Publisher’s Weekly reports that Scott McCloud‘s early work, Zot!, will be reprinted in a new collection next summer, launching at the 2008 San Diego Comic Con. Interestingly the 576 page collection will be in black and white, apparently at Scott’s request: “When I switched to black and white, the series really got up to speed. I was exploring character, and I thought I could do more with black and white; with tone and chiaroscuro. Black and white is so much more like picture-writing.”
It is interesting to me that this older work has been picked up not by a comics publisher looking for archive material for a reprint collection but by one of the planet’s largest multi-national books publishers and also that there is an inference that the black and white approach can be more accessible (Scott also remarks how black and white manga influenced his early comics development, even when he couldn’t read the language). Given the growing interest in manga mainstream publishers have been showing and the fact much of that is in black and white they may well have a point.
Wed, Sep 26, 2007
Comics and cartoons