KANSAS CITY, Mo. – In the beginning, the round little bald man who got lost and dropped his ice cream, who always requested a table for one and who was laughed at by passers-by, was simply a loser. Today, though, 35 years later, those who turn to the funny pages each morning see Ziggy, that lovably beleaguered but always optimistic character, as a hero.
Since being launched by Kansas City-based Universal Press Syndicate on June 28, 1971, Ziggy has managed a rare feat for a simplistic comic-strip character – he’s become an icon. He is published in more than 600 newspapers around the world, is the face looking out from countless greeting cards and is the inspiration for thousands of licensed products, such as calendars and cookie jars.
“He keeps going on. He’s kind of an Energizer Bunny of the comic strips and life,” said Tom Wilson, the strip’s artist and son of the creator, the elder Tom Wilson.
“You keep getting the worst life has to throw at you and you show up every day in the morning in the newspaper, and people see that and they say, ‘Well, you know what, he’s still here, so maybe what I’m having happen right now, or Ziggy’s thing happened to me, is not so bad.’”
Ziggy, nameless at his conception, has been visible in some form or another since the mid-1960s. The elder Wilson – who handed over his brainchild to his son in 1987 and now lives in a Cincinnati nursing home – first drew a Ziggy-like character as an elevator operator offering political commentary in editorial cartoons. No one would syndicate it.
The pantsless everyman eventually appeared in an American Greetings gift book, “When You’re Not Around,” that caught the eye of Kathleen Andrews, a founder of the fledgling Universal Press Syndicate, which badly needed a popular comic to keep it afloat. A deal was struck, a name was given and Ziggy was born.
“It sold, thank God,” Andrews said. “And sold and sold and sold.”
What took shape was a comic detailing an always giving, never cynical, often laughable character who is a hopeless romantic, a true believer, an unsophisticated inspiration. He has changed through the years – trying platform shoes in the 1970s, lamenting magazines’ coverage of O.J. Simpson in the 1990s and talking about homeland security today – but at his core, Ziggy has always been the same.
Caring. Friendly. Hopeful.
“He’s not so much a strip as a personality, a living character, in many ways, and he sort of develops just as we all do as we go through life,” the younger Wilson said. “He tells us essentially by virtue of his character what works for him, what doesn’t work for him, how he would react. It makes our jobs a little easier.”
Those who know the Wilsons, father and son, say you can see Ziggy in them, but the younger artist counters that it’s easy to see the character in anyone. We’re all Ziggy.
“It’s hard to say when I’m thinking like Ziggy or thinking of Ziggy or when a Ziggy thing is happening to me,” Wilson said. “He’s with me pretty much 24-7 in some form or another.”
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