If it’s 100 pages, does it stop being a preview?
Well, do yourself a favor and click here to go to HarperCollins’ web site, where they have posted the first 100 pages of Scott McCloud’s black-and-white collection of Zot!
While McCloud has made himself famous for his books on Understanding Comics, Zot! was his experiment on putting all these latent ideas into practice. With art that smashes together Western craftsmanship with touches of Japanese style, Zot! was about an optimistic, charismatic sci-fi hero who would occasionally travel to our imperfect world to visit his sweetheart Jenny. Yet this wasn’t all about fighting: McCloud also took a deeply personal look with almost all the members of Zot’s supporting cast, exploring the trials and tribulations that come with young love and sexuality.
But why the freebie? Scott McCloud himself has the answer: “I remember when Understanding Comics was first published in 1993 and Kitchen Sink sent me to a trade show to promote it. We’d sent out mailings, we’d taken out ads, but the best promotion for the book we ever did was simply handing out a thousand copies to retailers. Covers sell comics. Ads sell comics. But nothing sells comics better than the comics themselves.”
While this book dates back from 1987-1991, it’s certainly a bright beacon of what comic book storytelling can be, so I would suggest you give that a check right now — you can thank HarperCollins later.
June 8th, 2009 at 2:16 pm
Well, 100 pages may be a bit more than a “preview”, but it sure as heck sold me on buying this book.
I had seen it a couple of times at Barnes and Noble and thought about it. I’d never read any of it though and was hesitant to pick it up, what with my finances being a bit tight right now.
After reading this “preview” though, I’m sold. I’ll be picking my copy up this evening on my way home from work.