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...
Here's a volume that's not for the faint of heart. In these 88, oversize, A4 pages, J. Webster Sharp applies her dazzling stippling technique to translating the psychological underpinnings of the mental health issues that occupied Edwardian era egalitarian, George Ives, driving his assembling of a massive hoard of newspaper clippings that he collected into a lengthy series of scrapbooks over a period of 50 years (think Henry Darger as a scrapper). Hallucinogenic is the word that first comes to mind while scanning these images. Also, disturbing.
At the conclusion of the volume, hand written transciptions of some of the newspaper clippings that inspired the comics are appended.
Anyone interested in some background on the creation of this work is encouraged to tune in to this 45-minute interview with J. Webster Sharp hosted by publisher Avery Hill.
Review Quotes:
"There's no one else making comics the way she is, and there's no mistaking one of her comics for somebody else's. Her concerns, fixations and flights of fancy are more or less entirely her own, and her means of communicating them are likewise utterly unique." -- Ryan Carey, The Comics Journal
"Confronting taboos with surgical skill, an anatomist's understanding and a detective's passion, the auteur has crafted here an emotional experience both enticingly lovely and yet intrinsically profane." -- Now Read This
"It has detail, it has passion and courage and guts, and wit and intelligence. It's daring and takes risk in both subject matter and execution. It also makes you unnerved, uncomfortable, intrigued, repulsed, excited. It's singular and unique." -- Paul Ashley Brown, Comic Bits Online
J. Webster Sharp began her professional art career as a portrait painter, and she also explored textile sculpture, collage and drawing. Having always been a lover of comics she committed herself to a career in sequential art in May 2021. She's inspired by the strange, eccentric and the psychology behind unusual imagery.
