. Diane Noomin”), and his tribute to her, The Buildings Are Barking: Diane Noomin in Memoriam, was published by Fantagraphics in July (see “Coming from Fantagraphics”).

Other award winners in comics divisions included

  • Online Comics – Long Form: Phil Foglio
  • Online Comics – Short Form: Rich Powell
  • Newspaper Comic Strip: Will Henry
  • Newspaper Panel: Dave Blazek
  • Comic Book: Ben Bender
  • Graphic Novel: Alex Ross
  • Editorial Cartoon: Matt Davies
  • Gag Cartoon: Christopher Weyant