DALLAS, TX.- Jerry Scott and Jim Borgman selected all 103 pieces that make up Heritage’s inaugural Zits Comic Art Showcase Auction on January 4. They wanted to pick out “the good ones” to offer fans of their 26-year-old, award-winning strip Zits, which has appeared in more than 1,700 newspapers worldwide since its introduction in July 1997. Some good strips. Some good sketches. Some good book covers.

“And we had a hard time picking out the good ones,” Scott says, “because we think a lot of them are good.”

He and Borgman laugh. They’re not bragging. Far from it, as both are sweet, thoughtful men whose insight into family life has entertained and enlightened generations of readers. Zits is the greatest, longest-lasting sitcom on paper — Freaks and Geeks two years before Paul Feig and Judd Apatow paid a prime-time visit to their own misfit, misunderstood childhoods.

Among those for whom newspapers were constant morning companions, kids found inspiration and took delight in the daily doings of Scott and Borgman’s 16-year-old Jeremy Duncan, the most well-adjusted, sensitive and pragmatic teen ever to populate the funny pages. Parents, too, adored the strip, which presented Jeremy’s parents, Connie and Walt, as well-meaning, compassionate and only slightly out of touch.

It was as though Calvin grew up and realized he had more in common with his parents than his stuffed tiger. Jeremy was Charlie Brown grown up, too, his short pants grown long and baggy, his childhood depression rendered as teen moodiness. Charles Schulz was even a fan, though he famously noted that “Zits is the worst name for a comic strip since Peanuts.”

The goal of Zits has been the same since Scott pitched it to Pulitzer Prize-winning artist Borgman almost three decades ago: “I try to make a strip that makes Jim laugh,” Scott says. “To find out other people thought it was funny, too, was terrific. But if I can make Jim laugh, the rest will fall into place, and it has. It’s surprising and so gratifying.”

“The most common — and comically common — comment we got was, ‘You must have a camera in our house,’” Borgman says. “Everyone says the same thing to us, even in Sweden, if we went on a book tour. We pay attention to our memories and kids’ lives because they all share universal themes. We observe it all with a humorous eye.”

For the first time, Scott and Borgman are opening the archives and allowing fans to own a favorite strip, a favorite moment, a favorite character or perhaps something published on a meaningful date. It’s something they’d never done before — and for each, it has been “a surprisingly emotional experience,” Borgman says. Scott likens it to “looking at skin cells that were shed over the years because every one of these strips is a part of us.”

And these strips are a part of their readers’ lives. The two men have been around long enough to know what kind of impact their work has had on the little kids who grew up to become moody teens who grew up to become fretful parents. That’s the genius of Zits: It’s an everyday dramedy written from the small moments that add up to the Big Things.

“Most of life swims past you,” Borgman says. “But Jerry has that ear and that remarkable way of capturing what most people miss.”

“If this was a symphony, I am the high strings and the piccolo, that high frequency of joke, joke, joke,” Scott says. “Jim brings a deeper resonance and thinking: ‘What is the message here? What are we doing?’ If you combine those two things, you get a certain harmony.”

Borgman tells the story of the guys at the nearby bike shop who recently realized he was the strip’s artist and told him, “Holy crap, you were baked into my childhood.” That, more than the political-cartooning Pulitzer and the two National Cartoonists Society’s Best Comic Strip of the Year Awards and the myriad trade paperback collections, made him realize he’d been around a long time — and that it was time for them to begin parting with their strips so that fans might finally keep a piece of the story that was theirs all along.

“How many people have the opportunity to touch people with their work?” Scott says. “When we hear from people, it’s very gratifying. And it’s always the same: You got that right, and it’s honest. When Jim and I talk about why we’re offering these strips, it always comes back to this: Zits is like the moon. Anyone can look at and enjoy the moon for free, but only a limited number of people can own a moon rock. We’re offering a piece of our moon to those who want the real thing.”

“It will be nice to know they found homes everywhere,” Borgman says. “Some people will treasure them. That’s the exciting part of letting them go. These pieces will be in places of honor in people’s homes — and not on the walls of museums. I’d love to think people with teenagers or who navigated their teenage years successfully have a drawing of ours somewhere and one day pass it down to their children. That, to me, is every bit as exciting as being in a museum.”