While the vast majority of the webcomics I read are anchored in the science fiction and fantasy genres, every so often I stumble across comics that enjoy defying easy classification. Gypsy is one such comic, with a delightfully quirky and surreal storyline and artstyle that has led several people to compare it to Josh Lesnick’s Girly. Unlike Lesnick’s rambling cheesecake masterpiece, Gypsy avoids the cheesecake and fanservice and focuses instead on its ever-growing cast of characters, all of whom are connected in some way to the titular character, Gypsy.

Gypsy lives in a world inhabited with Great Wing-ed Frog-Things, goddesses who send their people off on various (often inconsequential) quests, robotic gypsygirl dolls (which Gypsy herself apparently designed), and other assorted silliness. While this may seem part and parcel to any number of other surreal webcomics out there, Gypsy stands out among its peers in that the titular character doesn’t actually do anything. She doesn’t talk to the other characters. She doesn’t walk through the world observing. She doesn’t give commentary on the world around her. She literally lies there, often being dragged or carried about, as the comic revolves around her.

Oddly enough, this plot device works and helps drive the plot as a whole. Early in the comic we learn that Gypsy is suffering from brain freeze – not from ice cream, mind you, but rather from having learned too much, causing her head to fill up until it can’t take anything else. Outside of pressing a button early in the comic (causing a robotic puppet troupe to play “A Funny Thing Happened On The Way To The Forum” over and over again) and snagging a rope to keep herself (and her new caretaker) from sliding to their deaths, she is a proverbial lump on a log, and a plot device that other characters use to drive the story as a whole.

It is these other characters who truly bring Gypsy to life. Each of them have been touched by Gypsy in some way, either through inspiration, obligation, or even existing because of Gypsy (in the case of the sentient Gypsygirl dolls), and their actions could be considered influenced partly by the comatose young lady. Of these, the central character (and in many ways the primary protagonist) is Ziggy, a doctor who tries (unsuccessfully) to treat Gypsy’s brainfreeze and who is then forced to help Gypsy with her Goddess Service after Mama Rose, Gypsy’s apathetic mother, abandons Gypsy with the doctor with the note “She’s your problem now!” Add to that Gypsy’s Goddess Service (delivering a letter to the other side of the planet), and you have all the ingredients needed for a light and tasty plot.

While Gypsy’s Goddess Service may be the primary impetus of the story, it is the multitude of secondary plots that bud from the main that breathe life into the comic. Whether it’s watching Mama Rose’s antics during her retirement, the efforts of the Puppet Troupe to find gainful employment, or of the various other people who get drawn into the gravitational pull of Gypsy’s plot, there’s something to amuse nearly everyone.