Zachary

From Candypedia
Zachary
GenderMale
Age22
Birthday1986
SpeciesCat
OccupationBand manager
DebutArrival, page 18
June 8, 2008 (2008-06-08)

Zachary is a well-meaning, hopelessly tactless young cat from the Silvershore Islands, the beach getaway where Lucy and her friends spend their summer vacation. A rookie band manager with a spotless record of bad decisions, he attaches himself to the group after carrying an unconscious Lucy out of the surf, never mind that he can’t swim. Before the trip is over, he becomes the first person blunt enough to tell Lucy the truth about her and Mike.

Personality

Zachary’s first instinct in any emergency is to help, and his second thoughts tend to arrive far too late to matter. When Lucy sums him up as “an impulsive idiot,” his whole defense is “You could say that..”[1] He ditches Catherine mid-date the second Blur and Chirpy beg for his help, leaving her standing in the street without her phone.[2] “I think he cares too much,” Catherine admits,[3] and Veronica’s commentary agrees that “Zachary means well, he just doesn’t think!”[3]

He has just as little filter when he talks. When he hears that Mike has gone missing, his idea of reassurance is a cheery “Well he’s probably dead.” Four horrified glares later, he’s offering to help find the body instead.[4] None of it helps his reputation with the kids. Sue and Tess brand him “Pedo.” and “Creep.” when a frightened Lucy clings to him,[5] and the label clearly stings. By the end of the trip, he won’t even sit down next to Lucy without first promising “I’m seriously not looking to creep on you. Really. I’m not.”[6] Veronica’s commentary calls the accusations “completely unwarranted.”[6]

Zachary stops clowning around during his last conversation with Lucy. “I’m not trying to hurt your feelings, Lucy,” he tells her on the beach. “What I really want is for you to get out of all this without hurting yourself..”[7] He speaks from experience, too, telling her she reminded him “of the mistakes I made when I was your age..”[8] Oliver crowns him “The king of unsolicited advice!”[9]

Appearance

Zachary is a cat with a long, dark ponytail[10] and a pair of glasses he keeps having to push back up his nose.[4][11] He debuts in swim trunks on the beach, and spends the rest of the arc in shorts and a T-shirt.[10][12]

Veronica’s commentary on Arrival notes the character “went through several transformations”. An early version looked too much like the cat version of one of her friends, and he carried the development nickname “surfercat” until she reworked his look because “This character is not a surfer.”[1]

Significant events

Zachary enters the comic as a nameless beachgoer, watching Lucy from the sand in Arrival.[10] When a wave knocks Lucy out as she shields Yashy and no actual lifeguard responds,[13] he hauls her out himself.[14] She wakes up, kicks him in the chin, and only manages an awkward thank-you once Mike explains the mix-up.[14]

He leads the group to lunch,[12] but his gushing over Lucy’s singing goes over badly, and the scene cuts to him bruised on the pavement outside.[1] Catherine arrives to clear his name.[15][3] At the goodbye, he offers Lucy a hundred dollars for a song. She pockets the money and bolts.[16]

In Search and Rescue, Blur and Chirpy summon him to help find the missing Mike.[4][2] His help is of the usual quality, since he leads the search party into a monster chase and straight off a cliff.[17] At the campfire that night, Yashy brands his cheek with a molten marshmallow, and Catherine packs him off to wash up.[18] That’s how he ends up spotting Lucy sobbing into Mike’s chest through the restroom window.[19]

Intervention opens with him still eavesdropping on the pair from that restroom.[20] Mike catches him in the act, and Zachary ends up in the toilet.[21] On the walk back to the campfire, a well-meant remark from Zachary hits a nerve,[22] and Mike unloads on him about the real state of things between himself and Lucy. Zachary is left standing alone under a streetlight.[23]

On Lucy’s last night, in Return, he crosses paths with her on his walk home and asks, carefully, if he can sit with her.[6] He tells her what he has worked out about her and Mike,[24] and Lucy breaks down as they argue.[7] The next morning, he and Catherine see the group off at the airport in his final on-panel sequence in the main comic.[11][25]

Major relationships

Lucy

Lucy kicks Zachary in the chin as she comes to in Arrival.

Lucy treats Zachary like a pest for most of the trip, even as he keeps trying to help her. She dubs him “fake lifeguard” within a day of meeting him,[26] and greets his last attempt at conversation with “Actually stalking me now?”[6] He starts out besotted with her singing,[1] but the longer he watches her orbit Mike, the more the fascination turns into honest worry.[20]

It all comes out on her last night on the island, in Return. Once the small talk about the stars runs dry, he asks whether Mike is really good for her,[9] and puts his conclusion as gently as his mouth will allow: “He kind of.. .. hates you?”[24] He warns her that Mike will one day leave for his faraway girlfriend,[27] and when she argues, he calls her attachment a “one-way OBSESSION”.[8] Lucy finally breaks down and confesses, “Dammit, Zach, I love him..”[7] He answers by telling her a first love can be too much trouble to keep,[7] and by promising to be there if anything ever happens to her.[28]

For all that, their goodbye is downright warm, a simple “Good luck, Lucy.” answered with “I’ll do my best.”[11] The comic goes on to prove him right. After Mike’s rejection in Unrequited, a sobbing Lucy admits to Sue that “Zach.. He was RIGHT..”,[29] and his warnings replay through her head on the walk to Paulo’s door in Another Shoulder.[30] Veronica later pointed to this conversation as proof of Lucy’s blind spot, noting the thought of Mike getting sick of her “never crossed her mind, as was shown in her conversation with Zachary.”[31]

Catherine

Catherine has known Zachary “since middle school.. so she’s pretty aware of my.. shortcomings,” as he puts it, right before insisting she is not his girlfriend.[32] She vouches that “Zachie wouldn’t hurt a fly” and calls him “a really sweet guy, only a little bit fanatical,” all while cheerfully airing his music-career history to a table of strangers.[15][3] In her telling, he has a “GREAT voice, but he keeps tryin’ to play guitar. So his bands never really work out,” and his move into managing talent just lets him “make bad decisions for everyone!”[32]

A whole trip spent watching teenagers pine at each other finally gets to her. At the airport, she erupts with “Can’t ya let me be frank about my love for you in PEACE?!” He answers with “You know I can’t help it, Cathy.” The two hold hands as the sun comes up.[11][25] Veronica’s commentary calls the pair “a chilled out, more comfortable version of.. two certain characters.” Yashy gets there first in the comic itself, sizing up how much the two couples bicker.[32] Outside the main comic, a one-page gag from the BCI anthology Ships Ahoy, Season Six has Zachary play Catherine an “audition tape” of pure noise and explain, “I signed a contract with them! They speak to me.”[33]

Mike

Mike rounds on Zachary on the boardwalk in Intervention.

Mike is wary of Zachary from the very first afternoon, wondering aloud whether following a stranger around the island is really such a good idea.[12] Catching Zachary spying from a restroom does nothing to soften him: “Maybe that’ll teach you not to snoop, hmm?”[21][34]

The one time they really talk, Zachary means it kindly when he says, “She.. really loves you. Doesn’t she? .. Yer real lucky, man.”[22] Mike shouts “You really DON’T know anything, do you?!” and vents everything he’s been holding in about Lucy, right down to “she ‘needs’ me.. That’s where it begins and ends.”[23] Veronica’s commentary explains the misfire, noting that Zachary envies “that kind of love, a love he wouldn’t want from Lucy at all!”[22] By his own account, the advice he gives Lucy on the beach afterward is “just what I got after talking to the guy. And a little eavesdropping.”[8]

Minor relationships

Tess

Tess is the first to thank Zachary properly for the rescue, and she adopts him as the group’s guide on the spot.[12] The warmth has limits, though. The moment he compliments Lucy’s singing, she wants to know whether he’s hitting on her and exactly how old he is.[1] By the next chapter, she’s back to greeting his arrival with a relieved “Zachary!!”[4]

Quotes

I can’t even swim! Zachary, volunteering for a water rescue in Arrival

Well he’s probably dead. Zachary, sharing his theory about the missing Mike in Search and Rescue

Your voice is gorgeous! Even when you call me creepy! Zachary, to Lucy, moments before things go badly for him in Arrival

A nosy guy with toilet feet. Zachary, agreeing with Mike’s assessment of him in Intervention

Sometimes your first love is just too much trouble. You have to let it go. Zachary, leveling with Lucy on the beach in Return

It gets better, believe me. And look, if anything happens to you, I’ll be there.. Somehow. Zachary, making Lucy a promise in Return

Gallery

Trivia

  • Veronica has said Zachary was originally in a band himself, with bandmates designed and a performance scene planned for Lucy and company to watch, before she scrapped the idea and made him a rookie manager instead.[35]
  • Lucy isn’t the first girl to take him for a hundred dollars. Veronica’s commentary on his backstory montage reveals the “homeless” girl he hands $100 is playing a trick on him, and that her brother is about to slingshot him in the face.[3]
  • A return for Zachary was once planned as part of “a very specific ending path that is not remotely relevant anymore”. Veronica says the forecast for him now “isn’t very good.”[36]
  • He reprises his rescue duties in the alternate-universe BCI story Another Rescue, helping carry a battered Paulo back after the bridge accident.[37]

See also

References

  1. ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 1.3 1.4 Chapter 42: Arrival, page 25
  2. ↑ 2.0 2.1 Chapter 43: Search and Rescue, page 17
  3. ↑ 3.0 3.1 3.2 3.3 3.4 Chapter 42: Arrival, page 27
  4. ↑ 4.0 4.1 4.2 4.3 Chapter 43: Search and Rescue, page 16
  5. ↑ Chapter 43: Search and Rescue, page 19
  6. ↑ 6.0 6.1 6.2 6.3 Chapter 45: Return, page 2
  7. ↑ 7.0 7.1 7.2 7.3 Chapter 45: Return, page 7
  8. ↑ 8.0 8.1 8.2 Chapter 45: Return, page 6
  9. ↑ 9.0 9.1 Chapter 45: Return, page 3
  10. ↑ 10.0 10.1 10.2 Chapter 42: Arrival, page 18
  11. ↑ 11.0 11.1 11.2 11.3 Chapter 45: Return, page 13
  12. ↑ 12.0 12.1 12.2 12.3 Chapter 42: Arrival, page 23
  13. ↑ Chapter 42: Arrival, page 21
  14. ↑ 14.0 14.1 Chapter 42: Arrival, page 22
  15. ↑ 15.0 15.1 Chapter 42: Arrival, page 26
  16. ↑ Chapter 42: Arrival, page 30
  17. ↑ Chapter 43: Search and Rescue, page 18
  18. ↑ Chapter 43: Search and Rescue, page 27
  19. ↑ Chapter 43: Search and Rescue, page 28
  20. ↑ 20.0 20.1 Chapter 44: Intervention, page 1
  21. ↑ 21.0 21.1 Chapter 44: Intervention, page 2
  22. ↑ 22.0 22.1 22.2 Chapter 44: Intervention, page 4
  23. ↑ 23.0 23.1 Chapter 44: Intervention, page 5
  24. ↑ 24.0 24.1 Chapter 45: Return, page 4
  25. ↑ 25.0 25.1 Chapter 45: Return, page 14
  26. ↑ Chapter 42: Arrival, page 24
  27. ↑ Chapter 45: Return, page 5
  28. ↑ Chapter 45: Return, page 8
  29. ↑ Chapter 51: Unrequited, page 12
  30. ↑ Chapter 52: Another Shoulder, page 4
  31. ↑ “Ask response on Lucy’s blind spot about Mike”. 2015-11-17.
  32. ↑ 32.0 32.1 32.2 Chapter 42: Arrival, page 28
  33. ↑ Ships Ahoy, Season Six, page 12 🔒 (members only)
  34. ↑ Chapter 44: Intervention, page 3
  35. ↑ “Ask response on scrapped character concepts”. 2026-06-09.
  36. ↑ “Ask response on a possible Zachary return”. 2026-04-05.
  37. ↑ Another Rescue, page 10 🔒 (members only)
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