Touching the hearts and tickling the funny bones of readers since 1971, Ziggy is a cultural icon. Who knows how many yellowed and curling clippings of the cartoon are displayed on refrigerators, computers, doors, and bulletin boards across America? Some of the most cherished panels are ones that feature Ziggy performing small acts of kindness and good works. The best of these are collected in the latest Ziggy book, Character Matters.

The charm of Ziggy is that he lives a sweetly simple life. Things often don't go his way, but he always perseveres and maintains his sunny outlook. Ziggy is Everyperson, the part of us that harbors warm feelings and good intentions, but sometimes gets stepped on by a reckless world. In the great tradition of Ben Franklin, Roy Rogers, and Forrest Gump, Ziggy delivers his own homespun philosophy and retains his individualism and character, regardless of the transforming forces at work in a swiftly changing world.

Comforted and inspired by his steadfastness, his tenacity, and his gentle spirit, Ziggy fans have been intensely loyal for over three decades.

No one walks away from a Close to Home cartoon unscathed. John McPherson's lumpy characters and bizarre situations are tailor-made for gut-splitting laughs. And then there are the cartoons that leave readers shaking their heads, sputtering, "Oh my gosh" as a guilty smile passes across their faces. The Scourge of Vinyl Car Seats delivers what fans expect from McPherson: jokes about everything from parenting to dating to car repairs. McPherson takes his readers on a journey that's very Close to Home.

The National Cartoonists Society nominated Pearls Before Swine as one of the best comic strips of 2002.

Pearls Before Swine is an impressive comic strip success story. After only a few years of syndication, it appears in more than 150 newspapers worldwide, was nominated as Best Newspaper Comic Strip by the National Cartoonists Society in its debut year-an unprecedented achievement-and its first book collection, Pearls Before Swine, has sold through four printings.

This Little Piggy Stayed Home continues the adventures of Rat and Pig, two characters who couldn't be more different-or more surprising. Rat is your typical Every Rodent: scheming, self-centered, and more than occasionally manipulative. By contrast, Pig is sensitive, kind, and-even on his best days-just plain stupid. Together with Zebra and Goat, they confront the strange and wonderful world around them, a place that looks suspiciously like our own.

By turns thoughtful and subversive, silly and sophisticated, This Little Piggy Stayed Home is one of the funniest comic collections out there.

The Los Angeles Times calls Zits "one of the freshest and most imaginative comic strips." The world of sixteen-year-old Jeremy Duncan revolves around his insatiable "growing boy" appetite, lip-locking with squeeze Sarah, keeping his jerry-rigged vehicle roadworthy, and playing with his band, Goat Cheese Pizza. Somewhere in the background, he's vaguely aware of some muted voices, constantly beseeching him to pick up his Matterhorn-sized clothes pile, to be home on time (so lame!), and to (God forbid!) communicate with them. The disembodied voices are those of Connie and Walt, his mostly patient, but sometimes frustrated to exploding, parents. In Zits, they portray a hilarious view of coping with a teenager and with being a teenager. Created in 1997 by Pulitzer Prize-winning editorial cartoonist Jim Borgman and Reuben Award-winning cartoonist/writer Jerry Scott, Zits appears in more than 1,600 newspapers worldwide in 45 countries and is translated into 15 different languages. The comic has an estimated daily readership of more than 200 million readers.