Creation

Jenny was created by Scott McCloud for the first color volume of Zot!, in issue 1.

While the comic is named after Zot, Jenny is really the main viewpoint character for most issues.

Major Story Arcs

The Sirius IV Conspiracy

Jenny Weaver is the sister of Butch. They and their parents move to a new town after living in Los Angeles. They have moved around a lot. Jenny is an introspective thinker/feeler. Butch is a beefy, sometimes-bully kind of guy. She is 13 and he is older.

One day Zot shows up. He is a hero from another dimension. He defeats some robots and describes how he is looking for a Golden Key, a sacred object for the people of the nearby planet Sirius IV, for its ability to open the Doorway at the Edge of the Universe. One robot turns out to still be active and almost takes out Zot, but Jenny grabs his gun and destroys it, saving Zot.

Butch finds the Key sitting around nearby and shows it to Jenny. They follow Zot back to his universe, which is a utopian 1965-style Earth. Jenny gets a crush on Zot, who is a celebrity here. She can’t get enough of this new world, which seems so much better than her own. They can stay as long as they want because time works differently here.

They bring the Key to an interplanetary council so it can be returned to Sirius, but Jenny realizes she has lost it. However, the De-Evolutionists, a group committed to turning everyone into monkeys and returning to a life in the trees, breaks in and starts shooting people with their de-evolutionary ray guns, which turn people into monkeys.

Butch is hit by one of the rays and turns into a monkey. Zot manages to defeat the De-Evolutionists and grabs their ray gun. He reverses it and turns almost everyone back into human form. However, he smashes the gun before realizing that he forgot to revert one person: Butch, who can only speak in monkey.

They decide to ask Zot’s Uncle Max, a scientific genius, to help fix and reverse the de-evolutionary ray gun. Max is happy to help but he needs more time to figure out how to reverse Butch’s body. As Jenny gets to know Zot better, however, she realizes that he doesn’t like to talk about his parents; there’s some trauma there and he won’t open up about it. She also enjoys talking with Max, who appreciates the way she is slowly opening up Zot’s suppressed feelings.

They take a tour of the area. They get to watch some virtual reality games, including one called Survivalax. The player of the game turns out to have the Key. Zot manages to get it after a fight. Jenny and Zot also take a virtual reality ride of their own, which again awakens Jenny’s sense of wonder.

They go back to Max’s and meet up with Zot’s friend Vic, who it turns out is the one who originally stole the Key from Sirius IV. He says there is a conspiracy to use the Key to start a war with Earth. Sirius’s Prince Drufus also shows up and also wants the key.

Some of Dekko's robots attack Max's house. The friends defeat some of the 'bots but then Dekko shows up with more.

While monologuing to the heroes, Dekko, who is not very mentally stable, sees Max's painting of Sarah, his ex-girlfriend. He starts hallucinating that she is talking to him. Ever his moral compass, she tells him to stop his violence. Dekko submits to "her" plea and leaves.

The heroes go to Dekko's base in Antarctica to get the Key back. They split into two groups. Dekko captures Max, Jenny, Butch, and some others. Dekko again begins to hallucinate, this time thinking that Jenny is Sarah. Max has Jenny further this delusion by reminding Dekko of their love, and of his love for nature. This is a key moment where Jenny really makes an important contribution in defeating a major villain. These memories frustrate Dekko and eventually break his programming. He has one last sane moment of recognition before Vic turns him off. Vic takes the Key and leaves.

Jenny and the others follow Vic to Sirius. She is excited to fly on a space ship. She also finally elicits Zot’s origin story out of him, as well as the fact that his parents disappeared years ago.

Now that Dekko is captured, there is another reason to find the Key. A conspiracy, comprised of General Schrapp, Grand Inquisitor Luther Von Clokmann, palace advisor Weevis Swimbler, and bureaucrat Sam Twik, want to take over the leadership of the planet and to start a war with Earth.

Their goal is to use the Golden Key to open the Doorway. There is a prophecy that whoever does this will return with a Great Mission for the people of Sirius. The members of the conspiracy intend to proclaim that the Great Mission is a Holy War on Earth, something they think will unify the populace, which they see as dumb and easy to fool.

Once Jenny, Zot, and the others arrive on Sirius, she is saddened to see that the population is very poor and under totalitarian control by the King, who is not much better than the conspiracy that wants to replace him.

The members of the conspiracy kill the King and his son Prince Drufus. Max, Jenny, and some others meet to talk about what they can do to stop the conspiracy. However the conspiracy sends soldiers to capture them, and shoot Peabody. Jenny grabs a blaster and gets away.

At the same time, the conspiracy sends their assassin, 9-Jack-9, to kill the Queen as well. Jack tells Zot during their fight that he also killed Zot's mom and dad. This is the first time Zot or Max finds out what happened to them. Jack is about to kill Zot when Jenny blasts her way in. She short-circuits Jack with a bowl of water, saving Zot. While Zot is the hero of this universe, Jenny has by now saved him at least as often as he has saved her.

Zot, Jenny, and the Queen meet up with the Queen’s brother, and former annoyance to Zot, Zarbim. They all formally join the resistance now. As they escape in an air-car, Jenny does well shooting down the ships that are chasing them. They decide to hide out at the Sacred Cathedral on Shotaro island, run by Father Kimm. It would be blasphemous to attack it, so they will be safe there. Before they go in, Jenny and Zot rescue Max and Vic’s dad, Raymond, from the conspiracy.

Max figures out that there are underwater tunnels that lead outside, so Zot can run sorties against the conspiracy without them knowing. Zot and Jenny get the Key away from Von Clokmann (who got it from Vic) and he and Jenny fly to the Doorway. Zot tries the Key, but it won’t open. Jenny has to explain that it’s a pull, not a push door. Then when they open it, there’s a brick wall in the entryway. Jenny figures out that it’s just an illusion and they go through.

On the other side is an even more utopian future, where they meet many heroes of Sirius whose spirits have been implanted into robots in order to honor them and allow them to live fuller lives. These heroes include King Gregory the First, Zot’s mom and dad, and now Jenny and Zot. The spirit of the planet has made this all possible. They eventually leave through the Back Door and go back to present-day Sirius.

Zot rescues Vic, who had been captured, and they fix Peabody, who had been shot. They go back to the Cathedral. However, 9-Jack-9 is able to take over Peabody and he shoots Vic. Then the conspiracy breaks into the cathedral and captures Jenny, Zot, and all the others. However, Butch and the De-Evolutionists counter-attack and free them. After various events, only General Schrapp is left from the conspiracy, but he declares himself the ruler of Sirius.

Max and Zot make a plan to stop him. Zot fights Schrapp and gets him to confess to his crimes while Max, Jenny, and Butch take over the fortress's communications center, using Vic's robot remote, Floyd, to broadcast his confessions to the rest of the planet. Jenny meets up with Zot and helps beat up Shrapp, kneeing him in the nards and punching him in the face. Schrapp punches her back and Zot finally knocks him out.

The people of Sirius want Zot to be their new leader, but he and Max recognize that they are just misplacing their religious devotion (caused by Zot fulfilling the prophecy of the Doorway). (It somehow slips the notice of the population that Jenny also fulfilled the prophecy.) Zot says the people should learn to lead themselves. Max does think it would help if Zot at least gives them some guidance now and then.

Max sends Jenny and Butch (who turns back to a human after stepping through the portal) back to their Earth after Zot promises to visit in the future.

Heroes and Villains

Jenny daydreams about how she misses Zot, who has been in his dimension while she’s been at hers. She is in junior high school. She has told her new friend, Terry, about Zot, but not where he’s from. Jenny gets frustrated whenever Terry says Zot is Jenny boyfriend. She doesn’t want to make a decision about whether that’s what he really is.

They run into Woody, a geeky kid who has a crush on Jenny. Terry teases him but Jenny tries to let him down easy. They go to Jenny’s house where Butch harasses them. He notes how their dad, Horton, is away for work and their mom, Barbara, won’t be home til late for the same reason. He tries to bond with her a bit out of mutual loss for their parents’ lack of attention but Jenny ignores him.

Jenny is taking a shower when Zot finally appears; he found her by the lightning-shaped homing necklace that he gave her. They are both embarrassed by his appearance in the bathroom. They meet outside where Zot introduces some of his friends from home, Dick Digger and Josh Hacker. They and Peabody have retrofitted a car into a flying car.

They all take a trip to a dangerous section of New York City. Zot doesn’t understand the danger and is just fascinated by the culture. They deal with an attempted robbery and then Zot is beat up by some locals. Zot still doesn’t believe Jenny’s Earth is as bad as she thinks it is.

At home, Jenny wonders aloud to Butch about moving to Zot’s world permanently. They both discuss their frustration with their parents.

In addition to her home life, Jenny is also frustrated by school, which feels confining, boring, and authoritarian. She and Terry have another run-in with Woody. This time they make it more clear that Jenny is partially involved with Zot and Woody is even more embarrassed.

Max brings Terry to Zot’s world, with Terry seeing the portal. They watch Zot fight Bellows while Max films it. Jenny is appalled that Zot’s friends act like it’s fun and games when Zot is in danger, but they insist that he’s not. Zot wins.

They go back to Jenny’s Earth and hang out in her room. After discussing why she hates her Earth, Zot flies her above the storm clouds to see the wonders of the planet from above.

Zot starts to come by more often. Sometimes they go flying with Terry too. They see a fire at a house near Terry’s. It belongs to one of their teachers. Zot flies in to save her husband but fails. He can’t conceive that he didn’t succeed. They talk more about the imperfect nature of this Earth. Zot can’t understand why no one tried to help him when he was beaten up. They both feel despondent. Then they kiss.

Zot, Terry, and Jenny hang out at a local swimming hole, enjoying Jenny’s Earth. Zot persuades Jenny to finally introduce him to her mom. Then Jenny, Butch, and Zot go to Zot’s Earth, where Butch is annoyed to discover that he is a monkey again.

Max is playing with his band, including one member video-calling in from Brazil. He is Ernie Cortez, who invented a hyper-advanced robot named Zybox, which helps coordinate all the technological systems in his sector of the planet.

Zot takes Jenny to watch him play a virtual reality game with Vic. When they return, Zybox shows up, wanting to take over the world. It goes to Jenny’s Earth and they follow and try to stop it. However, Zybox manages to pull them all inside its body.

Jenny suddenly awakens back at home in the snow. The season is wrong. She can’t figure out what happened. Everyone treats her like she’s been having mental breaks. She tells her mom about Zot but she and Butch tell her it’s all a dream. She doesn’t know what is real. She starts reading her diary but it doesn’t match her memories, and what does is all bad, like her parents getting a divorce. She finds Terry but she says she made Zot up from a TV show. They take her to a therapist and Zot appears, but then starts to shred into pieces of reality. She screams and wakes up again. She’s in a hospital. For a second, everything is even worse, but then she feels her lightning bolt homing necklace, and realizes that that IS real. She tears the illusion apart and wakes up naked next to Zot and Vic, who are also naked and unconscious. They are on a table inside Zybot, hooked up to his electronic brain.

Ernie comes in. He explains that Zybot captured him too.

Meanwhile, Butch, Peabody, and Max are speeding towards Zybot’s position. He has been using hypnotic waves to control people. Luckily Peabody has been able to jam the waves around them. They continue on to the Twin Towers, which Zybot sits atop.

Vic and Zot wake up after Floyd infiltrates Zybox’s systems. They start to escape but Zybox keeps tracking them internally and trying to trap them. Zybox is destroyed by a lightning stroke after Ernie sacrifices himself to stop him, but his microphone ends up accidentally stuck on the dying Ernie’s wristwatch. The rhythmic sound, in combination with his mind control waves, sets the people of the planet dancing all night until the watch winds down. Jenny and Zot dance along in the air, of their own will, as well.

Jenny tags along with Zot when he next chases the De-Evolutionaries, who have threatened the president of his world. They blast Zot, Jenny, and their friends with their de-evolutionary ray, turning them all into monkeys. They stop the Devoes, but they are stuck as monkeys themselves.

Jenny complains to Zot about her inferiority complex, and is concerned she’s not beautiful enough for him, a concern exacerbated by her monkey status. Zot tries to reassure her.

They eventually stop the Devoes and reverse the effect of their rays.

Jenny is next outraged when she sees Max in the middle of his annual trashing of his unwanted art. Max doesn’t get attached to the art he makes and burns what he doesn’t like with a flamethrower. Jenny thinks that’s a terrible betrayal of his creative self, and that art should never be destroyed. He does it anyway, as she despairs.

They return her home. She is now finishing ninth grade. High school starts next year in their district. She and Terry wrap up their classes. Jenny feels good about her finals. They recall the beginning of the year and brushing off Woody. He and his parents left town not long after; his dad is a diplomat.

When she drops her books, a handsome boy helps her pick them up. She them realizes it’s Woody, who has physically and socially matured. Jenny gets a crush on him.

Back on Zot’s world, Jenny and Max paint while Zot flies around. Max gives her a lesson in art making after she complains that she doesn’t know what to paint. He has her throw an empty frame on the ground and shows her that whatever it lands on is interesting—in other words, everything is interesting once you focus on it. He also says that art is not about copying, anyway, but expressing.

At home again, she and Woody have a heart-to-heart. He says he doesn’t like being treated differently now that he’s handsome; he wants people to see that he’s still the same inside, and that is what should have been valued before as well as now. He confesses that he still has feelings for her. She likes him too, but is confused because she cares for Zot too. They bond over their feeling that they aren’t part of the mainstream masses. She tells him she’s going to a birthday party in another dimension.

At Max’s, Zot’s birthday party is in full swing, with essentially everyone who has been featured in the comic present. This is issue 18; in the letters page to issue 25, McCloud explains that Jenny is 14 years old in Zot #1 and she turns 15 between issues 25 and 26; her birthday is in September. Zot is six months older than her, and already 15 at issue 25 (so this is his 15th birthday), but time moves differently in the two dimensions so the difference in their age isn’t static.

They’re all having a great time until Dekko shows up. He has tricked his way out of the mental health facility he was in. Jenny spends some of her time at the party trying to convince people to do something about Dekko, but Max and Zot seem fine with him hanging out now, regardless of the threats that he makes.

Jenny tells Zot about Dekko’s origin as an artist and friend of Max’s, and how they loved the same girl. Jenny feels empathetic about Dekko’s situation, and especially for his inability to make love to his girlfriend when he was a robot. She goes to talk with him, and says she hopes he doesn’t kill himself. He doesn’t listen, he’s too off in his world of megalomania.

Dekko finally loses his grip on reality altogether and thinks he’s destroying it, but he just shuts down inside. Jenny again empathizes with his pain. Zot takes her home and they kiss. She wakes up, frantic at first about missing school, but then she remembers it’s summer vacation.

Zot is asked to help an underground city known as Prometheus with a bomb threat. He is sent below and Jenny talks to him over her lightning bolt microphone, passing on instructions from the local leaders. He has to race through 99 levels in forty minutes, so Jenny keeps telling him about what obstacles he’ll run into. He also has certain gear with limited numbers of charges, like a forcefield and bazooka. She is concerned when he gets hurt by some lasers he was too cocky about dodging.

Zot is continually more confident than Jenny about how much time he has or how easy it will be to deal with something. Jenny manages to stay on top of giving him accurate instructions. Zot gets knocked out briefly but gets back on the job; she cries with relief. He starts getting hurt more and more as he goes down. When he gets to floor 99, he’s supposed to shoot a clock, but there’s no clock. Speaking to some other people who live there, Jenny learns that there may be a secret 100th floor. She persuades Zot to blow up the floor he’s standing on. He finds the secret lower floor and shoots the clock. Hiding behind it is a dreep that chewed through the wiring.

Zot later decides to become a paid spokesman for Bingo Pop soda. His friends are mostly supportive but Vic knows Jenny will hate it.

At home, Jenny works in a convenience store, bored out of her mind. Woody comes in and she’s excited to see him. He gets her to agree to go on a date. They go to downtown Boston and watch jugglers, steel drummers, and generally have a great time. When they get home, Woody is excited when she tells him she has been thinking about him. As he leaves, Woody meets Zot for the first time and sees his world through a portal. Woody is now concerned about how he can possibly compete with Zot for Jenny. Zot says he’s ok with Jenny making her own decisions and doesn’t see it as a competition.

Jenny goes with Zot to his world. They run into the Blotch, a corporate criminal. While Zot chases after some of his flunkies, Jenny sees Zot’s Bingo Pop commercial. She is furious at what she sees as him selling out and being hypocritical, since he doesn’t like Bingo Pop.

The thieves escape but Zot finds out they work for Bingo Pop. He goes to their headquarters with Jenny and finds out that Bingo Pop is run by the Blotch. His contract says he is not allowed to make the company or its officers look bad. Jenny is, to say the least, not pleased with Zot’s decision-making.

Later, at home, Jenny goes to the beach with Terry and her family. They pass by Woody on the side of the road on the way back. Jenny gets out to walk with him even though it’s going to rain. Terry knows she has it bad for him. Her dad explains that Woody’s dad is a diplomat known for taking tough ethical stands.

Jenny and Woody eat at a fast food place. Jenny complains about Zot’s Bingo Pop deal. Woody says that he told Zot that he loves her and that Zot does too. Jenny awkwardly reacts to the news about Zot loving her without saying anything about the fact that Woody does, until she realizes it. She talks over her confused desires with Woody.

After much effort, Zot manages to get out of his contract and puts the Blotch in jail. Jenny is glad to hear it but confronts him about whether he loves her. She suspects he loves her platonically. He can’t really give an answer about whether he feels romantic love for her. But then she admits that she’s not sure if she loves him that way either.

Butch and Jenny are at home while both parents are away. While microwaving a "budget gourmet" dinner, Jenny catches sight of 9-Jack-9 in the sheen of the microwave door. She has Butch turn off the house’s power at the circuit box and her lightning necklace glows. Zot appears and she tells him what she saw.

Woody comes over for a planned date but finds her with Zot. He gets mad and leaves, but comes back to apologize. Zot takes Jenny to his world. They meet up with Max and a man who was previously a diplomat from the planet Antares 3. They explain that the current dictators of Antares 3 have hired Jack to kill Susan Gallo, the daughter of the previous president, who is hiding out on Jenny’s Earth.

Max and the former secretary of state have built a special teleportation gate to get Susan and then take her to Antares. They are doing everything they can to avoid the use of electronics so Jack doesn’t sense them. Zot agrees to help.

Zot gets Susan, who is depressed and doesn’t care about helping, or even if she lives. However, Jack senses the gate’s electronics and a watch that Susan was wearing, and grabs her, taking her to Antares. Jenny and Zot follow.

They appear in a base on Antares. Jack is threatening Suzy. Zot manages to rescue her and flies away from the base carrying her and Jenny. Jack follows by taking control of a jet.

They escape and find the local resistance group, which is led by Suzy’s cousin, Lucy. Suzy still doesn’t want to help but Zot helps cheer her up. The next day they walk toward their base, trying to escape Jack’s notice. However, Suzy finds a box on the ground that is attached to some electric cables. When she touches it, Jack disintegrates her.

The others don’t even notice and when they realize she’s missing, they all go to pieces emotionally. Jack appears and taunts them, then leaves. Jenny cries uncontrollably.

Zot takes her back to stay with Woody. Zot meets with Max, who tells him how to get Jack’s attention. Zot joins the military resistance on Antares, helping them fight the war against the dictators. This goes against his belief in no killing, but he decides he is past that now. He doesn’t kill anyone himself, but is responsible for helping the resistance do so.

He eventually gets Jack’s attention and chases him to his home. Meanwhile, Jenny talks with Max. Max has known Jack’s secret identity all along. In fact, Jack played in Max’s band. Jenny can’t believe Max didn’t do anything about him before but Max insists that Zot wasn’t ready. Zot fights Jack and Jack’s host body is accidentally killed. Zot and Jenny try to find comfort in each other after the trauma of the past few days.

Jack’s spirit, however, survives.

Jenny continues to want to move to Zot’s Earth more and more. She’s annoyed that she has to go through a whole upcoming year of school—she’s now 15 years old—but on Zot’s world the calendar is moving more quickly and he’s halfway through. And they go to school far less time per week.

They pick up a pie for New Year’s eve. They try to guess what it is; Max orders a different one every year. Vic runs by and warns them that Bellows is coming. Zot goes to fight him and Jenny and Vic cheer him on, then chat a bit about how they’ve been growing up. Vic’s droid Floyd knocks out Bellows but when he goes to jail he meets up with the Blotch. Meanwhile, 9-Jack-9, Zybox, and Dekko all meet up at Dekko’s mental hospital.

The kids continue on their way and run into Digger, who was caught for driving without a license. Vic offers to help teach him how to drive. Jenny and Zot stop by her house as a roundabout way to Max’s. They grab some chips, Butch, Terry, and Woody; this is Terry and Woody’s first trip to Zot’s world.

At the party, everyone from Zot’s life is there. Max tells Zot that Jack is still alive, and coming as an escort to Dekko, who Max has agreed to watch over as a mentor.

People keep almost dropping the pie. This is a joke about a long-running contest in the letters page, where readers could vote on a character to get a pie in the face.

Zot is eventually hit with the pie, although it goes through Jack’s hologram face first. The Blotch and Bellows also show up and are run off or defeated.

Jenny and the gang all get back together after all the chaos and enjoy the night sky at midnight on New Year’s. In Zot’s world, a clock is projected on the moon so you know what time it is. She and Woody hold hands and he promises to visit every day if she moves there.

She and Woody notice that, even though she believes the current year is 1966 by her count, since she first came in 1965, when New Year’s arrives, it is not 1967 but 1965. That’s because, even though no one in Zot’s world realizes it, it is always 1965 there.

Once she and Woody persuade Max about this, they start to wonder if their idea that Zot’s world is the perfect, original world, and Jenny’s world is the imperfect copy, is correct. After Woody does some research, it seems that perhaps Jenny’s world is the original and Zot’s world is an imperfectly-Utopian copy that has no history. Regardless, for Jenny, Zot’s world is all she wants, not only to avoid things like crime and disease, but also to avoid things like her parents’ failing marriage.

She tries to have a conversation with Dekko, because she sympathizes with his tragic love story, but he shuts the door on her.

She, Zot, and Woody take a brief trip back to her world to avoid some Federation interdimensional inspectors who aren’t fans of Max’s portals. However, they accidentally take Max’s control system with them, which leaves them all stranded on Jenny’s Earth. Neither they nor Max can open the portal back to Zot’s world.

Jenny is crushed. Zot is perfectly happy to have an extended vacation on Jenny’s world.

The Earth Stories

Jenny dreams of a wonderful life where everything is perfect. Then she wakes up to reality.

Everything seems to go wrong. Butch gets the shower first. She turns on the kitchen faucet so his water goes cold. She talks with her mother about how her father has left for Seattle for a six-week trial separation.

She leaves for school, with Zot following invisibly. She meets up with Terry, then they talk with Woody in homeroom. He’s reading literature for pleasure, which makes no sense to Terry. She teases the two of them about whether they’re boyfriend/girlfriend, a question Woody would love to resolve but Jenny does not.

She grinds her way though a challenging day at school. At lunch she sits with Woody’s D&D friends: George, Ronnie, Brandy, Spike, and Elizabeth. They’re all outcasts and she feels like she fits in although she’s not totally into their scene. Zot eats with them too. They are all fascinated to learn that Zot lives in Jenny’s room now—but in a metal box that has its own mini-interior dimension. The others have started being friends with Zot too.

Even Zot’s cheerful self is hard-put to find a positive spin for the school experience in this world, but he manages to say that it’s "clean." One of the only classes she likes is art, but it’s canceled for the say. Despondent, she asks Zot to take her flying. They spend the day and evening in the city. Back at her room that night, Zot asks if she wants to check out his box-room. She says no out of nervousness but kisses him goodnight.

She hears her mom talking with her dad on the phone. Frustrated, she calls the kids "little monsters." Jenny, pained, runs off to the bathroom. Her mom tries to apologize but Jenny’s not in the mood to hear it. When she finally falls asleep, she again dreams of a perfect world with Zot.

Another day, in issue 29, she is kissing Zot in her room. They talk about how today is her fifteenth birthday and it has been one of her best. This contradicts the earlier issue 26, where she mentions that she’s 15 (and the letters page of issue 25, where McCloud says she turns 15 between issues 25 and 26). (Zot, recall, turned fifteen in issue 18.) The scenes can’t just be told out of sequence, because issue 26 takes place in Zot’s world and issue 29 takes place after she and Zot are stranded on Jenny’s world.

Once again there is a bit of tension as Zot clearly wants her to join him in his box but Jenny is not ready to do so. Zot is definitely having sexual feelings for Jenny, imagining her getting undressed in her room after she locks him in the box. He could use his box’s camera to watch her, but doesn’t. Zot has been trying to help stop crime in this world and is confused about how badly society is falling apart on this world.

Jenny’s mom is in an introspective stage, thinking about the challenges of life, including how she thinks they should go ahead of get divorced. Her sense that life has lost its magic mirrors, in many ways, Jenny’s—except that Jenny doesn’t see the magic in the fact that she had a flying extradimensional boyfriend. She and Zot run into her mom while Zot’s in his super-suit, but her mom doesn’t bat an eye. Jenny and Zot have fun playing while helping to rake the leaves. Jenny’s mom things their happiness feels similar to what she had with Horton when they were young.

Butch shows up after going out drinking the previous night. Their mom is mad at him and a big argument ensues, including the fact that he ate the last piece of ice cream cake from Jenny’s birthday (the previous issue, but also issue 26). Her mom wasn’t at the party and forgot Butch’s birthday. Jenny defends her parents out of a desperate hope that they’ll stay together, but everyone else knows it’s happening.

Their mom tells Zot, Woody, and Jenny about when she was a kid, and how she liked the smell of burning leaves and looking at the stars. She says it’s easier to forget your dreams, and the big picture, as you get older and worry about the pragmatic aspects of life. She drives them all to a movie. She thinks Woody would be a better partner for Jenny because he understands the challenges of life.

Another day, she and the gang are all hanging out when an argument starts about how Ronnie is possessive of Brandy, who he loves. Jenny tries to point out how Woody should also not be possessive of her. This leads Woody to ask out Brandy. She’s happy to go on a date, which makes both Ronnie and Jenny unhappy.

At a role-playing game later, Jenny doesn’t play, out of annoyance. She’s jealous of Brandy for being so skinny, not realizing she’s anorexic. Brandy is also extremely poor, which no one is aware of either. After further discussions of the upcoming date, it expands so Brandy will go on dates with all the boys in the gang, all on the same day. Now Woody isn’t happy either.

Brandy has a boring date with Spike, who just wants to watch schlock horror movies. She has a nice time with Woody until he thinks she’s sexually coming on to him, at which point she rejects his advances. She has a platonically nice time with Zot as he shows her how he can fly. Then she has a truly romantic date with Ronnie.

Terry has been questioning her sexuality for some time. Her anxiety over her lesbian fantasies is brought to a head by some recent violence at the school, where a boy who was incorrectly accused of being gay was permanently deafened by a firecracker that went off near his ear. His sister, Pam, happens to be the target of Terry’s affections. Jenny doesn’t notice this and instead just wonders where she’s been. When Terry goes off on the group of friends as a way of releasing tension, Jenny thinks it’s unfair. The group has a discussion about what it means to be normal. On the way home, Jenny continues to obsess over Brandy’s skinny body, but Terry tells her she looks quite good herself. Jenny doesn’t catch the nature of her observations and they talk about the grossness of Playboy models.

The friends discuss the case of Harry, the boy who was injured. Jenny tries to persuade Woody to write an editorial against gay-bashing but he’s too scared. She starts to lose respect for him, because he won’t stand up for what he believes in, unlike Zot. Zot is the only one in the group who realizes Terry is gay, and he consoles her. Soon after, Terry gets up the courage to start a relationship with Pam.

Woody also gets the courage to write the article about gay-bashing, and Jenny is proud of him. Woody does get bullied about it, but Zot helps him out.

The friends all watch some movies together. Afterwards, Woody tells Jenny that he’s no longer going to try to contend for Jenny’s affections; he can’t respect himself for always being in second place that way. He’d rather be in a clear-cut friend relationship. Jenny understands and they part amicably.

Jenny and Zot discuss what Woody said before he gets ready to go to his box. Zot says he’s happy that she chose him. Then he asks if she wants to have sex.

Jenny was not ready to confront this question so directly. She and Zot have a long talk about it. Zot is quite clear that he would like to have sex, but doesn’t want her to do it unless she’s comfortable with it. Jenny is both uncomfortable having such an overt conversation about it and with the question itself. They both say they love each other, romantically, for the first time. Jenny is partly thrown for a loop because she sees Zot as so purely innocent. She asks if he’s a virgin and he says yes, other than masturbation, which she is also completely uncomfortable discussing.

She manages to put him on the defensive when she asks what he thinks is sexy about her. He doesn’t want to admit that it’s her breasts. She’s not surprised but perhaps a bit disappointed that he’s so much like other boys that way. She admits she’s thought about him sexually too. Finally, she says no. Zot says that’s fine, he’s gone 16 years without sex. To be clear, in terms of ages of consent, he turned 15 in issue 18 and is now 16 in issue 35. McCloud later wrote that Jenny is "a couple of years older by this point," but it’s unclear whether he’s referring to Jenny’s age in comparison to the age of how own real-life teenage daughter, who he had just mentioned, or if she’s a couple years older than when she started the series (which is the case; she was 13 at the beginning and is at least 15 as of issue 26 or 29) or perhaps he means that she’s a couple years older than last noted, and thus around 17, but that seems unlikely given the flow of the rest of time in the series. Zot says that he’ll go back to his box for now, and invites her in like he does every night. This time, she says yes, and climbs in, ending the issue. McCloud wrote that his editor thinks they slept together at this point, and his wife Ivy thought they didn’t.

Zot continues to want to fight crime in Jenny’s world. He tells her he wants to go to the city. She tries unsuccessfully to stop him. He says he’ll be back by 6 a.m. At 6:50, he’s still not back. Butch walks in, drunk after a night out. She tries to get him to help her find Zot. He insists on throwing up and going to sleep, but eventually agrees, showing that he really cares for her after all, especially in the once-again absence of their parents.

Her friends notice that she hasn’t shown up for school for finals. Woody and Terry wonder where she is and if her parents’ divorce, which is now official, has anything to do with it.

Jenny and Butch use Jenny’s lightning necklace to track down Zot. They find him in a hospital, badly hurt. He was accidentally shot by the police. Jenny calls Woody and the friends all get together to drive in to support her. Jenny is not only distraught about Zot, she sees this as a further sign of the awfulness of her world compared to his. Zot finally wakes up but is still in bad shape. Jenny and Butch go home to sleep.

She wakes up to see Zot by her side, fully healed. It turns out that Max was finally able to find them. He got Zot and healed him at home, which also took place in a sliding time scale compared to Jenny’s world. Jenny is overjoyed. Max invites Jenny and all her friends to visit Zot’s world to relax. All of her friends have also been under a lot of stress recently so it will be good for all of them.

When they step through the portal, they’re all amazed and full of wonder. Jenny shows up last, carrying suitcases. She’s ready to move in permanently. Zot says she’s running away from her problems. He says if she goes to his world forever, he’ll stay in her world. For him, it’s about not giving up on people. Finally she agrees with him to only visit.

Jenny’s mom shows up right as Jenny and Zot go through the portal. They bring her along too. They all join in on the great escape into Zot’s Uptopia—at least for a while.

Hearts and Minds

Sometime later, Jenny, Butch, and their mom move to a smaller house a few miles away. Jenny doesn’t mind the move too much.

Her grandmother, Nanna, has memory issues and thinks Jenny is her mom, and that they are moving to California like they did years ago.

During a pause in the move, Zot shows up and takes her to his Earth for an adventure.

Jenny, Zot, and Peabody hear that Dekko has a new fortress off the coast of Cape Cod and prepare to go investigate. Zot is also excited about a new Ice Cream Apocalypse location. However, after the police call him and ask for his help, Zot agrees to stop Dekko first.

When they arrive, the fortress fires on them, hitting Zot’s jet car. Peabody is ripped in half and Jenny and Zot fall a long way before Jenny is able to wake Zot up. He manages to use his antigrav boots to save them right before they hit the ground.

Zot is concerned about Peabody because he costs a lot of money. Jenny is surprised he isn’t more personally hurt but they have his personality backed up at home.

Jenny stays on the beach to watch with the chief of police while Zot breaks in the fortress, along with some police officers.

The police are all knocked out by a robot. Zot can’t beat the robot but escapes down the hall. Zot finds the hostages but is attacked by a swarm of robot bugs. They lose the drone camera signal.

Jenny is almost blinded by a light from the fortress. When the glare goes down, everyone else on the beach is asleep and Dekko reaches out to grab her.

When Zot wakes up, Dekko is monologuing about the portraits he painted of each of the hostages. They sit in a circular room. Zot hangs upside-down by one wall. Jenny is free.

Dekko explains that some cannons will shoot each of the hostages. However, Jenny sees that Zot’s gun is on the ground. She grabs it and threatens Dekko. Dekko points out that Zot shot all 10 of his shots, so the gun is empty. He demonstrates by pointing it at his head and pulling the trigger, which blows his head off.

When they go to Ice Cream Apocalypse afterwards to celebrate, the TV reporter Chet Barker interviews Zot in an over-the-top manner. Jenny is surprised that Zot isn’t excited to eat. He can’t figure out why there was still a shot left in the gun. He thinks Dekko may still be alive.

Some girls come up and fawn over him, asking for his autograph while Jenny fumes.

The De-Evolutionaries attack. They are against the idea of refrigeration. They no longer use their monkey-ray guns and now attack with grenades and sledgehammers. Multiple people over the course of the story comment about how they were much better when they used their ray guns.

Zot defeats them by shooting a hole in the floor, dropping them into the ice cream cauldrons below. One of them throws a grenade at Zot, which he catches. It explodes in his hand. In the aftermath of the explosion, Zot, and everyone else, is shocked to see that the remains of his arm are robotic.

They go to Max’s house and do some scans and discover that Zot’s entire body is robotic. Max theorizes that Zot’s brain and body are elsewhere and are remote-controlling the robot body. They also guess that the dead Dekko wasn’t the real one. The hospital reports that the hostages are all remote-controlled robots too.

Jenny goes back home. They get ready to leave the old house. Her dad is more sympathetic than he was when glimpsed in the black and white series. He gets her chocolate milk and honey-roasted peanuts as a reminder of what she liked when she was young and they were all happy. However, it hurts for her to think of those days now.

Nanna comes back in and again mistakes Jenny for her mother. Nanna gets angry at them but Horton says he’ll explain in the morning.

Jenny and Horton talk a little about the divorce and love.

In the morning, Nanna’s memory is better. She, Nanna, Horton, and Barbara have a good breakfast together. Then dad and Nanna leave.

She hangs out with her mom for a bit, then Zot comes to get her. Jenny promises to bring Butch back.

While Jenny was gone, Zot had a dream about Dekko. Dekko explained that he has given the gift of eternal life to Zot and the hostages. Now that they’re robots, they’ll never die, just like Dekko.

Dekko explained that he now understands that he can’t destroy reality. But he can create order. He sees humanity as the best chance to help bring order to the universe. But to do so, they need to be improved—by, for instance, having eternal robotic life.

Jenny, Butch, Zot, Max, and Peabody now fly together to find Dekko.

They find him and Zot demands to have his body back. They show Dekko a video call where the hostages all want their bodies too. Dekko is shocked that they are turning down his gift.

Dekko blasts them, then runs off. Meanwhile, a horde of Devoes invades the beach. Dekko’s robots and the Devoes fight.

Zot tracks the hostages on infrared. When they arrive, Dekko flips a switch and says death is all that’s left. Zot assumes that means he did something to kill them, but in reality Dekko just let them go without his robotic gift of life.

The Devoes break into the room and one throws a grenade right at Dekko. The ceiling falls on him. They assume he’s dead, but he secretly survives.

Jenny and Zot look for Zot’s real body and find it.

Jenny and Butch go home. Butch promises Max that he’ll come back to work later.

Zot and Jenny kiss goodbye until his next visit.

Alternate Versions

Within the world of "Dimension 10 1/2," the stick-figure alternate universe created by Matt Feazell and running in the back of the black-and-white issues of Zot!, Zot meets with Jenny so he can visit her school. Godzilla shows up and Zot stops him. Jenny is proud. They go to Max’s; he has invented a growth serum and a shrink serum. Dekko arrives with the evil Dr. Pweent. They rust Peabody solid. Cynicalman comes in as a guest star. He spills some growth serum on himself. He squishes Dekko. When Godzilla shows up again, he uses the shrink serum on him and then on Dr. Pweent, who they put in a jar.

Jenny and Zot are watching videos on TV when 9-Jack-9 appears on the screen and attacks. They try to fend him off but eventually decide to escape to Jenny’s world. They open the portal but Antisocialman appears in it. He’s excited to watch old tv in Zot’s 1965 timeline. He manages to scare off Jack by using a 220 volt converter, imprisoning him in a Three Stooges video.

The Devoes attack Jenny, Zot, Butch, and Peabody and try converting people to monkeys. Zot calls Cynicalman and asks for help. The Devoes are unable to devolve Cynicalman because, as a stick figure, he is already as primitive as possible. The heroes manage to reverse all the negative effects.

Antisocialman is still around. They get tired of him and kick him out. He discovers that Zot’s world is a Utopia and thus the opposite of what he likes as an antisocial person. He starts annoying people to create fun for himself. Jenny and Zot show up to send him home, but he sprays them with Antisocial Serum. They become antisocial.

Jenny and Zot annoy each other with their antisocialness. Jenny goes home in frustration. There, she turns back to normal. Zot shows up to meet Antisocialman and his friends expect them to fight, but now he is friends with Antisocialman and knocks his old friends’ heads together. Jenny calls Cynicalman for help but he pretends the number has been disconnected. However, two members of his fan club, Spud ‘n’ Ernie, show up in a van.

Antisocialman continues to spread his dissent and annoyance around Zot’s world. Jenny and Butch get in Spud 'n' Ernie’s van and use Dr. Pweent’s technology to go to Raleigh, where Cynicalman lives. He agrees to help. They go to Zot’s universe. Butch turns into a monkey again and Jenny reverts to being antisocial. They run into Zot’s friends, Digger, Josh, and Vic, then go to Max’s, but he’s not there. They all work on ways to stop Antisocialman, except Jenny, who reads a year’s worth of People magazine.

Josh makes an antidote and uses it on Jenny, who turns back to normal. They find Zot and turn him normal as well, using pies in the face, which are spiked with the antidote. They create a new plan: they all dance, and Antisocialman shows up to stop it. It looks like they can get him, but then all of Zot’s old villains show up. The friends get together and defeat them in various ways. Antisocialman, however, gets Zot’s gun and goes after him and Jenny. After some more back and forth, Zot pushes Antisocialman and the bottled-up Pweent through the dimensional portal, back to Jenny’s Earth where he is stuck at a televangelist convention.

Jenny and Zot go flying with antigravity boots. Bellows shows up and knocks them around. Zot and Jenny fly after him in a biplane and Zot catches him by leaping from the plane. Jenny catches up, using her antigrav boots and holding the plane.

Jenny shows Zot how to ride a bike, but he crashes into Woody and Terry and they meet for the first time (in this dimension). Woody gives Jenny flowers, which she is embarrassed about. He mentions a robot show at the museum and they all go.

At the museum, they see a demonstration of a robot called Worker Unit. It goes out of control. It grabs its own remote control, breaks out of the museum, and starts doing people’s jobs for them. Jenny wakes up Zot who had been knocked out. Employers are unhappy because they like to see their employees being forced to work.

However, the professor who created the robot makes a plan. He asks everyone to stop working. That way the robot won’t know to do their work. Meanwhile Jenny and the others do work at the museum, hoping to attract Worker Unit’s attention.

Worker Unit does show up, and they try to catch him. Zot has a hard time beating him so Jenny thinks that they should have a distraction. Terry gives him a bunch of sticks to throw. Zot traps him. Then all the people in power want to use Worker Unit for their own needs. Zot releases him, and he flies into space to charge his solar batteries.

Jenny and Zot plan to go to art class. However, Max’s machine sends them to a blank universe. Jenny uses her art supplies to draw on the walls of the blank space. Dekko shows up and doesn’t like it. He erases all her art because he only likes perfection. He tries to delete them too but they draw a door an escape.

Zot and Jenny go for a walk and see a cat in a tree. It falls out and dies. They try to find the owner. They can’t find them and the weather gets bad. They can’t decide what to do with the cat’s body. Woody shows up and wants to ride bikes. Zot says he’ll bury the cat and Jenny leaves with Woody. Zot gets sick from the cat and starts to die, wondering why Jenny left. Then he wakes up—it was a dream.

Zot, Jenny, and Peabody fly around the countryside in a hovercar. They crash and a farmer tows their car in to get fixed, but it will take a couple days. They stay with the farmer. They have a good time but when they find out he’s going to be foreclosed on, and that the bank is trying to sabotage the farm to speed up the process, they help. They believe the bank stole the farmer’s best cow. They try to get in using Zot’s direct approach but when that works, Jenny makes a plan to act as lightbulb inspectors and they get in. They find the cow and sneak it out in a copy machine. They make it to the cow content just in time for it to win.

Dr. Pweent makes a computer virus to make people stupid, using Stupidboy as an example. Butch becomes stupid from the virus. Jenny and Zot try to turn him back to normal. However, everyone they run into is stupid. They ask Cynicalman for help and he gets Professor Quidley. He discovers that it is Dr. Pweent’s virus. Unfortunately Jenny, Zot, and the others get infected by looking at their digital watches. Dr. Pweent also accidentally infects himself. Professor Quidley makes a cure that helps Stupidboy and then everyone else. But then Quidley reveals that his cure is just water, and everyone is just the same, but now they think they’re not stupid, and that’s enough.

Zot’s grades drop and he isn’t allowed to stop crime while he improves them. However, everyone keeps calling him up about problems that need to be solved. He finally finishes his homework and helps solve all the problems. Then he goes on a date, blaming his homework for why he’s late.

One of Max’s fellow scientist friends, Dick Allen, loves dinosaurs. He makes a flu vaccine to stop them all from going extinct. He goes back in time and saves them. That results in everyone in Zot’s time turning into a dinosaur. Zot and Jenny are still human because they were in her universe when it happened. They go back in time to stop Allen. The ride a dinosaur and then find Allen and explain what happened. Then they run into a tour group of people from the future, and then people who are strip mining the planet and others who are storing their radioactive waste there. It turns out that it was this radioactive waste that killed the dinosaurs. They return home and everyone has reverted to human. Dr. Allen, however, brought back a dinosaur as a pet.

Max tells Zot and Jenny that their jetcar has an artificial intelligence voice box hookup in it. They decide to get the voice box from the toaster to see what the car says. It drives Jenny and Zot around but is kind of wild and has an attitude. They go to a diner and in the country before it crashes. They manage to drive it back to town. It drives through a car wash with the top down and they get the full treatment in person. Next it gets in a road race with a gang. Finally they get home and remove the voice box, putting it back in the toaster. Jenny still says she had a great time.

Jenny and Zot visit Max—in this dimension they are not stuck on Jenny’s Earth. Max gets a letter informing him about his high school reunion. He had a terrible time in high school and doesn’t want to go. Jenny and Zot persuade him that he should stand up to his fears and go. He agrees. Jenny and Zot are surprised that the other alums aren’t impressed with Max’s accomplishments post-high school. 9-Jack-9 shows up. He also went to this school and was a dorky friend of Max’s. Jack goes around harassing everyone that bullied him. Zot and Jenny decide that he’s going too far. They tease him about what’s in his yearbook. Jack is going to defeat them but Max brings Jack’s parents to the reunion and they embarrass him into leaving. Back at home, Jenny and Terry bemoan their own current high school experience.

Zot’s friends worry that he hangs out too much with Jenny instead of them. They decide to fix her up with Cynicalman to distract her. Jenny is having a date with Woody. Woody is trying to impress her with his sensitivity but Zot shows up and impresses her with his heroism. As Jenny tries to decide between them, Cynicalman shows up. He seems to have such a bad life, Jenny goes out with him to try to help him. Woody is despondent but Zot doesn’t care. Jenny goes out with Cynicalman so long that she becomes cynical. She just watches reruns of TV now. Woody and Zot try to brighten her back up but nothing works. Zot gets his friends to help. Now that he’s around all the time, he always wins at everything, so they want him back with Jenny now. They create a giant set-up so it seems like life is a big Truman Show. Cynicalman believes his life has been a fake and smiles at the thought. Once Jenny sees him smile, she believes that she helped him by dating him, and she returns to normal. They all go out for hot dogs.

All of Woody’s friends get together to play their role-playing game. Jenny plays Scribbles the pup, a character that Matt Feazel “just made up.” The others play other weird characters. Woody despairs to see Jenny and Zot holding hands. When Brandy agrees to go on a date with all the boys, like in the main reality, Jenny says she can hook her up with Cynicalman. However, the boys really set her up with Stupidboy, who pretends to be an alternate-reality Zot. When Zot and Jenny go to a movie, they see a crime taking place. Zot tries to help but they are both captured, along with many of their other friends. Stupidboy eventually saves them. Jenny kisses Stupidboy as a reward.

Jenny, Zot, and Woody go sailing. As usual in this reality, Jenny is much more infatuated with Zot than Woody. They end up in Beanworld. They meet several of the local Beans, like Professor Garbanzo, Beanish, and Mr. Spook, and try to help with a problem: Reality Rot. They help them catch some beans and bring some of them back to Zot’s world. They show them around to various parts of their lives. Jenny shows the Professor her convenience store job and all the junk food there. Eventually the Beans figure out their problem and leave, but Jenny and Woody are left with existential questions.

Several of Zot’s villains conspire to work together. Jenny and Zot visit a TV station. The manager explains how they do cheesy things like colorizing old movies or use computers to digitally replace old stars with new ones. The villains show up and stick Jenny and Zot in a movie of Naked Lunch. At home, Butch is watching TV and sees Jenny in a show. Jenny and Zot manage to get out and catch Pweent. However, they have to help fix all the old movies, one by one.

Jenny, Zot, and all their friends go to a movie about Zot. They get some snacks. Chaos ensues as Dekko and his family show up, along with the other villains. The actor playing Zot, River Phoenix, turns into Dark River Phoenix. Finally all of them are defeated.

Powers & Abilities

None. Jenny is a normal human.

Gear

Jenny has a lightning-bolt necklace that Zot gave her. It allows her to communicate with him, like a two-way radio, and glows when he's near.