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What with all the shelves of manga at Barnes and Noble these days it is hard to remember now how outré Zot seemed in the mid-eighties. Graphically it was kind of like a cross between Astro Boy and the Fantastic Four. The first ten color issues of Zot were a twist on the superhero comic with an ongoing storyline that was then the norm in mainstream comics. Though this edition does not reprint those first ten stories the first black and white issue was basically a full reboot of the series and you will not be at a loss to follow the series. From the first black and white issue on Zot became something a little more thoughtful than it had been and while the whimsical side of the characters never quite passed from view there was often something wistful about the approach to the stories. It is convenient to think of the first ten comics as a summer story and the black and white run of the series as being in a sense autumnal, but that may be just a little bit too facile of a commentary on what is really a fairly complex set of characters and subjects.

The basic set-up is that Zot inhabits a world similar to but much more pleasant than ours, a futuristic world in which people have robot butlers, drive flying cars, and a superhero like Zot occasionally gets mixed up in making commercials for soft drinks. He travels back and forth to our world where his love interest Jenny resides. A lot of the stories seem to hinge on the dichotomy between the two worlds and the place of escapist fantasy in adolescence. But the stories work as adventure stories as well. There is always a moral center to the stories though they are not generally preachy, and that was an intentional thematic counterpoint to mainstream comics at the time which were relentlessly pursuing a dark, gritty, noir inspired take on the superhero (most famously in Watchmen and The Dark Knight Returns).

Zot was Scott McCloud’s first professional comics work and while it is still one of the best runs anybody ever had, it is obvious in places that as an artist he was still learning and not quite comfortable with all of the tools at his disposal. Honestly, that is one of the book’s most charming aspects to me. I love the fact that Zot is a coming of age story about two young people and the arc of the stories comprises the artist’s own coming of age as an artist. While most of the art is design oriented and heavily influenced by Astro Boy there are a lot of much more naturalistic touches as well, particularly in the second half of the book which is mostly about Zot exploring our world. I should point out that despite the cartoony art Zot is not necessarily a book for young children. There are serious moments, teenage sex is dealt with realistically and gay rights are addressed. I think the book is suitable for anybody over twelve, but it is conceivable that many people would not. I’ve always liked Zot and having the entire black and white series collected into one great big 500 and some odd page book really appeals to the nerd in me. To top it off Scott McCloud includes a running text commentary on his stories that alone is worth the price of admission to me. I don’t know why I always like the story behind the story as much as the work itself, but I always have been a sucker for an author’s own judgment of his work, and Scott McCloud is as interesting commenting on his own work as he is in discussing comics theory in his best selling book, Understanding Comics. All in all this is one of my favorite purchases over the last couple of years.

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