Day 705 of 365 More.

Usually on Wednesday nights I plug Cosmic Hellcats, because new ones come out every Monday and Thursday. But today something else important happened that made me want to talk about it and not even mention the killer new episode of Cosmic Hellcats that I just posted at midnight.

Today, after 17 long years of waiting, Zot! came out in compiled trade paperback form.

In a lot of ways Zot! is probably responsible for Cosmic Hellcats. Zot! was written by Scott McCloud who some of you might remember I met a couple years ago when I saw him speak.

Anyway, Scott wrote the well received, but relatively unknown indy comic, Zot! After Zot was cancelled, he went on to write a well known book called Understanding Comics, which is one of the most influential books in the medium (and one every artist, comic book or no, should read). He also wrote two sequels and ended up becoming something of an authority on the changing nature of the industry and an advocate of webcomics. Understanding Comics renewed my childhood desire to one day publish a comic of my own. That desire grew and eventally became Cosmic Hellcats.

At the talk I saw Scott speak at, everyone asked him tons of questions about his well known texts. But I was the crazy guy in the back who raised his hand to ask when the 4th volume of Zot! would be collected into a trade paperback volume. You see, the first three volumes had been collected soon after Zot! ceased publication, but the company who published those books went out of business before the final volume ever came out.

Scott, seemed amused and answered me something like "I swear, before I die." Well, I sincerely hope Scott isn’t planning on dying tomorrow. Because that would be a tragedy. But if he did, I will be happy to know that he did manage to keep his promise to me.

So for that, I thank you, Scott. And I thank you for writing Understanding, and Reinventing Comics and Making Comics and inspiring the seven year old boy inside of me to follow his dream.

Of course Scott doesn’t read this, but maybe one day he will. After all he did eventually get to see my initial pic about him. So, If you ever do read this Scott, thank you. Without you there would be no Cosmic Hellcats, and I wouldn’t even have something to not pimp here.

365 days