The Great Zapfino

Join the crowd, hold your breath, and thrill to the ringmaster’s ballyhoo as The Great Zapfino ascends the impossibly high ladder and prepares to make the ten-story Leap For Life onto an impossibly tiny trampoline, defying fate “for your entertainment.” It’s a feat no rational person would attempt—and it seems that Zapfino thinks so too. He’s out of the big top in a flash and on an airplane to a palm-tree lined beach, where he snags a job and a dingy top floor room in a Miami-esque mid-century modern apartment building, making a new life for himself as an elevator operator. He likes the tenants and the tenants like him, and life rolls along until the evening he falls asleep waiting for his nightly bread slice to toast and dinner catches fire. What Zapfino wouldn’t do “for your entertainment” he now does for self-preservation, delighting onlookers as he leaps off the ledge and tumbles acrobatically through the air, bouncing onto the firefighters’ trampoline and sticking a perfect landing with a theatrical flourish. Apart from some well-placed signage and the ringmaster’s initial patter, the story proceeds wordlessly, allowing viewers to pore over the variety of elevator riders and their gear and to recognize Zapfino’s air of contentment as he settles into a humble but satisfying routine. Frazee’s black pencil drawings capture the action in a slightly ambiguous temporal setting, in which elevator operators ply their trade and men can be spotted in ties and fedoras, while airline passengers drag wheeled suitcases and hipsters carry coffee cups and yoga mats. Slight but delightful, this title easily withstands multiple readings, and unprepossessing Zapfino earns the big Z on the front of his uniform.