Review: Invisible Ink: My Mother's Love Affair With A Famous Cartoonist

Invisible Ink: My Mother's Love Affair With A Famous Cartoonist by Bill Griffith
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I am a fan of Zippy, Griffith’s surreal comix character, and I hoped that this autobiographical graphic work would be in the same vein. It is. Griffith tells the story of his mother’s long affair with a well known cartoonist that he didn’t know about. Ends up his mother worked for said cartoonist, and Griffith’s father was a bit of a loner type. Griffith tells the story of finding out about the affair and doing his own detective work to try to figure out how this happened. He also tells, and better, shows what he thinks might have happened if he knew this when he was a young and impressionable cartoonist. Much like a deep-thought Zippy strip, Griffith illustrates in a different style reflecting the teachings of the elder cartoonist. I really enjoyed that Griffith was able to share some of his deepest thoughts about this unknown aspect of his mother’s life, in writing and drawing. Some of the story, like meeting with his uncle at the beginning and end of the book, felt a bit forced, but otherwise, quite an interesting glimpse into Griffith’s head.

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