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.)

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.

Anthony Robbins Better Get a Load Of This. . .

Ziggy's nose appears to be avoiding this exhortation toward assertiveness, gradually migrating its way toward the back of his head. I mocked it up in PhotoShop and eventually decided to protect you all from the image.

Though it's a great deal more interesting if we posit a sort of a riddle: if this were a "pull" door, then it would be truly fiendish for the door to suggest that sheer stubborn willpower would be enough to bend its firm hinges in the correct direction and allow entry. In this way the door is a sort of "guard" as well as an obstacle - a sentry to certify that only the truly intelligent will be granted the volatile gift of assertiveness. The world will not soon fall before the inscrutable powers of a newly-confident Ziggy.

Flux on the Menu

All of this personalized service apparently hasn't bought Ziggy any flexibility. But that's just the way he likes it, innit?

Hell: Day 3

As Ziggy continues his foray through this Lynchian nightmare, he encounters a surreal, frightening image that is so arbitrary, so shamelessly cruel that we cannot take it to be real. In fact, it seems designed merely to terrify and unsettle him. If we were to allow for the possibility that this image is real, then. . . no, I cannot. I'm not strong enough. Nevertheless, rejoice with me, beloved readers, for our descent into Hell ends this day.

Wash Your Hands First, Please

Cartoon characters with an oedipal abandonment complex are somewhat rare, but by no means nonexistent. Nevertheless, it's a matter of record that Ziggy has found a place where he is forced to take his medicine, and where the course order is determined by the server and not the customer. Exactly the way he likes it, it turns out.

This Macy's balloon of a matriarch is being a little too nice to Ziggy not to doubt her motives. And Ziggy's the only diner there - is he renting the place by the hour? And where does he get the money if he doesn't have a job? Gad, I love a strip that makes me think.

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Ziggy's got to be doing something slightly advanced to have encountered this sort of rebuff from his passive-aggressive computer. His system's quoting old Humphrey Bogart movies at him and all he wants to do is play Taipei. The Americanized tile-matching one - not the real one.


DISCUSSION QUESTION: Will Ziggy's senior citizen target audience understand the technology reference?

The Man in Black

Ziggy's toast is singing.

Ziggy (the strip, never the individual) often deals with topic of oppression, incompetence, and self-loathing, but I think I like it the most when it's just plain weird. And when your morning foodstuffs start crooning Johnny Cash your life is plenty weird. Ziggy seems a little put off by this development, but not necessarily afraid or confused. He's probably worried that his toast will continue its soulful tune through the twin trials of butter and jam, all the way to his linear mouth.

Classism

No doubt this is what you get when you recruit a daffy old Welsh couple to run the local Chuck-e-Cheese. Forcing the guests to make value judgements on their own selves every time they have to do a number one sounds so very, very British. It would turn their dusty little heads to learn that a gentleman's wizz is much the same as that of a mere ruffian.

No Place For Questions of the Soul

Man, the Nighty News has gone philosophical on us all of a sudden. This is either some sort of misguided religious tract or merely a confusing self-evaluation question; heck, it may even be a veiled threat. Regardless, this little query seems destined to confuse the dickens out of everybody, especially our favorite pale little cave goblin, sitting alone in the dark in his terrifically-luminescent armchair.

I'll assume that the question stems from intents philosophical for the following response: we're all on our way out, buddy. Thanks for bloody well reminding me.

Monetary Rebound

As the sleep-deprived, apathetic woman explains, Ziggy's smelly dwarf money is of no use here.

"Every exit is an entrance somewhere else."

Watch Ziggy's face screw up in consternation as he works this little doozy out. Trapped in a Carollesque nightmare, or perhaps something out of Escher, making heads or tails out of this door seems to be out of the question.

The nauseating color scheme in this facility, taken with the door's confusing message, seems to point toward some sort of behavioral study. But when did I volunteer?, Ziggy thinks to himself,
And why do I hear laughter from the other side of that large mirror on the wall?

Morose Encounters

I've always been partial to the idea that any supposed extraterrestrial race would have the same relationships to their spaceships and technology that we do to our computers and cuisinarts, our toasters and tasers - they don't have the slightest idea how they work. As on our planet, a couple of dozen experts on their homeworld have managed to appropriate enough of the technology, ideas and work of others to put together this hovership. And darned if its pilots would know how to fix it.

So their ignorance is hardly damning - we accept a certain degree of ignorance and confusion in our daily lives, understanding that we can't hope to understand half of what happens to us on any given day. But adding indecisiveness to the mix seems unneccessary. So what if they don't know who to abduct? If they have any red wine on board, I'd suggest that they go with the dog.

A Day of Books and Babble

Again with the mountain and the climbing, Ziggy! Again with the backpack and the loss of direction and the crushing disappointment! You've visited this guy twice since I started reading this feature, and he ain't got nothin' to offer you. When will you learn? Sure he's got the beard and his butt on a mountain, but, if anything, he's even more wayward and lost than you. Drunk and depressed sages give untoward advice. So don't just assume that he's going to be serene and understanding. If you're going to judge a book by its cover, at least let it be this one:


See? That's pretty straightforward. When seeking enlightenment, however, don't look only for a beard or a robe, or you'll be bucking for disappointment. Looks like somebody could stand for a little self-help:


Dang - must you ruin everything?

The Psychosomatic Mechanic

Kudos to Tom Wilson for having the courage to use nearly the exact same strip two months in a row. It's a wonderful strip and I'm glad that it came up again so that I could discuss it. My first thought was to make a joke about Wilson's shrewdness: the average reader's age for his feature skews well into the 90s and he could with all likelihood reuse the same strip day after day with no real consequence. Old people live in a perpetual "Memento"-esque nightmare wherein the memory resets every fifteen minutes or so, so I'll go on record as saying that it's not worth the effort to impress them with quality work when they already spend most of the day staring at vapid knickknacks.

After pushing the old people angle I would lapse into a long soliloquy about subjectivity and mental objectivity and a hundred other "-ivities", before realizing that letting this double strip occurrence slide would be inexcusable. Let's give Tom Wilson credit for inserting an actual premonition into "Ziggy."

Why do I think that the 5 April strip was a premonition - a subtle hint at things to come? The white outlines, surreal perspectives and dreamy landscapes certainly hint toward a bizarre omen. Why not? If Ziggy were to have a premonition, wouldn't it be about something this bland and insecure? Notice the way the mechanic smiles wildly, nonthreateningly, while holding his wrench very close just in case.

The difference in Ziggy's sentence between iterations merely proves the veracity of this interpretation: "Mind" or "head", Ziggy's a heck of a lot more prescient and prophetic than we give him credit for.

Not all premonitions turn up so clearly. Imagine that you saw, one fateful morning, the following image, clear as Clearasil in your mind:


"GRISLY MURDER!" You'd be shouting to everybody who used to respect you. But wait until reality comes along a month later and gives you context for the image:



Oh! I just got a tantalizing look at my future in the wonderful field of custodial labor! Too bad I didn't notice it at the time.


Premonition image by Filipe Franco

The "guy sweeping" image was unattributed in the
first place, which makes it okay for me to repeat the
vicious cycle.

Ziggy and the Mothers of Invention

Actually, this is about the only cliched cartoon situation that we've seen Ziggy in for the past few days. Nevertheless, the cartoon archetype of the psychologist's couch is an important one, provided that you're The Far Side or a Johnny Hart strip.

No - the numero uno newspaper comic cliche is banality, something which Ziggy regularly attempts to deliver in spades but manages nonetheless to be interesting. Geez - can I see a Cathy without talking toilets? Or a Mary Worth without characters buying ineffective drugs from psychedelic vending machines? On the first day of this blog Ziggy was held captive in a bank by the bank's employees. Cliche? Hardly.

I can already picture Freudy McBoredbeard's recommendation: break the fourth wall, once a week, until the feeling of déjà vu subsides.

The Water Closet Speaks

Just what on Earth is happening here!?! I know that Ziggy's world is strange and surreal, but we cross the line into complete surreal horror when confronted with toilet couriers. We know the drill: Ziggy gets a message from his toilet announcing mail, then retreats into the hallway where his arm turns into a coat hanger and a giant insect crawls out of his sink. Oh - joy and humor!

Can I please request that my comic strips not have toilet couriers? I'm fine with front door singing telegrams, electronic mail and even pebbles thrown against my bedroom window in the wee hours of the morning, but the bathroom is not a neutral zone. The idea of outside voices, whether human or electronic, intruding into the private recesses of the loo is unsightful and tasteless. This strip isn't even colorized. Shame, shame on you, Ziggy.


Aw - I just can't stay mad at you.

"Then," said the cat, "it doesn't matter."

How many times has this happened to you?: You bump off to the local super for a roll of chapstick, only to become waylaid on the return journey, astray in a land governed only by metaphor. Unfortunately, it seems that "THE COMEBACK TRAIL" is a path barely a hundred feet in circumference, looping back over to the sign announcing its existence. Heaven knows how many times Ziggy has walked this trail, or how many times he will continue to walk it. I won't cast any aspersions on Ziggy's childhood, but it's possible that the word "beaten" holds some unpleasant connotations to his mind.

The Stars. . . Space. . . I'm So Small

I had a pretty dark interpretation in mind for this one, involving a room full of frenzied claustrophobes who have killed each other off in an attempt to reach the door. I even wrote a couple of paragraphs in that vein in my usual wit-soaked delivery before hanging the sense of it and resolving to strive for lighter plateaus.

It's difficult to reach any sort of conclusion to this strip because it's such a half-joke. Your brain's humor center still experiences that appreciative tingle, almost as if you were hearing a real joke, but the punchline doesn't quite hit. It's like being stopped before a sneeze.

So I'll just find satisfaction in the usual things, particularly Ziggy's trademark bleak look of quiet desperation. There's really no situation in which Ziggy's body language is inappropriate:

Pass the MD

A few weeks ago, as a result of this incident, I recommended that Ziggy seek out a new source of medical care. Unfortunately, Ziggy searched via pawn shop ads, so it seems that he's in the same boat. But every cloud has a silver lining: This "doctor" hasn't been to medical school, so he doesn't know that patients who ask questions can be punished through misdiagnosis:


"What are all of those strange jars doing in the corner? And why are you handing me a blank waiver? Why the enormous collection of bear traps and matted pelts decomposing in the janitor's closet? And why was your receptionist selling cigarettes in the lobby? Why, why, why, why, WHY?!"

"You have Tourette's. You'll need a lobotomy. I'll get the saw."


Remember, if it quacks like a duck then it's a quack like this doc, if you catch my drift*. But the discovery that Ziggy's physician may be more "special" than "specialist" seems to have gotten Ziggy in full-on strangle deathgrip mode - look at his right hand clench involuntarily. You can't see Ziggy's eyelids but they're twitching like hummingbird wings.


* I honestly won't blame you if you don't.