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Ozy and Millie

About 6 pages (1,878 words)

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Ozy and Millie

Author(s)	D. C. Simpson
Website	http://www.ozyandmillie.org/
Current status / schedule	Updating every week day
Launch date	January 1998

Ozy and Millie is a webcomic, created by D. C. Simpson, which debuted in January 1998. It follows the adventures of assorted anthropomorphized animals. New strips are released on most weekdays. The comic centers on Ozy and Millie, two young foxes from a town called North Harbordale contending with everyday elementary school issues such as tests and bullies, as well as more surreal situations. The strip usually concentrates on character interaction, but occasionally veers into political commentary. Simpson airs his political views more directly in his other comic, I Drew This. Most of the strips have been reprinted in book form. Five collections were released through Plan 9 Publishing, but they have all gone out of print; currently a complete set of the strip's archives is available through Lulu.com. Its animal characters, focus on grade-school matters, use of ink and brush as drawing implements, cynical-yet-hopeful tone, and generally bizarre situations remind some readers of Calvin and Hobbes (in fact, Simpson's index page for 2000 depicts Ozy and Millie dressed as Calvin and Hobbes), though readers have also seen connections to Berkeley Breathed's and Walt Kelly's work. The comic was part of Keenspot from 2001 to 2003, went independent for several years and returned in November 2006. In 2002, the strip won the Web Cartoonist's Choice Awards for Best Anthropomorphic Comic. The strip has also won the 2006 Ursa Major award for Best Anthropomorphic Comic Strip.

1 Characters
2 Collected Editions
3 See also
4 External links

Characters

Ozy

The trouble with being in the eye of the storm is, you're basically surrounded.-Ozy

Ozy, ten years old, lives in the small American town of North Harbordale, together with his friend Millie. He is an arctic fox. He was originally supposed to be a wolf according to D.C. Simpson, until a fan showed him a photo of arctic fox kits that, he said, were "absolute ringers" for Ozy. Ozy retained his whisker marks. Ozy's full name, Ozymandias Justin Llewellyn, is a reference to the poem Ozymandias by Percy Bysshe Shelley:

My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:

Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!

Ozy is easily recognised by his large top hat, which he got from his father Llewellyn when he adopted Ozy. Apart from the hat he wears only a vest, but no pants, which occasionally makes him the target of some of Millie's practical jokes. He's generally adept at letting Millie's pranks pass by without much effect, but he does occasionally have to suffer bullying at the hands of the school jock, Jeremy, whose favourite pastime involves stuffing Ozy into rubbish bins. Apart from that, Ozy suffers from annual baldness, usually through either some freak accident or because of Millie. Although it is caused by a curse (later revealed by Llewellyn to be a myth), which has passed on through Ozy's adoptive father's heritage largely unnoticed, it does affect Ozy rather badly since he is the first Llewellyn with any hair to lose at all. Ozy is also quiet and serene, and usually plays the "straight person", serenely accepting his place "in the eye of the storm". Under guidance of his father, Ozy practices the art of Zen - or more a humorous version of it. The fundamentals of his view is explained as: It has been said that, while knowledge is acquired by learning... Wisdom is acquired by unlearning.

Millie

I act weird because I figure, hey, I'm gonna be an outcast anyway, so I might as well do it with style. – Millie

Ozy spends most of his time with his best friend Millie, a ten year old red fox girl. Millicent Mehitabel Mudd, as her full name goes, is usually seen wearing her set of blue denim overalls. Unlike Ozy's zenlike calmness, Millie's trademark is chaos, both in the destruction she leaves behind and the clever ways she devises to get out of doing work. She's a real rebel, and is opposed to any form of authority, which regularly leads to confrontations with both her teacher, Ms. Sorkowitz, and her mother, Ms. Mudd. Her destructive and rebellious habits not only get herself into trouble, but quite often Ozy too when she drags him along into yet another of her grand schemes of world domination - or, failing that, uses him to hide the trail of destruction. And although she might be havoc incarnate at times, she also has a strong sense of justice, and has a hard time facing the inexplicable wrongs of life and the world she sees. However, her rebellion against the establishment is mostly limited to annoying her mother, playing jokes on Ozy and disrupting the peace at school. None of which matters any less to her, as long as she has fun doing it. Millie says aloud what others think, and does what others, for fear of reaction from the people around them, wouldn't dare. She has her introspective and thoughtful moments, and like Ozy she thinks about great (and sometimes not so great) philosophical questions. What makes her unique is how she goes about finding the answers.

Llewellyn

Whatever does not kill me makes me stranger. – Llewellyn

Ozy's adoptive father, known only as Llewellyn, is a red dragon whose manner can only be described as strange. He's been involved in everything from running for U.S. president - first under the "People With Nothing Better To Do" Party, then under the Zen Party (he "campaigns by not campaigning") to playing the incomprehensible "House Rules Parcheesi" (whose resemblance to Calvinball has not gone unnoted). But when he's not running for president or involved in some kind of secret conspiracy, he's the one to give Ozy the support he needs with often some clever but seemingly useless advice. In the meantime, he runs his house as a separate nation, Greater Llewellynlland. Llewellyn is likely around 150-200 years old, and currently lives by himself, having only Ozy to raise and care for. The kids both like him, though they often see him as a big red friendly oddball. While his stories usually contain a lesson somewhere, the lesson is either completely irrelevant or the story completely pointless, and it's never entirely sure whether or not he's actually making it all up as he goes. He clearly has some secrets up his sleeve though, but you're more likely to see him bathing in motor oil than chanting ancient incantations.

Ms. Mudd

Millie's mother, whose first name is unknown (except that it starts with M), is best described as an older, wiser, and perhaps more temperate Millie herself. Having been much like Millie in her past, and being an accomplished lawyer today, she knows all the tricks, rules and loopholes that come with raising Millie, much to Millie's own annoyance. And while Ms. Mudd knows how to deal with mischievous little fox girls, she's also the first to lend her support if there's anything amiss with her little sprout. Since she is living alone with Millie, Ms. Mudd has been looking for companionship, and found it with Llewellyn. They've been dating for a while, and it seems that they get along very well together. Not to mention the effect this has on the two children, who can unsurprisingly get along better with the parent of the other most of the time.

Other characters

Ozy and Millie's raccoon friend Avery has devoted his life to trying to be "cool," even though that sometimes means ditching his "uncool" friends (if only for a while). Ironically, he often hangs out with Stephan the aardvark, the nerdiest character by far, whose lifetime goal seems to involve the ultimate destruction of Microsoft. Also hindering Avery's quest for coolness is his kid brother Timulty, whose innocence is greatly welcomed in a world where adults seem to be no smarter than kids. The two major antagonists are Felicia the sheep, the "popular girl" who's always teasing Millie for being too individualistic (or in some cases just plain weird), and Jeremy the rabbit, whose favorite pastime is stuffing Ozy into trash cans. Other minor characters include Ms. Sorkowitz, Ozy and Millie's kangaroo teacher; Principal Beau Vine, the bull principal of the school who won't lift a finger to stop the bullying going on in his school, but instead, encourages it (he apparently believes that "repeated exposure to unprovoked assault squelches unhealthy nonconformist tendencies" - the author freely admits to having issues [1]) and Dr. I. Wahnsinnig (German for insane or mad), the ring-tailed lemur psychiatrist of the school. Also included are Ozy's dragon cousin Isolde, who is in charge of various conspiracies from time to time (the most notable is the time she hijacked a truckload of thermometers as a roundabout way of getting hired as a reporter for a cable news network), and Captain Locke, a kid pirate from an alternate dimension on the other side of the couch, in which people age backwards. This is how Locke, currently the age of the children, is also Millie's father.

Collected Editions

Ozy and Millie. ISBN 1-929462-11-5*
Ozy and Millie, volume 2: Never Mind Pants. ISBN 1-929462-20-4*
Ozy and Millie, volume 3: Ink and White Space. ISBN 1-929462-43-3*
Ozy and Millie, volume 4: Authentic Banana Dye. ISBN 1-929462-56-5*
Ozy and Millie, volume 5: Om. ISBN 1-929462-69-7*

After a few years, Dave Simpson began re-releasing the strips in newer compilations:

Prehistrionics: Ozy and Millie, 1997-2000. 176 pages, 2006 ISBN 1-84728-773-5 Contains Cartoons from Ozy and Millie and Never Mind Pants.
The Big Book of Ancient, Semi-Coherent Wisdom: Ozy and Millie, 2000-2001. 132 pages, 2006 ISBN 978-1-4303-1505-6 Contains Cartoons from Never Mind Pants and Ink and White Space.
Zen Again: Ozy and Millie, 2001-2002. 128 pages, 2007 ISBN 978-1-4303-1508-7 Contains cartoons from Ink and White Space and Authentic Banana Dye.
Perpetual Motion: Ozy and Millie, 2002-2003. 128 pages, 2007 ISBN 978-1-4303-2116-3 Contains cartoons from Authentic Banana Dye and Om.
Tofu Knights: Ozy and Millie, 2004-2005. 128 pages, 2006 ISBN 1-84728-772-7 Contains cartoons from Om, and also never-before printed material.
Closer to the Void: Ozy and Millie, 2007-2007. 127 pages, 2007 ISBN ??? Contains the most recent strips from the web comic, along with a bonus "The ABCs of Ozy and Millie".