Zot! #30

We used to burn leaves by the side of the road.

Jenny and her brother Butch get trapped in another dimension where they meet a teenage superhero named Zot. They go on an adventure and face all these villains and Butch gets turned into a monkey. Fun all around. The series lasted 10 issues, published by Eclipse comics, 1984-85.

A couple years passed. Finally, Zot! #11 hit the stands. Now black and white. Jenny had been a point-of-view character, a way for the audience to see themselves in Zot’s story. But by now McCloud had decided she was really the star, and that this was the story of a girl who occasionally visited a fantasy world she was starting to find more real than her own world.

But as to the real protagonist of Zot!… the true character arc on display belongs to Scott McCloud himself. He was 23 when he started Zot! and 30 when he finished. He changed a lot in that time, in terms of figuring out what he wanted from life and from the comics medium. What stories he wanted to tell. How he wanted to tell them.

He would go on to create my favorite treatise on the comics medium, Understanding Comics. Highly recommended if you have any interest in what makes these things tick. Though basically a textbook, I stayed up all night reading it when I first bought it. I’ve come to my own ideas about the medium, some at odds with his, but this work forever shaped how I saw comics and art and even mathematics.

Within the pages of Zot!, we see McCloud starting to lose interest in superhero stories, while at the same time writing some of the best superhero stories ever. One of these days, I’ll probably spotlight Zot! #25, the epic conclusion of his battle with 9-Jack-9.

But now I want to push further ahead in the series. Starting with issue 27, Zot gets trapped in Jenny’s world, basically an inversion of the concept of the series up until that point.

Jenny’s world is our world. There are no super-villains nor grand adventures. And so the story turns to other types of problems, the type McCloud was finding himself increasingly interested in.

For a series of issues, each issue spotlights a different supporting cast member, often minor characters who have only had a few lines up to this point.

One issue concerns Jenny’s friend Ronnie, an aspiring comics artist too obsessed with superheroes, likely a nod to how the author now saw his teenage self. Another concerns Jenny’s friend Terry, coming to terms with her homosexuality.

This issue is about Jenny’s mom, Barbara Weaver.

Autumn

Here’s the cover again. It’s one of my all-time favorite comic covers.

I may have a fondness for autumn-themed comic covers. Here’s The Fall by Ed Brubaker and Jason Lutes.

Here’s Mouse Guard by David Petersen, with connected front and back cover.

Now, it must be noted my personal connection to autumn is minimal. Growing up in California, the trees mostly stayed green. Maybe there was an occasional leaf on the ground here or there.

My family took a couple trips to Lake Tahoe for me to see snow; I think we built maybe one snowman in the mountains in my youth. But in general, seasons didn’t mean much to me. My biggest connection to winter and snowmen came through my love of Calvin & Hobbes comics.

And so it was with autumn. I read comics like this without having any real idea what they were talking about.

At the age of 30, I moved from California to Maryland. Generally a mistake, but I finally got to learn about seasons. When I moved into my apartment complex in February, I decided it was a fine complex, though not very pretty. All the trees were dead. I really had no idea that it was February and that meant something. The trees weren’t dead, they were sleeping. One day in April, the entire complex was covered in pink and white flowers. All of a sudden. I decided that meant spring had begun.

I used to think of seasons like dates on a calendar, the same as months or weeks. Just marking time.

But within a few weeks, the flowers were gone and everything was green.

The one day in September, the ground was covered in leaves. And over the next month, the trees became yellow and red and it was generally very beautiful around. I finally came to appreciate autumn.

It wasn’t worth the humidity of summer or the inconveniences of snow, though. Seasons were better left as things to be visited rather than lived in, I decided.

But prior to that experience, my best sense of autumn came from this comic.

This is a comic I always think of when moving or making big life changes anyway; every step toward adulthood, starting a career, buying a house… this is always on my mind.

The lettering is by Bob Lappan. Scott credits his wife Ivy with a plot assist. Cat Yronwode is the editor.

This used to be my favorite season. These days, I don’t have a favorite. The seasons pass too quickly. The trees are putting on a nice show like always… bright reds, yellows and oranges, everywhere you look. Yet all I can think of is the dirty laundry in the basement. And whether to tell Harry Peterson I want to go part-time. And when do I get the Toyota back from the Sunoco Station since Horton was too cheap to take it to the dealer. And should we go ahead with the divorce. And when did life become so trivial.

There’s a lot to unpack just in the opening monologue. The dramatic hit is in the 5th panel when she throws out something serious in the midst of her reverie. The marital problems and pending separation between Jenny’s parents has been part of the background noise of the entire series, and tied into the general idea that Jenny wanted to leave our broken world behind forever to live in Zot’s utopian world.

It’s the rest of the page that interests me more, and that I connect so strongly with. That last sentence is what gets me. Summarizes all my fears in one moment.

In general, I avoid adulting. I take pride in not being any good at it. I don’t like to cook or clean or pay bills or worry about trivialities. This attitude sometimes has consequences, but I mostly get away with it. Sometimes it’s unavoidable. I was recently hit all at once with multiple requirements to adult, concerning doctors and homeowners insurance and bank accounts. All too much for me. And takes away valuable time I’d rather spend reading comics or watching movies or traveling, or hitting the pub with my mates. You know, the important things.

I explained above the seasons don’t hold a strong connection for me, but of the litany of concerns she listed off… things like laundry and car repairs… the color of the leaves seems the like most important thing on her mind. And I often feel like the world is constantly pulling me to lose sight of that.

I guess the monologue wasn’t quite over.

“…And when did life become so trivial. When did all the magic go out?”

One of the nice things about comics is that the text and art can be deliberately juxtaposed for contrast. The art shows there actually is some magic in this world. But Jenny’s mom doesn’t know that her daughter’s maybe-boyfriend is an interdimensional superhero. This page is the only time we see Zot fly in the comic. In this and most of the next several issues, his role is to stand in the background in his silly superhero costume and occasionally wave.

However, he really does serve an important purpose in this story, even though he’s just standing in the background in his silly superhero costume and waving.

Seeing the kids together (after they landed) reminds Barbara of her own youth. As she rakes the leaves into trash bags, she recalls coming home from college to see her dad had put the leaves in trash cans. In her childhood, they had burned the leaves. It’s now illegal. She remarks she had always liked the smell of burning leaves.

Seeing the leaves in the trash can is one of those moments, a dividing line between then and now. Life changes, and doesn’t always become what you thought it would be. The change is gradual, but there are sharp moments, even if they seem subtle at the time. Like leaves in a trash can.

The core conflict is echoed at that same lunch. Her then-boyfriend-now-husband-soon-exhusband is explaining that his dream is to be a newspaper editor. “I just want my life to mean something,” he says. Her father finds his ideas impractical, and offers him a job at his store. Steady, reliable.

If the comic is about idealism vs. practicality, Zot represents idealism taken to the extreme. He is endlessly optimistic about everything and everyone.

Jenny’s brother Butch does not represent endless idealism.

Jenny’s other maybe-boyfriend is Woody. She has to decide between the two boys one of these days; they’ve both agreed to be patient with her. Woody represents something more practical and grounded than Zot does.

Woody remarks that Autumn is his favorite season. “It just seems more… honest than the others.”

Back to the past, but further this time, to when they still burned leaves. Her father would light a single leaf and drop it on the pile. She saw it as a ceremony. She remembers it with awe and reverence.

With the memories of burning leaves comes the memories of her dreams. Her abstract and deep thoughts. She remembers using a flashlight to coordinate with a friend on a distant world.

“You start out thinking about life, the universe, and the existence of God… next thing you know it’s pension funds, laundry detergent, and a new muffler.”

She repeats the ideas of her opening internal monologue to the children. Woody already sees himself moving in the direction of more practical thoughts. Zot does not.

Woody and Mrs. Weaver share a moment. He also remembers when they burned leaves. He occasionally lights a leaf on fire to help him remember.

Mrs. Weaver reflects on Jenny’s two boyfriends. Interestingly, it’s Zot that reminds her of her husband. But how her husband used to be. Before reality hit him too hard. Woody’s already been hit by reality, she can tell.

Notice Zot is riding in the back of a car instead of, y’know, flying. Still in the silly superhero outfit though.

Turning points. She remembers when Horton gave up on his high-minded dreams to take a more practical job so that he could provide for his family.

She sees what they’ve gained and what it cost. Ambition for stability.

And she sees a single leaf on the ground.

It’s hard to not see the author himself all over this. Woody even looks a lot like him. He’s in his late 20s and has a goal of making a career in comic books. Independent comics, at that. Hardly practical. I’ll quote his afterword to this story in a collection some 20 years later.

As I neared thirty, I was a bit more attuned to the daily struggles of adult life, and it wasn’t hard to imagine circumstances in which I might have to get a “real ” job someday, especially if Ivy and I succeeded in having children while the U.S. comics market failed to enlarge its own family of readers. I could see life through either of Jenny’s parents’ eyes.

Scott McCloud, 2008

Thirty years later, he has two adult daughters, and has made a successful living as a cartoonist. I don’t know the artist, except through his work and appearances at comic cons. But it seems to me he’s found that balance between ideals and reality, between grown-up goals and childhood dreams. But I’m sure life was more uncertain in 1990.

Woody’s suggestion is a good one. The smell of a burning leaf… that sense memory is enough to shake her out of mundane thoughts and take her someplace better.

I’m reminded of a couple other pop culture moments. In “Sunday Morning Coming Down”, Kris Kristofferson sings about the same effect of this sense memory.

Then I crossed the empty street
And caught the Sunday smell of someone fryin’ chicken
And it took me back to somethin’
That I’d lost somehow, somewhere along the way

The moment is so on point that I wonder if McCloud had the song in mind when writing the scene.

Jumping forward a couple decades, I’m also reminded of the climactic scene in Ratatouille. Spoilers. That’s about taste (a little about smell) but the same idea. A taste that perfectly captures a person’s childhood and transports them to a different time. A time before they’d lost whatever it is that we lose.

I’ll share a few snippets from letters of readers responding to this issue, which were published in issue 33. A lot of the same things that resonated with me seemed to have resonated with readers at the time. (I was rather young and only a few months into my comics reading when this issue came out. I’d discovered Avengers, Transformers, and Silver Surfer… but not yet Zot. I first read this story over a decade after publication.)

…I found myself so strongly sharing [Zot’s] philosophy that I wanted to cheer and wave a flag for the dreamer of dreams… And maybe the reason I felt so strongly is that I live in Jenny’s mother’s world, not Zot’s, and my dreams have been battered and bruised and broken, and I’ve come close to losing my convictions. But not very close… My dreams have made me. Whenever I think that I should have taken the job with IBM–or whatever my equivalent would have been–I know I couldn’t have done it. Just like Jenny’s dad shouldn’t have.

Elizabeth H, Ottawa, Ontario

There can’t have been many of your more mature (read old!) readers who haven’t shared Jenny, Zot, and Woody’s youthful enthusiasm for the future only to wake up one day, like Mrs. Weaver, and find that their dreams have been lost in the struggle to survive in this material world.

Martin S, Stourbridge, England

I was packing my comics… and I picked up Zot! #30 for the umpteenth time, and like every other time, had to stop and read it again. Maybe it’s the changes forced by time, like graduation and a new house and another birthday, or maybe it’s the theme of what a person wants to do versus what they end up doing, a theme that has been a personal dilemma for at least the last few months–I can’t pin it down. I don’t think I need to. It resonates in where I am now…

Dan B, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania

End notes

Many Zot! comics had a backup story by Matt Feazell, a stick figure Zot adventure in Dimension 10½. However, in this issue, citing artist injury, the backup is mostly reprinted Cynicalman material.

In looking through the letters regarding this issue, I focused on the positive ones and neglected above to talk about a letter from future comics superstar, Hereville creator Barry Deutsch. It was a very thoughtful critique of some of the possible flaws of this issue. I think he makes some very good points, though I find this issue to be a masterpiece nonetheless. Discussing his letter point by point would be an interesting exercise, but tangential to my purposes here. I come to praise Zot, not to bury him.

I think the harshest criticism I’ve ever seen of this issue comes from its own author, looking back on it 20 years later and describing it as, “clearly a self-conscious attempt on a young genre writer’s part to step up to ‘real’ writing, while still clinging to his security blanket (the guy in the spandex costume)”.

I think it’s much better than he gives it credit for.

The series lasts six more issues. A few more of these spotlight issues, then a couple final issues for Jenny to come to terms with what she wants. Who she wants to be with. And what world she wants to live in.

Jenny does eventually invite her mom to Zot’s world to go for a ride in a flying car. To show her a little bit of magic.

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Personal asides.

I’d actually written this post in its entirety some weeks ago. Publication was delayed because I couldn’t find the darn comic. About half my comics are in storage half a world away, but Zot! should be with me. I was pretty sure I’d just taken this comic out to read or scan at some point and hadn’t put it back properly. It is a favorite. I have about 100 long boxes of comics with me, so I depend on comics being where they are supposed to be. For this comic, that should have been one of two spots. Either between issues 29 and 31 of Zot! or in a single box of “comics to be put away”. It was in neither of those two boxes. Which meant it was in the other 98… or somewhere else. I eventually found it easier to just buy a new copy online for $2. Though I’m sure there’s another copy lying around my apartment somewhere.

That’s the thrilling behind-the-scenes saga of how this went from being the 4th entry in my “reading great comics” series to the 5th.

Again, I find scanning hard. I made different settings decisions here than I had with Usagi Yojimbo. The drawing here has so much more detail that making the lines too black just muddled everything. Usagi’s lines are so clean, that nothing gets muddled no matter what. I ended up allowing the color of the page to come through in order to see all the details in the drawings and capture a softer feel.

Reading Great Comics

This is the fifth entry in our “reading great comics” series.

1. Sandman #19
2. Kurt Busiek’s Astro City #1
3. The Saga of the Swamp Thing #21
4. Usagi Yojimbo #93