Product Description

Random Zits not-so-randomly combines the previous collections Road Trip! and Teenage Tales into one mega-volume. It includes popular story lines that include Jeremy and Hector fixing up their old van and take it for a clandestine joy ride, and Jeremy learning the value of tact on his girlfriend's bad hair days, selling random household items on eBay, surviving sudden radical growth spurts, and being coaxed into a fishing trip with his father, who seizes the opportunity to have "the talk."

Zits captures the nature of teenage boys with uncanny precision. In one series of strips, Jeremy's mom is alarmed when she finds a fist-size hole in the wall of his room. Pressed to explain it, he balks. When he finally describes what happened, it turns out that the hole wasn't made in a moment of teen hormonal rage. It was made in a moment of teen hormonal idiocy, when he used his mom's meat tenderizing mallet to swat a bug. Anyone who has spent much time around an adolescent boy will recognize this seemingly inexplicable behavior: intelligence and impulsiveness locked in constant battle. This is the natural state of the teen male, and it's portrayed exquisitely in Zits.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #151367 in Books
• Published on: 2004-09-01
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 248 pages

About the Author
Zits writer Jerry Scott also is co-creator of the award-winning strip Baby Blues. He won the National Cartoonists Society's Reuben Award in 2001 for his work on both strips. He lives in Malibu, Calif. Zits artist Jim Borgman won the 1991 Pulitzer Prize for editorial cartooning and the Reuben Award in 1993. Jim lives in Cincinnati, Ohio, where he is the editorial cartoonist for the Cincinnati Enquirer.

Customer Reviews

Totally relevant to everyone
If you're a parent, this book is for you. This book is going to help you find out what your teenager is thinking, and how they think.

If you're a teenager, this jokes in the strips strike so close to home it's impossible not to laugh. For example, having high school fantasy about girls, or guys, or teachers!

I think every teenager and parents can relate to Zits. It's almost like a documentary, told in panels, to the point of déjà vu.

I also love the art drawn by Jim Borgman as well.

I've all series of Zits treasuries, and will buy if there are more in the future.

This particular book contains comics from the two individual books, Zits Unzipped and Busted!.

Visit my Amazon profile for other reviews.

Random boy
What is it like to be a fifteen-year-old boy? If "Random Zits," the anthology of the sixth and seventh "Zits" books, is any indication, then it's not exactly fun and games.

Jim Borgman and Jerry Scott (of "Baby Blues") continue to chronicle teenage angst, and the angst that comes with raising a teenager, as Jeremy continues to struggle with high school, romance, and the crippling embarrassment that comes with having parents.

In this treasury, Jeremy encounters new problems: his mother's birthday and only twenty-five bucks to buy a present with, time on the beach with his pals, an illegal jaunt with Hector in their run-down van, reading "Moby Dick," and a forced family vacation where he spends the whole time playing video games.

On the home front, Jeremy also has to deal with the hopelessly uncool parents he's stuck with: clashes with his parents on dating, curfews, laundry, and surfing on the ironing board. On the other side is Walt and Connie, who try to interact and communicate with a son who acts in strange and inexplicable ways (such as storing the relish on his computer).

And the supporting characters have a few life changes as well. Hector is still with his militant vegetarian girlfriend, while "perforated American" Pierce finds his soulmate and performs "decorative" orthodontia on himself. And the Posse (three superficial airheads) finally get taken to task for their weird manner of speech.

"Zits" shows no signs of wearing out its welcome in this latest treasury; Scott and Borgman perfectly capture the angst of a teenager who has no real right to angst. But they don't just have contrived teenagerhood, but also his confused parents, weird friends, and perpetual struggle to be an adult, but still burdened with the mind of a kid.

And they perfectly capture the surreality that can come with different generations, such as Walt wailing, "Who ordered a pizza at 7 am?", only to have Jeremy say, "Ahhh! Breakfast!" But they also include the sweeter side, with Connie bringing back an old kitchen rug, because of Jeremy's fond childhood memories of it.

Borgman and Scott's strip is kind of reminiscent of "Calvin and Hobbes." Not just because of the blonde protagonist with an active imagination, with a deadpan pall, but the funny imagery. When Jeremy's excuses "don't hold water," we see water dribbling out of his speech bubbles.

Though Jeremy should by now be in his early twenties, the perpetual fifteen-year-old slogs through more of the trials of teenhood in "Random Zits." Funny, surreal and very true to life.