I shared the above Ziggy cartoon once before. But having happened across it again, I was struck by the subversive message of the cartoon. An alien that looks like an angel talks to Ziggy, a human, and then expresses amazement to another of his alien race at the cosmology humans have come up with. The reference is presumably to a religious system that views these aliens as supernatural beings, messengers of the divine.
I think the “ancient aliens” idea is so popular precisely because it provides a way to keep “angels” and “gods” within the framework of a scientific cosmology.
But I suspect that anyone looking back on the “ancient aliens” idea from the perspective of our distant future will likewise scoff at the cosmology some had come up with.