Ziggy’s Gift (1982)

              Ziggy is yet another legacy comic strip, its current artist and writer being Tom Wilson II, son of its creator Tom Wilson, though in an odd twist its second artist has been at the helm far longer than its originator.  Tom Wilson was the Creative Director at American Greeting Cards when he created Ziggy in the mid-60’s.  He wasn’t originally a comic strip character, instead first appearing in various American Greeting Cards products.  He was finally adapted into a one-panel gag comic in 1971.  It started in only fifteen papers before becoming nationally syndicated in just a few years.  It was originally much more rudimentary than the version of the character we’re familiar with today, more crudely drawn, but it still featured the same mix of everyday hassles with odd flights of whimsey and visual absurdity.  He drew the comic until his son took over in 1987, and he’s been the one behind it ever since.  That’s sixteen years to thirty-five, which raises some interesting questions about which period of Ziggy is really the more authentic one.

Hi Ziggy!

              In a way it’s reassuring that the creator of Ziggy was an executive at a greeting card company because once I learned that everything about Ziggy clicked into place.  I’d always kind of assumed it had a more outsider art origin, that it started in some hippy rag on the West coast and gradually grew more popular as it shed its original countercultural intent, maybe the merchandising came about because the author turned into corporate scum like the rest of his generation, but instead any zaniness or satiric edge came from the same bland, safe set of calculated impulses that inspire the novelty cards insulting your dad’s age, the ones stocked right next to those with the golden edges congratulating your nephew on his graduation.  The simple design and the aw-shucks everyday aspect of the character were precisely planned to allow the kind of mass-consumption that you want in a gag-a-day comic. 

              What makes the strip itself more understandable paradoxically makes the special harder to figure, because I was simply not prepared for how earnest and quietly delightful it is.  This marks the return of Richard Williams as director, last seen with ‘A Christmas Carol,’ and having now seen both of these specials and scrubbed through ‘Raggedy Ann & Andy: A Musical Adventure’ I’m impressed anew with the man’s versatility.  The animation in all three productions is radically different, obviously in art style but also in tone and direction.  ‘A Christmas Carol’ was dramatic and impressionistic, overtly artistic and frankly overtightened, it flew through so much material so fast it was hard to keep up.  The ‘Raggedy Ann & Andy’ movie starts as, well, a movie, shot and edited relatively realistically, aping live-action shots and camera movements, before morphing into downright lunacy and madness in the second half.  That movie is an experience.

              By contrast ‘Ziggy’s Gift’ slows down and considers its subject.  Most of the shots are static, the camera locked down and watching passively as Ziggy interacts with people, considers his situation, carefully tries to solve problems, or just pets his dog.  At most it will slowly dolly along following Ziggy as he walks down the sidewalk, or occasionally it will push in on a scene for emphasis.  This is not a hurried cartoon.  A lot of the specials I’ve been watching have abstract or even absent backgrounds, maybe sketching in the idea of a setting but not giving much in the way of details.  This special is set entirely in an unspecified city and the background is made up of fairly detailed residential and commercial blocks.  It’s certainly not photorealistic but it grounds the characters in an urban reality.  It hits some of the same vaguely dystopian ideas about city living as ‘A Very Merry Cricket’ or ‘The Bear Who Slept Through Christmas’ but they’re much gentler here, not as overtly malicious. 

              There’s a wisp of a plot to the special, which is all it really needs.  It’s more a study of Ziggy making his way through the city on Christmas Eve and the rather heartwarming adventures he gets into.  He’s followed by two other human characters: a seedy pickpocket and a beat cop with an Irish brogue.  The pickpocket has a genius design, sallow and reed-thin with scraggly brown hair and a bushy mustache under a beak of a nose, he’s always skulking in trash cans and post boxes, snaking his arms around unsuspecting victims.  The cop is interesting because I can’t help but think he was given the Irish accent and fairly retro uniform to call back to older depictions of cops from the 30’s and 40’s in order to blunt the fact that even in the early 80’s cops weren’t exactly universally loved.

              The plot, such as it is, kicks in when Ziggy starts his day by waking up and brushing his teeth.  A newscaster drones on in the background about an epidemic of fraudulent charity Santas, which Ziggy ignores as he spies a newspaper ad saying a company is hiring charity Santas.  He applies and gets issued a costume, bell, and kettle and sets off, raising the suspicion of the cop, who decides to follow him.  Apparently the charity kettle is magic because after spotting some other charity workers Ziggy decides to give them some money and the kettle briefly glows, producing a stack of bills which Ziggy hands to the Salvation army workers.  The pickpocket spots this and decides to steal the kettle.  Comedy thus ensues.

              The plot is hardly what’s important, though.  Again this is more of a study of the Ziggy character.  It’s a series of scenes where Ziggy is put in a situation and we watch how he decides to resolve it.  He spots a tiny tree that’s fallen off of a truck and scampers out to rescue it.  He sees some pens of live Christmas turkeys and decides to use the magical kettle funds to buy them and free them.  His spot as a charity Santa is taken over by a thug and he decides to simply go elsewhere.  He’s puzzled by a scrap of red fabric in his dog’s mouth (the dog had just driven away the pickpocket) and ends up giving it to a shivering alley cat.  When he comes across a homeless person he takes off the Santa costume and gives it to him.  It’s all very nice, pleasant stuff.

              The more overt comedy comes from the pickpocket trying to steal the magic kettle.  Ziggy’s response to the kettle continually producing funds on demand is simple acceptance, he’s neither surprised nor impressed, it’s just occasionally useful.  The pickpocket, however, is desperate for it, although he can never coax it to produce the funds for him.  There’s very little that’s less funny or entertaining than breaking down physical comedy gags in writing, there’s only so many ways to say ‘and then his pants got stolen’ and very few of them translate the humor all that well.  I’ll just state that I found the comedy with the pickpocket very well done.

              The special resolves with the beat cop attempting to arrest both Ziggy and the pickpocket for being involved with the fraudulent charity Santa scam but they disturb a house full of orphans while he does so.  All three characters instantly snap to respectful attention, sing a little carol, and are too embarrassed to turn down their invitation to come in.  Ziggy gifts them the small tree he rescued, the stray alley cat who’s been following Ziggy this entire time starts playing with the children, the cop uses his badge as a star for the tree, and the sack the pickpocket has been using to stash his stolen goods also turns magical and starts producing gifts for the children.  The cop apologizes to Ziggy for trying to arrest him, the pickpocket is overcome by the good deeds he’s now done, and Ziggy excuses himself and trudges happily home through the ending credits.

              This is the first special that I’m actually kind of mad at myself for not seeing before now.  This won the 1983 Emmy award for Outstanding Animated Program, and I can certainly see why it beat out ‘What Have We Learned, Charlie Brown?’  It’s very simple and Ziggy himself is a very likable central figure.  He’s entirely wordless here, often interacting with excessively verbal characters, but the way he’s animated always lets you know what he’s thinking.  This is not available to stream and seems to have last been issued on home video in a 2005 DVD release, though it’s freely available in all of the usual places.  If it seems like I have less to say about this one than some other, obviously worse ones that’s because it’s easier to detail complicated failure than simple success.  This should be right up there with the other holiday classics in people’s memories.