I Heart Design

no. 58

SELECTED BYJIM HEIMANNJIMI HENDRIXDESIGNED BYRICK GRIFFIN

Rick Griffin was a Southern California high school student smack in the middle of a post–World War II generation weaned on comic books, television, and rock and roll when he took up surfing in the late 1950s. Expressing his youth and emerging lifestyle through the comics he wrote and drew, the self-taught teenaged Griffin would eventually come up with a comic strip and character named Murphy, which was published in Surfer magazine. The first time I saw “Murph,” I identified instantly with him and later snapped up Surfer Cartoons, a compilation of surf-inspired comics at a local newsstand. This booklet and Griffin’s later art would become the impetus for my eventual career in the ...