Zot! The Complete Black and White Collection: 1987-1991
By Scott McCloud
HarperCollins, July 2008, $24.95

There are those of us – only a few now, I bet – who keep hoping that Scott McCloud will finally get the comics-about-comics thing out of his system and go back to fictional comics. (1998’s [[[The New Adventures of Abraham Lincoln]]] is generally skipped over in these laments, as it is in all other discussions of McCloud’s career, including the one in this book.) Oh, sure, [[[Understanding Comics]]] was one of the great graphic novels of the early ‘90s, and a major roadmark towards the modern comics field, and [[[Reinventing Comics]]] and [[[Making Comics]]] have their strong points as well, but, we keep wondering, what about [[[Zot!]]]?

We were heartened when Kitchen Sink Press reprinted three-quarters of McCloud’s Zot! run in three nice trade paperbacks in 1997-98, and then disheartened again when KSP went under before finishing up with the fourth volume to collect “Earth Stories,” generally considered McCloud’s best stories. And since then, we’ve mostly just been waiting and hoping, living on crumbs like “Hearts and Minds” and McCloud’s other webcomics.

But now Zot! is back, in something like a definitive form, from one of those real big-time bookstore publishers that the comics field is so in awe of. HarperCollins has been McCloud’s trade publisher as far back as Understanding Comics, so their imprint on this book implies a lot about their commitment to comics, and to McCloud.

But maybe I need to back up a bit, for those of you who weren’t around for the days of Eclipse in the late ‘80s. Zot! was McCloud’s comics debut, starting with a ten-issue storyline in full color in 1984-85 and continuing with twenty-six more issues in black and white starting in 1987. Those color comics are now only available in the first, long-out-of-print, Kitchen Sink trade paperback collection of Zot! from ten years ago, though this book hints that they may be reprinted if Zot! 1987-1991 is successful enough. (And maybe then we’ll get Chuck Austen’s art from two “fill-in” issues from the time of McCloud’s wedding, plus all of Matt Feazell’s “Dimension 10½ “ back-up strips.)

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Like so many of the great cartoonists, Raymond Briggs operates almost in disguise, using his innocuous-appearing drawings and simpleton characters as a front while he delivers thoughtful commentary and a piercing wit.

The British pioneer of the graphic novel field (he was, at the very least, a contemporary of Will Eisner’s, though Briggs is too generally labeled a children’s book creator) offers up this sneaky blend of the adult and childish in the reprinting of [[[Gentleman Jim]]] (Drawn & Quarterly, $14.95).

The eponymous Jim is a bathroom cleaner with fantastic ambitions — in his mind. For years he’s been content to only dream of trying on a new career, and one day he finally decides to make those dreams real.

What follows is a seemingly childish series of adventures, as Jim attempts to enter unrealistic careers (a cowboy, a painter, a soldier) but is stymied at every stop.

Eventually he becomes dedicated on being a highwayman, stealing from the rich to benefit the poor. He buys fake weapons, creates a preposterous costume and brings home a pathetic donkey, then embarks on his misadventures.

Of course, this enterprise fails as well, which makes a simple enough little story. But what makes it so appreciable to a more mature audience — beyond Briggs’ delicate and beautifully composed art — is how he uses Jim as a foil to poke at the bureaucracies, laws and stuffiness of modern society that tamp down anyone daring to be odd.

Much as Charles Schulz and Richard Thompson instill children with adult sensibilities to great effect, Briggs does the reverse, making Jim both adult and childish, even giving him a baby’s broad face.

Like so many of Briggs’ characters, this allows Jim to be foolish and stupid but still endearing, a loveable bumbler who is deeply wise in his simplicity.