I think it’s fair to say that there’s a pretty big disparity when it comes to comics’ relationship with biographies. There are plenty of graphic novel biographies on the lives of film stars, historical figures, activists, sports legends — even the guy who invented Tetris, for God’s sake. What there is a shortage of, however, is comics about…well, the people who make comics. For that matter, there are even fewer about the great minds of the near-bygone era of newspaper strip comics.

As fate would have it though, there are people like cartoonist Bill Griffith — creator of Zippy the Pinhead, and one of the few cartoonists who has been churning out hilarious, poignant, and clever daily comics strips for nearly half a century — whose obsession with Ernie Bushmiller’s Nancy has lead to the publication of Three Rocks: The Story of Ernie