What Was That All About? looks back at the 20-year whirlwind life of the Duncan family, the inhabitants of the popular, modern family cartoon Zits. What Was That All About? is the perfect celebration of Zits' twentieth anniversary! Always spot-on, sometimes chaotic, and often messy comic moments are immortalized by the true-to-life give and take between Jeremy and his often befuddled parents.Authors Jerry Scott and Jim Borgman have sifted through the highlights (and some lowlights! ) over the life of the strip and have created a unique behind-the-scenes, insightful view into the history of Zits. They have selected their all-time favorite cartoons to fill the collection along with special features, including stories about:• How they met in Sedona, Arizona, and came up with the crazy idea of creating Zits• The teenagers in their own lives• Choosing the title Zits• Strips that newspapers declined to publish, or words they censored, etc.• Creating a Zits Sunday strip• Sucks, bites, and blows: staking out territory on the comic page• Fish paste and other reasons our kids don't want to travel with us anymoreExcerpts from their sketchbooks will also be shown.This is the book every fan of Zits has ever wanted!  

 In their immensely popular comic strip Zits, Pulitzer Prize-winning artist Jim Borgman and writer Jerry Scott have succeeded in creating one of the most poignant, realistic, and funny portrayals of teenagers found in any medium today.Sixteen-year-old Jeremy Duncan is a high school freshman and an aspiring musician. He daydreams about the day when his band, Goat Cheese Pizza, records their first monster hit single and they all pile into his van for their cross-country, sold-out concert tour. Between naps, study hall, and band practice, Jeremy still manages to find time to be the star of the hugely popular comic strip, Zits.Jeremy is a good kid. He is intelligent and kind, yet he still has the attitude that one would expect from a teenager. His unpredictable mood swings and monosyllabic answers to his parents’ mild-mannered questions often leave them baffled and bemused.The creators, who are parents themselves, have a keen insight into the many physical and emotional changes that teens go through during adolescence, and they have the gift of addressing these common dilemmas with compassion and humor.

Zits is the perfect comic portrayal of life, with an eye-rolling teenager and perplexed but connected parents.

Sixteen-year-old Jeremy Duncan is a high school sophomore and an aspiring musician. He daydreams about the day when his band records its first monster hit single and he and his bandmates all pile into his van for their cross-country, sold-out concert tour. Between naps, study hall, and band practice, Jeremy still manages to find time to be the star of this hugely popular comic strip.

Jeremy is a good kid. He is intelligent and kind, yet he still has the attitude that one would expect from a teenager. His unpredictable mood swings and monosyllabic answers to his parents’ mild-mannered questions often leave them baffled and bemused.

Zits was created in 1997 by Pulitzer Prize– and Reuben Award–winning editorial cartoonist Jim Borgman and Reuben Award–winning cartoonist/writer Jerry Scott. The creators, who are parents themselves, have a keen insight into the many physical and emotional changes that teens go through during adolescence, and they have the gift of addressing these common dilemmas with compassion and humor.

In their immensely popular comic strip Zits, Pulitzer Prize-winning artist Jim Borgman and writer Jerry Scott have succeeded in creating one of the most poignant, realistic and funny portrayals of teenagers found in any medium today.

Lauded by The Los Angeles Times "as one of the freshest and most imaginative strips," and designated as Best Newspaper Comic Strip twice by the National Cartoonists Society, Jerry Scott and Jim Borgman's Zits offers shared experience and parenting salvation for the 80.5 million homes to both teen and parent in the United States.

Simultaneously, Zits artfully reminds readers what it's like to both be an adolescent and parent an adolescent. While fifteen-year-old son Jeremy is grappling with impending career choices and parental pearls of wisdom on topics ranging from driving to sex, parents Connie and Walt do their best to keep up with his latest trends, vocabulary words, and appetite cravings.

Compellingly presenting a full spectrum of teen and parent goings-on, Zits appears in more than 1,600 newspapers worldwide is read daily by more than 45 million fans.

An indispensible and entertaining manual for parents on the verge of having a teenager, by America’s favorite cartoon team.

In their award-winning comic strip Zits, artist Jim Borgman and writer Jerry Scott have succeeded in creating one of the most poignant, realistic, and funny portrayals of a teenager found in any medium today. Parents themselves, Borgman and Scott have learned a thing or two along the way in their creative and family lives. The result is A Zits Guide to Living with Your Teenager.

A combination of select Zits comic strips depicting the relationship between teenager Jeremy Duncan and his parents, Walt and Connie, and witty, knowing, and dead-on commentary from Borgman and Scott, A Zits Guide to Living with Your Teenager is an indispensible and entertaining manual for parents on the verge of having a teenager.

Zits has twice been honored with the award for Best Newspaper Comic Strip by the National Cartoonists Society and received the "Max and Moritz" award for Best International Comic Strip in 2000.

How do you guys do it? My sons both say you've got the teenage mind down pat. My wife and I know you've got the parent-of-a-teenager mind down pat. Did you live in my house or what?" -The Washington Post

More About Alternative Zits

In Zits, Jerry Scott and Jim Borgman sublimely manipulate the two seemingly disparate worlds of teenagedom and parenthood to create a strip that is equally enjoyed by teens and their parents. Twice honored as the Best Newspaper Comic Strip, Zits appears in more than 1,500 newspapers and entertains a fan base of more than 45 million.

Appealingly portraying the angst and insecurities associated with growing up, Alternative Zits: A Zits Treasury follows sixteen-year old Jeremy Duncan as his parents, Connie and Walt, masterfully guide him through life's everyday challenges. This collection features all strips from Are We Out of the Driveway Yet? and Rude, Crude, and Tattooed.

The Duncans remind us of how families are created, how they can drive us out the door one minute and drag us back in the next, offering laughter, love, and inspiration." -Cincinnati Enquirer

* Twice honored as the Best Newspaper Comic Strip, Zits appears in more than 1,100 newspapers and is read daily by more than 45 million fans.

When contemplating what to name their strip, Jerry Scott and Jim Borgman sought the insight of Charles Schulz, who told them that Zits was "the worst name for a comic strip since Peanuts." It makes perfect sense then that Zits has achieved Peanuts-like notoriety.

* Equally enjoyed by teens and their parental counterparts, Zits appealingly tackles teen issues with equal parts grace and wit. Parents Connie and Walt masterfully guide fifteen-year-old Jeremy Duncan through the pratfalls of teenagedom accompanied by his girlfriend Sara and best friends Hector and Pierce.

Appearing in nearly 1,400 newspapers today, Zits has been a runaway success on the funny pages since its July 1997 debut. Creators Jerry Scott and Jim Borgman have won praise from fans and fellow cartoonists alike for their gently accurate portrayal of the angst, concerns, and questions that arrive during adolescence.

Creators Scott and Borgman understand the plight and subtle hilarity of being a teenager and parenting a teenager, which is why in 1998 and 1999, Zits won the Best Newspaper Comic Strip Award by the National Cartoonists Society, and the Max and Moritz Award for Best International Comic Strip in 2000. Zits strikes a universal nerve.

Zits is one of only 18 comic strips throughout history to top the thousand-newspaper mark. It appears in nearly 1,400 newspapers across the country and around the world, and is beloved by fans and fellow cartoonists alike. Zits brilliantly confronts issues affecting teens and their families, providing humor and perspective to everyone.

This Zits collection, with strips that appeared in print from April 2005 to February 2006, delivers the strip's usual mix of knowing humor and insight.

Kirkman and Scott don't just have their fingers on the pulse of the modern middle-class family; they have a grip on its wrist like a mother pulling a three-year-old past a grocery store cookie aisle.

Tadpoles in the toilet, backseat border wars, emergency homemade diapers . . . welcome to another year in the life of the never-a-dull-moment McPherson family. While sister Zoe and brother Hammie's budding sibling rivalry reaches new heights (and volumes), baby Wren is making great strides of her own. With the advent of "the climbing phase" no coffee table, countertop, or bookshelf is too high.

For years, the team of Rick Kirkman and Jerry Scott have given readers a too-funny-to-be-true, too-real-not-to-be insider's view of the American dream. They get the details and dilemmas so right, in fact, that it's a wonder they haven't been indicted for domestic surveillance.

  "Let's name the baby Lexus! It's gender-neutral. . . . It's unique. . . . Plus, people will be really impressed! 'There go the MacPhersons,' they'll say, 'they have a Lexus! '"

  When Jerry Scott and Rick Kirkman put their heads together, comedy springs forth like a baby out of bath water. This cartooning duo delights readers with I Saw Elvis in My Ultrasound.

I Saw Elvis... documents the day-to-day challenges Wanda and Darryl MacPherson face as they juggle the demands of raising adorable Zoe with getting ready for Bundle of Joy No. 2. The older, and somewhat wiser couple think they've got this kid business under control, only to find a whole new set of parenting problems on their hands.

  Potty-training becomes "potty pleading," Wanda concludes that she's not just pregnant, she's "abdominally challenged," and Darryl admits that what he really sees in the ultrasound screen is . . . Elvis.

"Bottom line: Zits rocks."It's incredible to think that Zits was only launched in syndication in the summer of 1997. Since then, the strip's leading teenager, Jeremy Duncan, and his mom, dad, and assorted friends have become a part of the American fabric and, more important, a part of our own families. Who else but cocreators Jerry Scott and Jim Borgman could so quickly work this magic through the more than 1,200 newspapers that now carry Zits worldwide?

Now comes Thrashed, the 9th collection of this incredibly popular strip. All the usual suspects are here: Jeremy; his friends Hector, Sarah, and Pierce; and Jeremy's long-suffering mom and dad. The crew find themselves wrapped up in all the angst and anxiety that life can muster, from keeping the gas tank above "E" to understanding the meaning of life. Through it all, Zits maintains its focus on the adventurous-if-sometimes-pockmarked journey that teens take toward adulthood.

This Zits collection of the past year's daily and Sunday strips is perfect for both teenagers and those who share residences with them, or ever did. Its warm and sympathetic tone brings humor and insight, even though the terrain is often rocky.

Adolescence is a time of painful growth and unpredictable change, when kids come packaged in a jumble of baggy jeans, rolling eyeballs, and grunting communication. Cartoonists Jerry Scott and Jim Borgman have captured the humor of that challenging time with Zits, in which they chronicle the life and times of the typically exasperating yet ever lovable Jeremy Duncan.

In this first Zits treasury, faithful fans of Jeremy's world will get a glimpse behind the scenes with never-before-seen sketches and the stories behind the strips. Sunday cartoons appear in full-color, highlighting the strip's acclaimed drawing style.

Even though the teenage terrain is rocky, Zits is warm and sympathetic. "The highest compliment we hear from readers is, 'You must have a camera hidden in our house! '" says Borgman.