Zippy Annual 2003 continues Zippy's ongoing love affair with "Brand X" America in all its faded roadside glory. The peripatetic pinhead visits giant teddy bears, giant hamburgers, giant squirrels, giant chimney seeps and giant Amish farmers.

He puts in a prolonged stay at Las Vegas's unheralded off-the-beaten-strip tourist attraction, the "Neon Boneyard", repository of discarded casino signs and the 30-foot tall "Mr. Lucky", who's seen better days.

There's even a "backlash" sequence where Zippy's "supporting cast" (Griffy, Claude, Toad, Shelf-Life and occasional wife Zerbina) intervene in order to hold Zippy to his "contractual obligations" and to interact more with them. Will Zippy come home again?

In another attempt to "cure" Zippy of his ongoing obsession to talk to very roadside icon in America, Griffy and Mr. Toad yank the Pinboy away and send him to a Coney Island of the Mind (in the 1920s-30s).

Other forays include a peek at Zippy's P.T. Barnum sideshow origins as well as Griffy's childhood days in rural New Hampshire, as well as visits to Japan, Levittown and Fred Astaire. In an extended continuity series, Zippy goes back in time to the early 1900's where he lives in a castle and cavorts with a guy who thinks he's Sherlock Holmes.
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8 1/2" by 11", big color section, 128 pgs., $19.95