Out, dadburned spot!

The body language here is important: Ziggy stares purposefully forward, in a frantic hope that the frightening hallucinations he is constantly subjected to are just that, and that the perpetual demons at the periphery will leave him be. If our titular hero was to continue driving for a few more panels I have no doubt we'd see a woman sharpening a baby on a grindstone, a bird made of knives carving up a cactus and Dane Cook trying out some new "jokes."

The OFF You Don't Put On

Witness: the ultimate collusion between Native American culture and American overpriced commercialism. Of course, the whole thing hits its full apex of sublime ghastliness with the sheer nihilism embodied in the idea of obliterating all dreams, incinerating the unconscious ramblings of the mind awash in its nighttime musings. It's precisely the type of sleeping death that you would expect not to find on prominent display in a shop window.

Precious Moments

Aww, how precious. I wouldn't mind living in the magical, idealistic hippy paradise that Ziggy lives in, where you can pay for hemp sandals with a song and exchange beard hair for illicit favors. Barring some unusual singing ability on Ziggy's part, I imagine that his idealism is unfounded - he would have no place in this new, whacked-out economy of rainbows and crystal unicorns.

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.

Just Nod If You Can Hear Me. . .

Another technicolor dreamscape, barren save for today's bringer of confusion: another nondescript vending machine. Placebos are, of course, the perfect drug for the dedicated hypochondriac, though clearly labeling the machine dispensing the drugs seems to defeat the purpose.

Which reminds me: Didja hear about the guy who took an entire bottle of placebo sleeping pills? He committed fauxicide! I just thought of that.

So many Ziggy strips play out like this: Our pale protagonist stands in the shadow of some looming monolith, which purports to offer solace or escape. Sometimes this monolith is machine, but oftentimes the dysfunctional agent of inconvenience is a fellow human. In true monkey's paw fashion, the solution is but a half-answer, a mere facade, and does nothing to help Ziggy in his searching, without exactly hurting him either. You get the feeling that there's a curse of sorts on Ziggy, that the entire world functions perfectly well except for the space surrounding our tiny hero's person. Inside this space, dry-cleaning will be late, you are subject to personal insults hurled by the television and will be the victim of bizarre, inexplicable accidents.

Ziggy's website tries to explain this phenomenon but makes him sound like some kind of broke stalker:

Poor Ziggy. He’s perpetually one step behind, one nickel short, one lane away. But we love him for it, because everyone feels like Ziggy now and then!

Have You Been To Electric Ziggyland?

In a world of uncertainty, despair and bleak hopelessness, I'm often reminded of a. . . wait a minute! Ziggy is wearing pants! Bellbottoms, by the looks of it. Why is he wearing pants!?! And need I draw undue attention to his shoes?

Studies have shown that the mind dwells on events long after they have occurred. Especially-traumatic or notable experiences remain locked in our mental banks for weeks, popping up when we least expect them. Ziggy's pants, shoes, and the general trippiness of this whole scenario shout "dream sequence"! They shout fairly loudly, in fact.

My, what could have brought this particular scene up during REM sleep? Allow me to venture a guess:


It's surprising that it took as long as five days for the experience to quell back up from Ziggy's subconscious. He appears to have merged the experience with his wardrobe from high school thirty years ago. It's like the Matrix, where they give us little hints as to whether we're in the real world or not. In real life, Ziggy's phone has buttons. He conforms to his strict dress code, standing pantless and sans footwear, as is his wont.

In the Dream Dimension, Ziggy is a bald Frank Zappa.

Once again, the real world is not nearly as exciting as our dreams. Heaven knows that today's psychedelic mushroom trip of a panel beats the pants (so to speak) off of the sidewalk chalk pastel it's derived from.