For years, I’ve felt that the biggest weakness of Scott McCloud’s Understanding Comics and followups was that almost none of McCloud’s actual comic work was easily available. Don’t get me wrong; Understanding Comics is a great book and actually is a great comic. McCloud does not get nearly enough credit for the way he dissects comics using the comic form. Understanding Comics demonstrates the strengths of comics while also showing the versatility of them as he creates a fantastic textbook disguised as a comic. While Understanding Comics is the ultimate text on how comics work, there’s never been a comic that served as a great example of McCloud’s theories in practice. While McCloud’s Zot! predates Understanding Comics, you can see the ideas and concepts McCloud would latter explore showing up in Zot!
Zot! 1987-1991 is the work of a creator full of ideas and theories trying to find stories to fit them into. The basic story is a combination of Peter Pan and Superman, the powerful superhero trapped in a boys world where he doesn’t have to ever grow up. Zot’s alternate world is a utopia-like society that still has its share of dangerous and insane characters like Art Decco or 9 Jacks 9. The stories and adventures on Zot’s world equals the adventures in Pan’s Never Never land, where the boys run free and the danger is hardly ever mortal. The other side of that equation though is our world where Jenny, Zot’s girlfriend who also functions as Wendy to his “Peter Pan, has to deal with high school, a brother and her parent’s divorce. Jenny’s world is the “real” world where superheroes and their bad guys don’t exist but they’re not nearly as scary as our everyday personal relationships with the world around us.
Jenny is arguable the main character of the book. Zot may be the title character but the story is told through Jenny’s point of view. Zot is the vehicle for the stories and he’s the colorful star but Jenny stands in for the reader, disgusted and tired of her own world and drawn to Zot’s wonderful science fictional wonderland. Through Jenny, McCloud gives us a character who’s wonderfully innocent and on the verge of adulthood and who is able to see the wonders of Zot’s world while showing us why the real world can suck for a teenager.
The collection begins with stories that bounce back and forth between the two worlds, Zot’s and Jenny’s. Those stories are full of fun superheroics. Zot’s world is full of colorful characters, particularly the villains. Two of McCloud’s bad guys are two of the most chilling and original creations in the last 20 years. Art Decco is Zot’s Joker, seeing the world like abstract or expressionistic art. His sense of reality is twisted and corrupted so his reality ends up looking like a Picasso or Pollock painting. 9 Jack 9 is essentially a sentient computer virus, looking to destroy the world. These villains, as well as the mobster The Blotch and the De-Evolutionaries create a fun and adventurous cast for Zot and his buddies to fight for.
For the last half of stories that are collected here, McCloud abandoned that world to focus directly on the high schoolers that Zot and Jenny are friends with in her world. Zot almost disappears into the background while McCloud uses these stories to explore teenage emotions and sexuality. Some of these stories are really strong as in Autumn where we see the story of Jenny’s parents who are now in the middle of divorce proceedings. It’s a good character piece that fleshes out some of the supporting cast while telling strong, honest stories. But some of these “Earth Stories” end up being a bit too sentimental, where McCloud doesn’t know when to pull back a bit and trust his characters a bit more. “Normal,” a story that that explores its character’s sexuality contains a few really touching moments but also at times feels like an old “After School Special” as it obviously preaches openmindedness and acceptance of all people.
These stories showcase McCloud’s storytelling abilities. McCloud was into manga before most of us could tell our Lone Wolf from our Cub. I don’t know how apparent it was back when McCloud was writing and drawing these stories but now that manga has become our second comic language, you can see a lot of it in McCloud’s stories. It’s not the large eyes and action lines that McCloud is borrowing but the storytelling techniques. In the way he constructs a page and moves from panel to panel, you can see the manga influence on McCloud. Even if his art at times is rushed and sloppy, McCloud’s storytelling techiniques show an artist and storytelling trying to push the ideas of what comics can do.
Zot! 1987- 1991
Written and Drawn by: Scott McCloud
Lettered by: Bob Lappan
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Tags: Scott McCloud, Zot!