CM: Ozy and Millie

I think I can safely say that Dana C. Simpson’s Ozy and Millie is one of the widest spread anthropomorphic comics out there. At the very least, of all the comics that I’m looking at this month, it’s the most successful and well-known!

Really, I just wanted the hat, but the vest is nice too!

The premise of the comic is a simple one: Ozy and Millie is about two vulpine children, an arctic fox named Ozy and a red fox named Millie. The comic follows their adventures through school and childhood, with plenty of hijinks and interesting characters along the way!

The comic runs much like any good daily comic strip, with each strip being self-contained enough to be read and enjoyed, and with a steadily increasing cast of characters to help or hinder our protagonists. Many of the cast can and have held their own to be the focus of one or more storylines, which helps add variety to the reading and allows readers to form real attachments. In many ways, Ozy and Millie is reminiscent of Bill Watterson’s Calvin and Hobbes in this regard, many times playing off of readers’ expectations for certain characters and building a personal mythology of running gags, annual story events, and witty writing that one would never expect for a ‘kid’ comic.

Before anyone starts calling Ozy and Millie derivative of Watterson’s much loved work, though, it must be understood how very much it sets itself apart and what makes it a truly iconic anthropomorphic comic.

Story

As I said above, Ozy and Millie is a daily comic strip through and through in its design. This means having ‘dailies’ in black and white with the occasional larger and fully colored ‘Sunday Strip’. When using this format for making stories, there are some concessions that must be made. For one, each strip must be at least somewhat self-contained and able to tell its own story in the three to four panels allotted. While this would naturally make one think that the comics cannot have a full, complex story between them, you would quickly find that to be untrue! Yes, many of the comics are simply setups for gags or messages, but it soon becomes apparent that, despite all of these gags in every strip, there is a real continuation of plot.

Now, this is not soap opera levels of story-telling, where you need to know who was dating whom and that Billy switched places with his evil twin from Dimension X last season. Rather, the story told is one of characters constantly learning from past experiences. There are so many fun moments and great jokes that I don’t want to spoil them, but an excellent example of the kind of ‘story progression’ that I’m talking about is the growth of the relationship between Millie and Llewellyn.

Llewellyn is a very long-lived dragon who also happens to be Ozy’s adopted father. When Millie first meets him, she is absolutely terrified of this tall, scaled, fire-breathing creature, and perhaps understandably so, considering how different Llewellyn is from other adults. Yet, she soon overcomes her fears and a bit of a friendship starts. As the comic goes on, Millie and Llewellyn become better and better friends, extending to even her mother becoming quite close to the dragon. Yet they frequently reference back to Millie being afraid of him at first or having to learn to eventually not find some of Llewellyn’s mannerisms to be quite so weird. For the entire ten years of the comic’s run, this storyline of their friendship develops off and on until it reaches a wonderful end point, and that is only ONE of many reoccurring plots that Ozy and Millie has. I didn’t even touch upon the grand tales of Captain Locke, the pirate that lives in Ozy’s sofa and perhaps my favorite character in the cast after Llewellyn.

So, yes, story elements in Ozy and Millie are far more wonderful and literary than you might expect, with plenty of surprises along the way and not a small amount of political satire as well.

Presentation

Ozy and Millie has been a website from day one, and the entire archive is freely available there online, but that is most certainly not the only way the comic can be taken in. Unlike the previous comics this month, Ozy and Millie has a number of professional book collections, and a small amount of real media associated with it. There used to be more, like calendars and fake voting bumper stickers (What? You didn’t vote for the Zen party?), but that has understandably trailed off ever since the comic’s official end. Nowadays, there are the standard shirts and mugs, but there are also supposedly still copies of the physical prints of the comic strips for sale from the author herself!

Ozy and Millie really does pride itself on its printability and readability, I think. The characters are distinct, but relatively simple in their overall designs. The comic strips are rarely so massive as to be impossible to print out and stick on your desk or a locker. Even the writing is presented in such a way that, even when complicated words or concepts are used, they are accompanied by something visually amusing to treat those who don’t completely get the joke.

Speaking of the jokes, I can’t really talk about Ozy and Millie and not address the kind of jokes that it favors. It’s not the most difficult to describe, but I can’t pass up an opportunity for Millie to give a visual aid:

Yep. There is political humor in Ozy and Millie and a LOT of it. If I had to throw out a guess, the comic strip is at least 60% political jokes and satire. I wouldn’t be surprised if it were much more than that, as many political jokes tend to go over my head. If you are not a fan of political humor like Millie’s handy sock puppet above, then you might find yourself less enamored with the comic itself. However, before non-politically-minded readers move to dash away, I should emphasize once again: Political jokes don’t do a whole lot for me, yet I absolutely loved the writing in Ozy and Millie.

The reason for this is due to Simpson’s fantastic writing style. This is especially apparent later on in the strip’s life, but Simpson has quite a talent for making a political commentary in the midst of a really fun and entertaining story that doesn’t seem political at all. Far from excluding folks who aren’t into politics, Simpson instead hides political phrases, ideas, and jokes so that folks who don’t know about them don’t know they’re missing anything, and folks who DO get them enjoy the stories that much more. Mr. W there is about as blatant as it gets, which may be enough to scare some folks away, but you would be doing yourself a great disservice.

The ‘Anthro’ Element

For once, I almost feel like I don’t have to talk a whole ton about this aspect for this comic.

The obvious elements of anthropomorphism are right there in every strip of the comic. We’ve got talking animals wearing various types of clothing and having conversations about many elements that are very human and yet different enough to help use realize that these are most certainly NOT humans.

Simpson does it better than many other anthro comic artists that I’ve read, though, and really does pay attention to the type of animals that she’s working with. One of the more obvious signs of this is with one of the school bullies, Felicia. She’s a typical ‘popular girl’ and just so happens to also be a sheep. Aside from the clear play on the idea of the ‘popular herd’, she also makes frequent use of her wool for jokes about fashion and even plot devices. The talks about her dying her fur during her ‘goth’ phase are some of the best with the concept.

Llewellyn steals the show with his absolute dragon-ness, though! Not only does he frequently breathe fire and have special dragon bread that tastes like gasoline, but the long-lived nature of his species is a central point of his character. Llewellyn rubs elbows with old American presidents, Chinese philosophers, and even Winston Churchill, taking in so many different ways of thinking and looking at the world that it turns the concept of ‘the wise old dragon’ completely on its head. Interestingly enough, he has the most human insight of all of the cast, which makes for often very amusing philosophies during all of the craziness that Millie gets involved with.

After Words

Sadly, Ozy and Millie ended officially back in 2008. Thankfully, it was a good, proper ending, rather than a slow death, making for a complete story that doesn’t leave the reader hanging. The books are still very much available, and Dana Simpson is still doing other comics. In fact, one of her recent creations is doing very well for itself and recently had a book released with more on the way! The series is titled ‘Heavenly Nostrils’ and is about a girl and her unicorn, meaning that it’s a prime target for us to look at together someday. For now, you can give it a read yourself and support the author!

It’s difficult for me to bring up problems with Ozy and Millie. The comic really is solid, and it’s also a comic that I followed all the way up to its conclusion. My copy of ‘Ink and White Space’ still sits proudly on my shelf. I think it was the first independent comic collection that I ever ordered online.

If I had to give any marks against Ozy and Millie, it would be the previously mentioned political points and how that could really drive away some folks. Some of the characters also are built for ideas or messages that don’t really come to fruition or seem all that fleshed out, like Stephan Aardvark and his being built around the eventual ‘dotcom boom’ and making fun of computer geeks in the 90s. Really, though, these are extremely minor points in ten years’ worth of solid comics and entertainment.

Do yourself a favor and read through some of the archives and maybe even pick up on the collections available on Amazon!

Until next time, happy reading all!

-Chammy