Zaftig Pink and the "nudie cutie" revival
An artist blending midcentury Americana with nudist humor for a new era of Nudie Cutie Comics
One day last February, I went on a naked hike—a familiar trail over the hill adjacent to Glen Eden Sun Club, one of my happy places. It was a rare day when the weather and calendar aligned perfectly for unplugging, even if my restless mind resisted. As I wandered the hills, my thoughts churned through work projects and unresolved ideas, including one I’d been mulling for weeks: nudist comics.
As a volunteer director of the Western Nudist Research Library at Glen Eden, I’ve spent hours immersed in vintage nudist magazines. These midcentury gems have shaped Planet Nude’s aesthetic and ethos, from their design to the cheeky “nudie cutie” comics tucked within. While playful and self-aware, these comics are firmly rooted in their era—dated, copyrighted, and out of sync with modern sensibilities. If Planet Nude were to revive that spirit, it needed something new. But I didn’t know many comic artists.
By the time I descended the hill, the idea was still simmering. Stopping by the library for Wi-Fi, I found an unbelievable email waiting for me. The subject line read: “An artist you might find interesting…”
Kismet!
This cosmically-timed email introduced me to Zaftig Pink, whose work I’d seen in passing but hadn’t fully appreciated until that moment. Zaftig’s drawings and characters (and whole vibe) felt like an answer to the exact problem I’d been mulling over. His work channels the playful irreverence of those midcentury cartoons, blending it with sharp modern humor, body-positive figures, diverse characters, and a love for the absurd.
I reached out immediately, pitching a collaboration (or three). By April, Planet Nude had launched Strips, our new webcomic series, with Zaftig’s Nudie Cutie Comics as one of its debut features. The series has since become a key part of Planet Nude, with Zaftig’s prolific output (dozens of gags in the backlog already) delighting readers twice a month.
In this interview, Zaftig shares his inspirations, his fascination with absurdity, and how midcentury Americana became the perfect backdrop for nudist humor.
The interview with Zaftig Pink
If your characters could break out of the gags for one day, what would they get into?
This makes me think of that Warren Beatty “Dick Tracy” movie and how Beatty took all of those fantastic Chester Gould character designs and translated them very literally to the screen. Pruneface was a few lines of ink in a two-inch panel, he’s fantastic, but when Pruneface is three dimensional flesh he’s an absolute monstrosity. And that’s probably true for any cartoon character. If anyone in one of my strips were to break out into the real world, they would probably just collapse in agony because their bodies are too impractically proportioned to cope with gravity.
Midcentury Americana is all over your work—why does that work for comics about nudism?
I think that that postwar period was probably the golden age of American nudism, and certainly the golden age of nudist media. Even the rattiest little digest magazine from that time would be filled with genuinely fantastic photography and graphic design. And I do love the nudie cutie films of that era. I know some people can find the blurred lines between education and exploitation in that era objectionable, but when it comes down to it exploitation is generally more fun than education. And what’s more American than making a quick buck while having a little fun?
But why that all works for comics about nudism is that era really determined the visual language for representing nudism. Cartooning is really the art of simplification. For a gag to work you have to be able to eliminate everything which isn’t absolutely necessary from the panel, and make sure everything that remains is working towards the gag. So if I draw a bunch of naked people standing around, the context of that isn’t going to be clear to a general audience. But if I draw a bunch of naked people standing around a volleyball net, that same audience will immediately know what’s going on. The iconography of that era is still powerful enough, and memorable enough, that it works as a visual shorthand. And for a cartoonist, any visual shorthand is an absolute godsend.
Is there a certain kind of absurdity you’re drawn to when creating your comics?
Life? Isn’t that absurd enough? We’re a bunch of thinking meat bags clinging to a rock hurtling at unbelievable speed through unbelievably vast space, and we live every second surrounded by innumerable things which could bring it all to an immediate end for any or all of us at any second. It’s genuinely hard to get much more absurd than that. All I can do is shine a light on it from a slightly different angle.
Do you think nudity is funnier because it’s natural or because it’s taboo?
Let me ask, is it funnier to be eaten by an alligator when you’re naked or when you’re clothed? It’s probably more practical to be eaten by an alligator when you’re wearing clothes, because then at least they can pick out the undigestible bits of your clothing after all is said and done and work out why you haven’t picked up your mail lately. But being eaten by an alligator while naked is probably funnier, because it enhances the gag. It’s the lagniappe, so long as we’re in alligator country.
Nudity is natural, but it also exposes our vulnerability. And if there is one taboo in our culture, it’s acknowledging — and I mean really acknowledging — that vulnerability. Again, we’re thinking meat bags on a space rock, and an alligator’s digestive system is just one of many, many things that could bring that all to an immediate end at any second. That’s our real natural state. That we’ve made confronting that taboo is how absurdism is born. And hopefully that’s where I come in.
Where can people find your merch or support your work?
Thanks for the opportunity for shameless self-promotion. I’m very happy to be on Planet Nude on the second and fourth Wednesdays of every month. I also have my own substack over at zaftigpink.substack.com, where I’ve been attempting to put out slightly longer strips every Sunday, with an even longer-form comic that delves a little deeper into nudist topics every month. Like everyone else in the universe, I have a fairly well-stocked online store, and anybody who wants to hire me for anything else is more than welcome to reach out through Substack. I promise I won’t talk about death and alligators nearly as much if you do that. 🪐
I have three Zaftig Pink design fridge magnets and ordered two more on Black Friday!
Outstanding work! It’s instructive to read about your shorthand, streamlined approach. I love that so many titles and written lines in your work have double meanings, like the “almost doesn’t count” in the horseshoes image in this article. Genius!