Even way back before I got heavily into Golden Age comics (and decades before I ‘discovered’ funny animal comics) I liked Ziggy Pig and Silly Seal. As a concept anyway. I was introduced to them via X-Men artist Terry Austin, who liked to sneak them into illustrations, like in this pin-up page from Marvel Fanfare #18.

I liked the way the name sounded, the weird incongruity of a funny animal team, usually built around a predator and his prey, being comprised of a pig and seal. I especially liked the surreal notion that once upon a time Marvel Comics successfully published funny animal comics.

Created by Al Jaffe, the artist better known for the Mad Fold-In, the series featured work by artists such as Joe Calcagno, Harvey Eisenberg, Al Fago, Al Genet and Mike Sekowsky. Al of which is information taken from the series Wikipedia entry which is pretty much all I know about the comic because actual issues (or even illegal digital downloads) are still frustratingly hard to find. I was lucky to get this issue of Ziggy Pig from (speaking of illegal) I.W. Publishing a.k.a. Super Comics. They published four issues of the series in 1958 which reprints material from a 1945 issue of Silly Tunes (or so the Grand Comic Book Database tell us).

I’m still no expert on funny animal comics, let alone Golden Age funny animal comics, but I can tell you I like what I’ve read of Ziggy Pig and Silly Seal - and wish I could read more.