Diane Noomin Husband: Who Is Bill Griffith?

Bill Griffith is the husband of Diane Noomin, an American comics artist associated with the underground comics movement who died at age 75 on Sept. 1.

Diane is his second wife and they got married after their first meeting at a New Year’s Eve party in San Francisco in 1972. She lived together with Griffith in Connecticut, where they moved in 1998 after many years in San Francisco.

Bill Griffith (full name William Henry Jackson Griffith) like his late wife, is also a cartoonis. He is best known for his surreal daily comic strip Zippy and the catchphrase “Are we having fun yet?” is credited to him.

Griffith began making underground comixin 1969 and a year later, he moved to San Francisco, California to join its burgeoning underground comix movement.

While there, he gained prominence, first with a hit comic Young Lust, “an X-rated parody of girl’s romance comics” which he co-created with cartoonist Jay Kinney.

Girffith co-founded the comics anthology Arcade, the Comics Revue with Art Spiegelman and co-edited for its seven-issue run in the mid-1970s.

Griffith has worked with the leading underground publishers throughout that decade and up to the present: Print Mint, Last Gasp, Rip Off Press, Kitchen Sink and Fantagraphics Books.

He contributed comics and illustrations to a variety of publications, including National Lampoon, High Times, The New Yorker, The Village Voice and The New York Times.