Back in 1976, I was doodling at the drafting table belonging to my buddy Josh's dad, cartoonist Barry Geller. Barry had just published a book called You've Turned the Fables on Me, and the main character of his Hans story was a squat little guy with a big nose and enormous moustache. I began riffing, and soon had my own squat little guy with a bif nose and enormous moustache. Something clicked, and he became my alter ego (despite the fact that I'm not squat, don't have a particularly big nose, nor a moustache of any kind).
The amusing character with a name like a cartoon sound effect immediately went to work, populating homemade children's books for my young siblings, notebook graffiti, and a series of underground "radio" tapes the Beach Brothers were creating and selling to a network of junior high kids in two states. In the Santa Cruz, CA, community, kids were sewing little Zs onto their clothes. It was a bizarre little cult of personality, centered around a mostly-unknown comic character who hadn't done anything of public note. Zingo's early cohorts were a mish-mash of the most hastily-thought-out characters ever devised outside an Ed Wood film.
By the early eighties, our little skateboarder was ready to go crimefighting. A new era for Zingo began, evidenced in Zingo Magazine #1, which was dropped on an unsuspecting public, much like a bomb filled with half-eaten lasagna, in 1983. The reaction was what one might expect from such a weapon - "Well... it's tasty, but it's half-eaten and my clothes are RUINED!!" What is important is that both Frog and Margot were introduced in ZM#1, and promptly disappeared. It was also the launchpad for a little 2-page mini-feature which would become Inner Circle.
After the superhero stories of Zingo Magazine and Tales of Zingo, a schizm evolved between the more serious storylines of the Inner Circle gang and the more cartoonish adventures of Zingo's bunch. In 1984, Zingo went stripping. A decidedly non-super Z and friends (including a talking harborseal with an affinity for Twinkies, appropriately named after Barry Geller) starred in a regular comic strip featured in the Palo Alto Campanile and the Foothill Sentinel, with a total run of four years (1984-1988). In 1990, Z and Barry made the jump to the animated screen in a couple short films I shot in animation school. Then...
Nothing.
They just up and left. Not one phone call or email from either of those bastards!
Until 2000, when Big Bad Hammer launched and they begged for another shot at the big time. A new weekly 6-panel Zingo "strip" (they are really more like actual pages, just with a gag on each page) ran for 20 "issues", from 2000 to 2001. Then everybody who'd launched BBH got paying gigs or became too busy to do it anymore, and - voila - no more Hammer, no more Zingo.
So that's the story. "So what" you rant, "what a waste of my time!" True. You probably should be more careful about what you read. But for the dozen or so fans of the little dude with the big nose and his surly harbor seal, there it is. The entire Big Bad Hammer series can be viewed here, as well as a few of the old strips. Enjoy.
By the way, the cameo in the 19th BBH strip is Checkerboard Nightmare, from the eponymous online strip by Kris Straub, one of the best comic authors offering online content.