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.

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.

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.

 "[Zits] is one of the most visually innovative comic strips to come along in years. Borgman's graphic pyrotechnics are the perfect complement to Scott's carefully designed layouts."—Brian Walker, The Comics Since 1945The world is full of issues but none so pressing as those faced by a teenager. For proof, look no further than Zits, the timely teenage-focused strip that now appears in more than 1,100 newspapers worldwide. This two-time recipient of the National Cartoonists Society's Award for Best Newspaper Comic Strip follows the life of 15-year-old Jeremy Duncan, a kid bursting with questions, concerns, hormones, and insecurities. Cast adrift between the worlds of peer and parent, Jeremy survives by clinging to his sense of humor . . . the universal flotation device of the teenage years.

  Creators Jerry Scott and Jim Borgman pull all of this eating, dating, driving, and parental angst and energy together in Road Trip! Zits Sketchbook #7. This hilarious collection contains the very popular series of strips that follows Jeremy and his best amigo, Hector, as they actually (okay, and accidentally) get to test-drive their van. Yes, that van on the cover.

From hormones to how-come-I’m-not-like-everyone-else questions and insecurities, Borgman and Scott continue to successfully tell teenage horror stories since the strips debut in newspapers in 1997. Readers and fans can find Zits in 1,600 newspapers worldwide, an achievement only 18 comic strips have ever earned.

Lauded by the Los Angeles Times "as one of the freshest and most imaginative comic strips" and designated as Best Newspaper Comic Strip twice by the National Cartoonists Society, Jerry Scott and Jim Borgman's Zits chronicles many of the scenes that play out under the rooftops of more than 80.5 million homes across the country.

Artfully exploring insecurities, societal pressures, and just plain teenage goofiness, Scott and Borgman contrast the experiences of adolescence and parenthood. Sixteen-year-old Jeremy Duncan is learning to navigate residential byways and high school hallways while the parentals, a.k.a. Connie and Walt Duncan, try to keep pace and find a little peace.

 The Los Angeles Times calls Zits "one of the freshest and most imaginative comic strips." The world of sixteen-year-old Jeremy Duncan revolves around his insatiable "growing boy" appetite, lip-locking with squeeze Sarah, keeping his jerry-rigged vehicle roadworthy, and playing with his band, Goat Cheese Pizza. Somewhere in the background, he's vaguely aware of some muted voices, constantly beseeching him to pick up his Matterhorn-sized clothes pile, to be home on time (so lame!), and to (God forbid!) communicate with them. The disembodied voices are those of Connie and Walt, his mostly patient, but sometimes frustrated to exploding, parents. In Zits, they portray a hilarious view of coping with a teenager and with being a teenager. Created in 1997 by Pulitzer Prize-winning editorial cartoonist Jim Borgman and Reuben Award-winning cartoonist/writer Jerry Scott, Zits appears in more than 1,600 newspapers worldwide in 45 countries and is translated into 15 different languages. The comic has an estimated daily readership of more than 200 million readers.