It's about time... for the new Now. The twelfth issue is a mind bender with perhaps the widest ranging material yet. From the rhythmic abstractions of Cynthia Alfonso's "untitled" to the old school satire, "The Cartoonist" by Matt Lawton and Peter Bagge, this issue spans the generations and the form itself. The æsthetic center on which the issue pivots is Kayla E.'s "Precious Rubbish", a series of post-modern mash-ups that bring together a variety of texts ranging from personal reminiscences to the Old and New Testaments and combining them with her personal, signature-style comics, here largely derived from a selection of old school comic book pages, including several from Matt Baker's Canteen Kate (!).
Many readers will get their first look at the piercingly acute and dizzyingly strange artwork of Bhanu Pratap in his story, "Big Head Pointy Nose" which is the first work of his we've seen in color.
Francois Vigneault's "The Bird Is Gone" is a moving tale of the passing of the Passenger Pigeon. No matter how many times you hear, see or read the facts that are related in this story, it always boggles the mind.
For us here at Copacetic, #12's highlight is Tim Lane's "Li'l Stevie", a hybrid work that seems to synthesize Chris Ware’s Jimmy Corrigan and Peter Blegvad’s Leviathan – with a dash of Al Columbia’s Pim & Francie – and then graft it all onto Ernie Bushmiller’s early period Fritzy Ritz and Nancy in order to create a dark, drunken and twisted, but pathos laden – and still very Tim Lane – Golden Age comics take on... Steve McQueen's childhood. This work won't appeal to everyone, but those who think this sounds up their alley won't want to miss it.
Another great issue of Now!
Already out of print! BUT, we have two copies remaining...
We had this in the shop but only now realize that we didn't get around to listin it here on the site!
Dear Mother collects the mind-bending comics of Bhanu Pratap, which are really quite an experience. Think Francis Bacon + Al Columbia + Giorgio de Chirico and you'll only be starting to get an idea...
Check out this thoughtful analysis at Ryan C.'s Four-Color Apocalypse to gain some insights into what to expect...
BACK IN STOCK!
Fans of New Dheli cartoonist, Bhanu Pratap's first North American collection, Dear Mother & Other Stories have been chafing at the bit awaiting more work from this unique and powerful comics maker, and now, at last it's time to release the inner reading beast so that it can gallop through 100 (mostly) full color pages of new work that fill this just released full size (9" x 11 1/2") hardcover from the Fantagraphics Underground (FU) imprint.
With maniac precision, in cold, cruel, harsh blacks, Pratap graphically brings to comics the underlying essence of "the shadow" as conceptualized by T.S. Eliot in "The Hollow Men," in 1925 (intriguingly, preceding by five years the emergence of the pulp character bearing that appellation). Reading – experiencing might be a better description – these works one feels at times as if one is being attacked via the optic nerves. Delineations of sharpness and angularity converge upon, contain and pierce soft blobby curves in ways that uncannily capture crescendoing anxieties that climax in panic before collapsing in despair. And always, there is the deep, black shadow... of the abyss.
Cutting Season features 16 short comics pieces, ranging in length from short, mostly black & white or monochrome, 1-2 page pieces like "Star Gazing", "Anvil" and "Stuff-icked" to to longer, full color, 8 - 16 page works like, "Into Me", "Toddling Towers", and "Sediment" with the remainder falling somewhere inbetween. It feels like some of these pieces – for example, "Stuff-Icked" and "Sediment" may be from an earlier period in Pratap's development; if not, then they are simply less maniacly precise.
Each of the pieces, to varying degrees, will tug at the reader's intelligence, nagging their consciousness for a solution to the enigma that they present. Like feeling an an itch in the brain demanding to be scratched, readers will find themselves returning to these pieces to unlock their riddles, and to sound their unfathomable depths.
