Zot! Day!

Scott McCloud was born on yesterday's date in 1960. McCloud is most famous these days for Understanding Comics, his insightful tome which deconstructs how comic stories function and how they interface with the reader. But my first brush with McCloud was in the pages of Zot!, a comic book from Eclipse Comics. 

I don't recollect when I first saw or bought Zot! by Scott McCloud, but I for sure had several issues of the Eclipse comic's color run which started in the mid-80's. But when I moved away from the Independents to focus on Marvel (driven by the need to conserve finances for my growing family) I lost track of the character and made no effort to follow the series as it moved through the decade into the early 90's, even when it lost its color and shifted to black and white storytelling. 

I was intrigued when I chanced upon a very cheap 2007 collection which gathered together most of the black and white run of the series. It looked like a handsome volume, well worth the small money and frankly I was intrigued. I'm pleased I bought the book. It is great, not only offering up some dandy stories told in McCloud's Japanese-inspired pristine style, but the connecting material putting the stories into context really open up the themes of the book.

The beginning of the black and white run with the eleventh issue was seen by McCloud as a reboot for the series and so beginning there is no problem for the novice. We meet in the the first two issues our protagonist Jenny of our Earth who has a "boyfriend" named Zot who is a superhero of sorts on an Earth in another dimension which resembles ours but feels more futuristic and idealistic. Jenny thinks her humdrum life of a broken home complete with pesky brother and a school life full of the boredom that can engender would be improved by shifting her load to Zot's world. In these first two stories we meet a steampunk villain named Bellows who proves to be a blustery but ineffectual baddie for our hero who dispatches him with smiling aplomb.

The next three issues offer up a more intense trilogy detailing the struggle against a computer named Zybox who in its quest for a soul ends up enslaving Zot's world and seems interested in ours. Zybox is a terrific foe who like the famous Tardis is bigger on the inside which allows the devious computer to toy with his victims as he looks to complete himself.

In a light-hearted one-shot we meet the Devoes, luddite-minded kooks who use advance technology to reduce the world to primitive apes when man was not slave to his machinery but lived ideally in the trees.

One of the scariest Zot villains is Art Dekko, a madman who suffering from cancer had his whole body slowly but surely replaced by various bits of technology. His madness is a threat to the world, or at least he imagines it so.

(Note: Issues nineteen and twenty of the series were art fill-ins by Chuck Austen which went on sale in the same month and are not included in the collection I read. McCloud still thinks highly of them, but I can offer no opinion.)

The Blotch is a baddie who worships greed and who practices a loathsome and unrepentant capitalism which attempts to reduce all of the world to merchandise and all people to employees. That's seen as a bad thing in Zot's world, or at least it is eventually just as in ours.

Perhaps Zot's most dangerous foe is 9-Jack-9, an electric assassin who travels through electronic equipment to seek out his victims. He's been around for decades and never fails, even challenging the seemingly perfect record of our hero Zot. This villain points to a coldness which perhaps suggests the nature and arguably origin of evil.

After these various super-heroic encounters the series does a shift as Zot and Jenny become stranded on our Earth. 

Zot gets stranded on Jenny's we get a series of touching low-key character driven tales which McCloud dubs the "Earth Stories".

It begins with a weird two-part story which first shows us a day-in-the-life of Jenny Weaver as she struggles with home and school, both worlds full of commonplace strife that many teenagers face. That is counterpointed with a similar story from Zot's perspective which shows how difficult fighting crime can be in a world which while filled with crime seemingly lacks the clarity of good guys and bad guys.

Then we get a portrait of Jenny's mother who has been little seen in the series to this point, but unlike the father who is all but absent in a family which is undergoing divorce, and never focused on. Here we get a story from her perspective which is about the nature of adulthood and the compromises and regrets which often accompany that journey we all must take-- if we're lucky. It's a sweet story and a thoughtful one.
 

Following that we get some tales introducing us to some new supporting characters. We meet Ronnie, a young black comics fan who is isolated in the almost exclusively white suburban community and his friend "Spike" who is the artist for the fan comics Ronnie writes. Both are young men trying to find out how to fit in.

Perhaps more tragic is Ronnie's girlfriend Brandie who is a supreme optimist but who struggles against enormous financial pressures and more in a family which suffers the damage of an alcoholic mother.

We get fresh insights into Terry, a longtime character who is revealed to be struggling with her sexual identity at a time and place where such things were far from typical, although as the story suggests in its very title absolutely normal in the broadest possible sense.

Woody is another longtime character who has had a crush on Jenny and finally has to move on when it's clear that Zot is the one she truly cares the most for, though it is difficult for everyone.

One of the most peculiar issues is a simple conversation, halting and confused, but certainly frank between Jenny and Zot as they discuss what it means to their relationship if they move beyond their friendly romance into a sexual relationship. What they decide will intrigue all readers.

And the series wraps as all the characters don't necessarily find full resolution, as life doesn't work like that, but they do get a glimpse of one possible future the access to Zot's world is reopened in time for everyone to have another visit.

This charming series wraps up full of heart and clearly McCloud is no longer interested in just telling superhero yarns, but wants to create comics which plow new territory.

The nature of how that works is the very next thing McCloud would work on as just after he finished Zot he turned his attention to the groundbreaking Understanding Comics.

Rip Off