A cartoonist’s grim pursuit of a killer

Author and cartoonist Robert Graysmith’s obsession with the famed Zodiac serial killer began in 1969 when he was a shy young political cartoonist at the San Francisco Chronicle.

Thirty-eight years later, the killer, who was never caught, is still very much a part of Graysmith’s life.

Graysmith’s book “Zodiac” is now in its 39th printing and reportedly has sold 400 million copies; his follow-up, “Zodiac Unmasked,” is in its seventh printing.

Now the story of the notorious modern-day Jack the Ripper, who terrorized the San Francisco Bay area and sent taunting letters and ciphers to journalists such as Graysmith and authorities in four jurisdictions, is hitting the big screen. “Zodiac,” directed by David Fincher, opens Friday.

The film follows Graysmith (Jake Gyllenhaal) and three other characters (played by Robert Downey Jr., Mark Ruffalo and Anthony Edwards) as they try to crack the mystery.

“I was probably about the youngest political cartoonist at a major paper,” Graysmith recalls. “I would have been about 24, pretty much like Jake in the movie. I didn’t weigh 145 pounds then, but the obsessiveness of the case got me down to 145.”

Watching Gyllenhaal, he says, “is like having a really good analyst, because I didn’t know how deferential, fairly shy and really obsessed I was.” And also just what a poor dresser he was. “Jake is wearing the same lousy clothes I wore -- the lousy sweater vest and corduroy jacket,” Graysmith says, laughing.

Graysmith became involved with the “Zodiac” movie in 2002, looking at the script and later spending three months in Southern California during filming, visiting the soundstage replica of the Chronicle newsroom.

“I opened one of the drawers [on the set], and there was a Chronicle notebook,” he says. “There were the Eagle pencils, like what we used to use. I opened the little phone directory, and it had the extensions of everyone. The pneumatic tubes worked.”

Graysmith also lent the production numerous personal items.

“Jake’s drawing on the actual drawing board I provided. They used my real cartoons, the real sketches and my real pen!”

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-- Susan King