Zomby (briefly) Returns: This is what creative desperation looks like

The first new "Zomby" cartoon in nearly two years. So, um, enjoy, I guess.

Zomby, a zombified parody of Tom Wilson's long-running newspaper cartoon series Ziggy, used to be an important recurring feature at Dead 2 Rights. That was before Ed Wood more or less hijacked this blog and (posthumously) made it his own. The premise was exceedingly simple. I'd take that day's Ziggy panel, turn the title character gray in Microsoft Paint, and change the punchline so that it was about a reanimated corpse who feasted on the living rather than a sweet, bumbling loser who couldn't get decent customer service. The joke, I guess, was that even in this supposedly-terrifying form, Zomby was just as much as an ineffectual, put-upon loser as Ziggy was. It was a way of taking some then-trendy monsters who were dominating films, TV, and video games and removing everything that made them cool or threatening. I did dozens, maybe hundreds, of Zomby panels and then just sort of stopped. Apart from a few stray shamblers in Plan 9 from Outer Space and Orgy of the Dead, zombies are no longer the focal point of this blog, despite its George Romero-inspired name. So Zomby disappeared. He hasn't been seen around here since 2013.

But today, I was trying to think of something I could post to Dead 2 Rights and thought, "Hey, why don't I try to do another Zomby cartoon and see if I can still get back into that mindset." So I Googled today's Ziggy panel and found that it was one of the series' most familiar tropes: Ziggy going to a diner and getting predictably lousy treatment. (The uncouth chef tells Ziggy he's too late to get the "breakfast of champions" and will have to settle for the "brunch of also-rans." Get it? Because Ziggy fails at everything and should totally just kill himself. HA!) It reminded me of another reason I abandoned Zomby: monotony. Ziggy only does five or six basic things, over and over. He watches TV, he takes abuse from his pets (a dog, a cat, and a bird), he tries to obtain goods and services without success, etc. I was going to call him out on this, until I realized that Ziggy's life was actually more varied and interesting than mine. I mean, he has a parrot. I don't. He goes fishing (or golfing or mountain climbing) sometimes. I don't. He freely walks around in public without pants. I...  well, that's none of your business.

Anyway, I realized today that the part of my brain that could easily come up with Zomby jokes must have died a couple of years ago. And unlike Zomby himself, I don't think it can be revived.

(sort of today's zomby) AND SOME OTHER STUFF AS WELL!

Hello once again, dear readers.

Due to the Christmas holiday and a heavy work schedule, I've been taking most of this week off from the old blog-a-roo. But here are some cartoons to make up for it. Instead of doing a typical Zomby!!! adventure, I've decided to do another variation on Tom Wilson's venerable Ziggy. Namely, I've taken a few recent panels and transformed the unlucky protagonist from a miserable idiot into a blissful idiot. Here's how it turned out:

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I don't know about you, but I like this little guy. He's optimistic and he's clearly learned life's greatest lesson: take pleasure in the little things. Bweakfast, kitties, comprooders... they're all here for our enjoyment.

I'd like to close out this little post with a few songs which have taken up residence in my subconscious lately. Hell, I should be charging them rent! First up is comedienne Tracey Ullman and her 1983 smash hit, "They Don't Know." Yes, Ullman first reached our shores not as an actress but as a singer. Her remake of this lovely Kristy MacColl number reached as high as #8 on the Billboard charts. The video is great, too, with a surprise cameo near the end.

Almost 20 years earlier, The Newbeats reached #2 with their pop soul tune, "Bread and Butter," which I first heard as a jingle for Quaker Rice Cakes in the 1980s. I'd heard the Newbeats' record on the radio many times and always assumed that the lead vocal was by an African-American female singer. I can't tell you how surprised I was to see an actual performance clip of the Newbeats and discover that their leader was in fact a slim, blond-pompadoured man named Larry Henley. Rarely has the disparity between sight and sound been so drastic:

And finally, since this is the last day of the year, I thought it was time for a reflection on the events of the last twelve months. All in all, 2011 proved to be a tough year for power mad dictators. Let's face it: that's a stressful job. Sure, it has its rewards, but dictatorship is rarely the type of career which ends with a cake and a gold watch. So as 2011 draws to a close, I thought I'd leave you with the catchiest song ever written about a brutal dictator. Honestly, this song -- "Amazin' Man" by British satirist John Bird -- might well have you singing Idi Amin's name while you do laundry or run errands.

Idi, Idi, Idi Amin! Most amazing man there's ever been! He's the...

Damn it!

(today's zomby) AND A PARTICULARLY ODD "THREE STOOGES" SHORT!

One of the nice side effects of the extreme repetition of Ziggy is that it occasionally allows me to do small-scale story arcs. If Tom Wilson II does jokes about the same topic or uses the same settings for several days in a row, I try to turn it into a miniature plot. Back in February, for instance, I did a little story about Zomby's romance with a generic female functionary. And more recently, I did several cartoons about the ominous birdpocalypse. If Tom Wilson does more cartoons with Ziggy hanging around his house in a bathrobe in the next few days, I will continue to explore Zomby's spiral into depression triggered by NBC's cancellation of The Playboy Club. Of course, though, I'm completely at the mercy of Tom Wilson in this regard. If he changes course, so do I.

(Incidentally, the mention of Ron Paul was triggered by the fact that several of the man's campaign ads have mysteriously appeared on my blog in the last few weeks. Why Ron Paul would advertise here is beyond me. As a leader of Dead 2 Rights, I do not and cannot endorse any candidates. But I can now admit that Michelle Bachman and I used to party together in the '90s. Hard. Oh, how that woman could party.)

But getting back to the topic of comedic repetition...

He Cooked His Goose (1952) is one of the oddest Three Stooges shorts I have ever seen. It's the 140th of the 190 films they made for Columbia, and it's interesting to see how eager the boys were to experiment with the tried-and-true Stooge formula at this (relatively) late stage. It's the product of two Stooge stalwarts, writer Felix Adler and director Jules White, though Adler's writing is more adventurous than White's workmanlike directing. He Cooked His Goose is one of the rare Stooge shorts in which the lead role goes to Larry Fine, a very gifted comedic performer normally relegated to the part of victim. Not only is Larry the star, he gets to be evil in this one! He plays a lying, scheming, womanizing pet food supplier and does a great job with the villainous role. For this part, Larry gets a few special accessories from the prop and wardrobe departments, like a giant cigar and an oversized bow tie. (For whatever reason, he also has a trained clam named Cedric.) He even gets his own little music cue that pops up every time he has an evil thought!

Moe and Shemp (yes, this short is from the Shemp era so don't expect to see Curly) are also brilliantly cast against type in He Cooked His Goose: Shemp as the film's romantic hero and Moe as a passive, gullible klutz who is actually being cuckolded by Larry! This is one of the few Stooge films in which the boys are not playing any kind of a team. They're not brothers, coworkers, partners, teammates, etc. in this short. The Stooges are playing completely separate roles for one of the only times in their career. Larry and Shemp are romantic rivals, while Moe is a stranger to both of them! Stooge regular Mary Ainslee is also quite good here as Moe's wife (and Larry's paramour) Belle.

So please enjoy He Cooked His Goose. Along with the plot details described above, you also get a glimpse into American life circa 1952, back when door-to-door salesmen still existed and telephones were of the rotary type. You also get to see what Christmas trees and Christmas lights of that era looked like. Even some of the film's expository dialogue has a lost-era charm, as when Shemp gushes to Larry, "Oh, this'll make my Christmas dandy!"

RIP Tom Wilson, creator of "Ziggy" (1931-2011)

Tom Wilson and his world-famous creation, Ziggy.

I'd like to take a moment to pay tribute to Tom Wilson, creator of Ziggy, who passed away last Friday at the age of 80. Wilson's son, Tom Wilson II, has been drawing the strip since 1987, but it was the elder Wilson who created the feature back in 1971.

There's a nice obituary for Tom Wilson here, for those who are interested in the man and his career.

One thing the obituary doesn't mention, though, is that when Tom Wilson was an executive at American Greetings, he was among the first to note the talent of a young, up-and-coming cartoonist named... Robert Crumb! Crumb worked for American Greetings back in the old days as an artist before he was able to support himself with his comic book work, and it was Wilson who promoted Crumb from lowly assistant to a more creative position as a lead artist for a line of cards.

Strange but true.

ZOMBY prepares food while pantsless. Yum.

AUTHOR'S NOTE: Zomby's eyes take up more room on his head than Ziggy's eyes do. So whenever Tom Wilson draws Ziggy with a hat, I actually have to move the character's nose down a little to make room for the eyes. Please, Tom Wilson, don't draw Ziggy with a hat. It adds, like, seven seconds to the process on my end.

And now you know.

ZOMBY: Tom Wilson = anti-government extremist?

Okay, first off, here are two actual Ziggy cartoons that ran this week (Thursday and Tuesday respectively):



Apart from the fact that the supposed government agent and the auto mechanic are clearly the same man in different outfits, these Ziggys betray a certain, shall we say, paranoia about the government and its intrusion into our lives. Is there something you'd like to share with the class, Tom Wilson or Tom Wilson II? Is Ziggy being produced in some heavily fortified compound in Montana somewhere? I'm starting to become concerned.

By the way, speaking of having microchips implanted in our bodies, did you know that beloved 60 Minutes curmudgeon Andy Rooney is totally down with that? He is!



Oh, by the way, here's today's Zomby.

How DOES computer dating work in ZOMBY's world...?

Tom Wilson seems to profoundly misunderstand how computer dating works, because he's always having Ziggy show up in person at some kind of "computer dating" office and staring up at the receptionist's desk like a dog looking for table scraps. Look, I'm sure Match.com and eHarmony have brick-and-mortar offices somewhere, but all you'd find there are some administrative staffers, I.T. guys, and maybe some customer service reps (if that part of the business hasn't been off-shored). Ziggy, however, seems to treat this place like it's some kind of magical "girl store" where they have sexy single ladies in some kind of storage room. I believe what he's looking for is known as a brothel.

Am I right about this or totally off base?

Experimental ZOMBY: You have defeated me, Tom Wilson.

Tom Wilson II, current writer and artist of Ziggy.

Greetings.

Today, for the first time in months, I am not offering you a parody -- zombie-fied or otherwise -- of the most-current Ziggy cartoon. The reason? The cartoon in question could suck the chrome off a fender. It's yet another scene of Ziggy talking to yet another generic female functionary who sits behind yet another brown desk. There's nothing I can do with it.

Congratulations, Tom Wilson (or more likely, Tom Wilson II). You have broken my spirit, you magnificent bastard. I bow to you.

Because today's Ziggy is for all intents and purposes unusable, I offer instead a TRIUMVIRATE! of vintage Ziggys, all with the eponymous character tastefully removed.

Enjoy...





P.S. - I especially like the one with the bird looking at the hamburger.