Shatner Move Over

That's not really a joke so much as a straight-up ad. In a culture where we're afraid to even mention popular product names in print this seems. . . inappropriate, somehow. I'm not even sure that the 5% of readers who recognize the reference will appreciate it.

Does that guy get wi-fi up there?

Fixin' To Do Some Probing

Ain't no backwoods man-eating alien know a thing about currency. They'll never catch dog-walking Ziggy and his exact duplicate with topical humor like that.

Might I suggest the following zinger, delivered by a certain Mr. Jimmy Kimmell, instead?:

"John McCain is putting his campaign on hold to focus on the economy. When you have 11 houses, you take a housing crisis very, very seriously."

Pen that one down and leave it where people can find it. When they're all doubled over with the ensuing belly laughs, probe 'em til they squeak.

One more thing: You cannot tell me that this strip is not occasionally influenced by Gahan Wilson. That is all.

Smarter-Than-A-Stupid-Rattus

Judging by that mouse's posture, he's about to check up on some hemorrhoid cream.

Avoid the Freud

Dr. Alfsheim Facialhair has adopted a sort of paganistic psychoanalysis, a breezy naturalism (naturism?) that allows him to keep his friendliness whilst forcing his patients into a sort of zoo animal mentality.

Ziggy's paying through the nose for this percussive psychology. He should have worn pants to his appointment.

Update: Props to Francesco Marciuliano

And now, a brief break from Ziggy for the following personally-relevant anecdote:

Reading the blog of the very funny Francesco Marciuliano, the writer of the always pleasant newspaper comic Sally Forth and the slightly more subversive Medium Large (a webcomic which, in my view, does a bang-up job of combining the aesthetics of a syndicated comic with the chaos of an electronic one), I was surprised to see this feature listed among 30 some-odd others as a friendly blog (a blog which receives his recommendation, presumably along with the 30 some-odd others in the list).

Well, you've made a powerful friend, Francesco! I knew I was a fan from the moment I saw this wonderful image:


Francesco's blog post is now more than a month old, so I haven't come close to explaining the insane traffic spike Ziggy Liberated has received today. Guess I'll just keep on Googlin'. Maybe somebody else appreciates my special brand of referential puns and nonsense.

Surreality: A Ziggy Retrospective

Ziggy's surreal adventures through the looking glass have led me to cobble together this little retrospective, which you should forthwith click to enlarge and possibly make into an illegal shirt:


Above Ziggy wrestles with right and wrong, correction and mistake, proving that the greatest battles are to fought within your own bulbous little mind.

One-Liner Monday

It's that time again:


Well, there's the Fattest Smile award from Hydrocephalics Monthly!


Well, they're still more appealing than Courtney Love.


The shell has moved up from non sequitur threats to a more specific, unceasing criticism. Maybe ol' Z thinks he's on the phone with his mom.


In the woebegone world of Ziggy, this means that Evil was hit by crippling morning depression and never showed up, leading Good to win by default.


Ziggy has a gun under that beanie.

The Deadly Hermit Crab Burrows Deeper

One lazy PhotoShop session later, the shell appears to be dispensing a deadly neurotoxin directly into Ziggy's brain:


This is the third such strip in just the last few months. The first warned about this sort of thing.

Nirvana? Nevermind.

It's some kind of ritual leaping seppuku for prospective intelligentsia. I wonder how the local gubmint spun this sign's establishment.

Three-Liner

When did Patton Oswalt become Ziggy's trainer?

Leotard Ziggy appears to be occupied with a single thought: Run? Like, with my legs?

I've seen worse initiations; I understand the Spetsnaz used to shove new recruits into a tiny room with a rabid dog and a shovel. With Ziggy it'd be more like a broken toaster and a Pop-Tart.

But Where's Al's Panacea?

Somehow, I have the feeling that everything this guy touches is scented.

Day of Doldrums

One of the strangest things about Ziggy is its wild unevenness: sometimes the backgrounds are a psychedelic nightmare, and sometimes everything is clad in boring earth tones. Sometimes there's a punchline, sometimes just a wonderful stream of absurdity. The rest of the time it's just depressing. Just like life, except for the part about the psychedelic nightmare - unless you're into acid jazz.

And sometimes it's just boring (yes, that's a link to this page). I kind of like the gloomy shadows gathering behind Ziggy, though.

Inner Pleas

We haven't seen the Guru since he shoved a man to his death. Still, Ziggy hasn't been down there for two months, so it's possible we've had several guru murder/switchovers in the time since he last made the trek. Given his above statement, it's possible that he was witness to one of the murders. Ziggy rarely hammers you with violence, but there's always death lurking under the floorboards. The UV exposure up there must be insane.

For the Mob it Was a Horse's Head

You've been dead all day?

Those mice are gonna kill that cat one of these days, and the placement of his trussed up, unconscious body suggests that this act is a warning to the miserable beast's master. Were this situation to be mirrored in real life, I'd expect Ziggy to arrive home one fine afternoon to find his furry friend drowned in the toilet. Then again, this is the madcap world of Ziggy, where people suffer but never die.

Kill the Pig, Make it Bleed! (Dark Days Ahead For Ziggy)

Poor Zig's financial woes have forced him into some kind of back-alley dentist's office. The certificates on the wall are meaningless; health standards have no home here. This unmasked, ungloved androgyne is all set to plunge his/her sweaty, hairy hands into Ziggy's terrified mouth along with six inches of metal. Novocaine is for pansies, right? I half expect to see restraints on Ziggy's chair.

Look at something like this and Gahan Wilson suddenly doesn't seem so bad.

Procrastinimrod

Ziggy doesn't look "poised" here. He looks doomed and afraid, like he's penning his will. He should have kept his procrastination generic and comfortable, like last time. Thinking about the things you have to get done defeats the whole purpose of procrastination, which is have a brief, wonderful worry-free day. Now he's just going to suffer twice as much. And it seems he's just seen the error of this little loophole he's concocted, attempting to unload all of his work onto his past self.

How will he find the time to "CALL @u3v/wsk" or "segz wromic" now?

Weird Art Attack

I felt inclined to point out that I really did know what I was talking about a couple of days ago with the parrot, then I noticed the bizarre art in this strip. Either Ziggy's some sort of Stretch Armstrong or his legs have been extended by two feet or more. Either way this strip brings up two unpleasant observations:

1) Ziggy may have knees. The people of the world have seen Ziggy's ankles for so long, and, having negotiated with the creator of this feature that the area under Ziggy's many one-color long-sleeved shirts is Off Limits, we're not used to thinking about it. By the looks of this strip, Ziggy's knees bend about one foot off of the ground and the rest is all thigh.

2) His Ziggy Jr. may be hanging out. The less said about this, the better. Drawing attention to what appears to be his dog's talking butt would have shown more propriety.

Incompetence in the Green World

Not a very helpful lesbian.

The Green Team

I noticed this Superteam has attempted a matching color scheme. I don't think the bird is pissed for want of a higher position than sidekick - after all, he was a cult leader last week - but because superhero teams are actually supposed to do things.

I've been lacking in philosophy for some time, now, and seeing as it's the stated goal of this blog to find philosophy in unlikely places, I'm going to have to answer my inner voices of responsibility and get cracking.

Patent absurdity of the talking pet situation aside, our protagonist's situation seems to mirror the plight of the modern everyman who, having filled his life with devices of convenience, comfort and mobility, suddenly reaches a point where an uncomfortable paradox sets in: an oversaturation of free time and leisure with no real avenue of escape. In other words, our modern man, suddenly able to go everywhere and do everything, is suddenly left with nothing at all to do.

Amidst the blaring electronic equipment in the house, blistering speeds reachable by the internal combustion engine, and instant communication all over the world, we hit the Saturation Event Horizon and are left with nothing to watch, nowhere to go, and noone to talk to. I've read stories that modern man is getting dumber. And that's the only world that's scarier than a return to the Dark Ages of production and technology, and you can already start to see it now: a world full of comfortable, unmotivated people who sit alone in their nice houses getting upstaged by their pets.

Even OnStar Would Hang Up On You

Odd - usually the "body shop" puns aren't depicted literally. I know the people of the world have pretty much made it their mission to screw with Ziggy, but it seesm a bit wasteful to go to the ends they do, considering that the most extreme reaction they get these days is a vaguely nonplussed, mostly-disinterested glance toward the "camera".

They could be circling around him, dressed in vampire drag, yelling: "Your car is DEAD, Ziggy! DEAD! And you're next! BWAHAHAHA!" And he'd merely keep up that look that says "Oy vey, life. What can you do?"

One-Liner Sunday

That mushroom hat is just bulging with coalesced sweat.


Jim Jones had that same self-satisfied look - cultists get the groupies.


I'd say Purple Repairpants has a point, but on second thought I think he's coming on to Ziggy.


Actually, a podcast is just a plain ol' MP3 file. After a line like that, I'd kinda like to see a large cartoon weight come crashing down on him and his pepperoni swimming trunks.

Ports and Ports

Comcast has a way of doing that.

Mon Calamari

The poor cat's still recovering from his taser attack - he can barely hear Ziggy tell him that his unfortunate resemblance to an octopus has barred him from all seafood restaurants for his own safety.

Calmly Reciting

This joke is so lame and Hallmark-ready that I can't help but wish they'd kept up yesterday's theme of introspective abandonment:


That's a work of art and don't you dare dispute that. Click to enlarge if you wish.

Neither Living Nor Dead

Ziggy's posed some pretty tough verbal riddles in the past, which naturally leads us to expect some sort of eventual comeuppence. Here he's caught in some mellow limbo, deciphering this silent oracle growing out of what appears to be the sole remaining functioning hair follicle on his own head.

But no matter how you parse it, it doesn't make any sense.

"Left it all away, right?"
"Left: It all. Right: Away."
"Left it all right away."
"Forward it all. Back away."

Those honestly aren't even attempts at humor. What does this mean? If I didn't know for a fact that Wilson was about to do a golfing strip the next day, I'd swear he's lost his mind, in a nice, Salvador Dali sort of way.

What Illness Do I Have Today?

Ziggy's paranoia and small vocabulary have all-but-validated his worst fears. No doubt he's planning to go out like Freddie Mercury, coughing between stanzas of songs and shivering alone in a hospital bed placed in a nicely-heated room that still can't take the edge off of those chills (apologies to Queen fans or good people). And just like Mr. Mercury, Ziggy's been hiding his ethnicity his entire life for reasons of career; would the sentimental idiosyncratics who read this feature keep on doing so if they knew he was some kind of lumpy troll?

The hopeless lines under the eyes make this one.

Stay Tuned For Some Ads From Law Firms and Community Colleges

Heh. He's so passive and vegetative; you can see the fear in his face but he just keeps taking it. He's closer to chair algae than a couch potato. And don't you think he's watching FOX?

Shelves With Things on Them

Ziggy is often unfairly criticized. Well, perhaps not unfairly, but disproportionately so. At its best its a surrealist, absurd-yet-optimistic little strip with pleasant little non sequiturs and occasional bouts of madness. You'll enjoy it in much the same way you enjoy Rose is Rose, though the world of Ziggy is usually scads bleaker.

This is the sort of strip which makes you smile a little inside and think: "I went to a bookstore yesterday. It wasn't very silly." Or not. (Hey, I can't pump out nihilism every day.)

Most Dangerous Game

The balance of nature is shifting. This one is great enough that it doesn't require any special commentary, but there's probably a good allegory in here somewhere. The unique, low perspective of this comic implies that Ziggy might be next. I've grown fond of the guy, but heavens me, I'd like to see Ziggy tasered.

Now they need to get one of these.

Fame and Sickness

Publicity for what? When you've got anal fissures, the doctor doesn't even let you sit in a stool, just rest your arm over it and squat desperately over the floor. Doctors in Ziggy prefer to loom over their patients, enthusiastically giving terrible information. When they're qualified at all, that is.

But these strips are often funny, like when a smiling MD hands Ziggy a shovel and tells him: "Don't worry - I'll finish digging for you when you finally fade." They might even bring back the pauper's grave just for Ziggy.

Avian Presence

Easy joke: Crummy people chair!? Ziggy's being awfully hard on himself. He'd better get another chair in case some non-crummy people show up.

These self-assured little birds don't seem to regard their benefactor with any particular affection, particularly the spiteful little pecker in the birdbath.

Sad Sack

No club will have him, and the last time he tried being upbeat and optimistic, this happened:

Picky Little Peckers

The last time Ziggy carried bags and bags of meat into the park, he was in the news. He knows better now.

Which Circle of Hell Do Bad Cooks Go To?

A barbecue gone wrong - a smoldering, open-air infernal cavern of cinderns and soot. And, lo, a voice from the mire: a voice of mock'ry, a voice of discouragement and sharp scorn. For embedded in the mess of smoke appears a demonic force, one whose sole purpose at the moment appears to be either to provide a negative incentive toward future grilling on Ziggy's part, or to persuade him to eat that which may be unhealthy to his little frame. Even the awful parrot looks down upon this unwelcome intrusion from the world of hellfire into an innocent, albeit misguided, attempt at a simple backyard barbecue.

Half-Dollar Hell

Things don't work the same in Purple World, giving Ziggy more than a second's pause. Yes, everything vended still runs you fifty cents, and the machine still leans intimidatingly, but these looming monoliths dispense items only as some sort of Monkey's Paw tradeoff, often taking your arm with it when you reach into the slot.

When the End of All Worlds comes a'tumbling down that chute, don't say I didn't warn ya.

Dunit!

No, that's the medical section. It's going to come in useful - that speech bubble looks set to go for Madame Librarian's throat.

The Game of (No) Life

Beanie-clutching? Check. "Indifferent outsiders" dismissing Ziggy with a half-hearted quip? Check. Low, discomfort-inducing chair? What do you think? Ziggy'd have a better time of it if he'd stop doing his financial work and interviewing through Douchebag & Sons.