Ozy and Millie

Ozy and Millie is a funny animal comic strip drawn by D.C. Simpson. Launched in 1998, it was updated five times a week or more for the majority of its run.

Ozy and Millie (vol. 4, Authentic Banana Dye) won the 2002 Ursa Major Award for Best Anthropomorphic Other Literary Work, as well as Best Anthropomorphic Comic from the Web Cartoonist's Choice Awards for that same year. It was also nominated for Best Anthropomorphic Comic Strip in 2005, and won the same award in 2006 and 2007.

History
D.C. Simpson notes on the web site's history page that early versions of the strip's characters first started appearing at the beginning of 1997. The characters continued in Tales of Planet Q later that year, eventually becoming Ozy and Millie on 1 January, 1998 (Planet Q was published that same month in Hunca Munca! #5, and also appeared in the indie comic Furrlough, issue #61). The characters were redesigned over April-May 2000. Versions are available in Russian, German and French, along with a few examples in Latin and Klingon.

On April 24, 2008, D.C. Simpson announced on the Ozy and Millie website that the comic would be ending sometime prior to the end of 2008, with occasional longer-length strips possible after that. The last posted regular installment of the series was on December 23, 2008.

Main characters
As in Charles Schulz's Peanuts, the main focus of of Ozy and Millie is among a group of children. Unlike Peanuts, however, the few adult characters are usually visible to the reader.

A complete list of characters (with pictures) is given on the Ozy and Millie "cast" page.

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 her a photo of arctic fox kits that, he said, were "absolute ringers" for Ozy. Ozy did retain his whisker marks however.

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 favorite 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, 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 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. When he's not running for U.S. 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, but you're more likely to see him bathing in banana pudding than chanting ancient incantations.

Ms. Mudd
Millie's mother is best described as an older, wiser, and perhaps more temperate version of 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.

Her full name was finally revealed to be Mililani Minerva Mudd on October 1, 2008, ending years of speculation by fans.