2dCloud co-founder, Maggie Umber steps out of the shadows with this sombre, beautiful meditation on nature in winter – with a special focus on owls.  Fully painted throughout, Umber invites readers to draw her depictions of the natural world into themselves and let them linger there, and reflect upon the spiritual aspects that thereby are revealed. 

Yes, it's the new Now!  Another 128 page anthology of short comics edited by Eric Reynolds.  Quite a wide variety of approaches are on hand this issue.  You might not like every story, but every issue of Now presents a wide-ranging mix of talent that includes some of today's top names side-by-side with relative unkonwns, all taking artistic chances and working to explore the expressive terrain of comics.

Now enters is third year of publication with a makeover.  With this issue, the paper stock has switched from glossy stock to a medium weight, flat white paper.  Good call: it looks and feels great; a bit more heft.  As a result, it's price has increased to $12.99, but at a chock full 128 pages of great (mostly) full color comics, it's still a bargain!

And, more importantly, this issue features a stellar line up of comics creators, including many a Copacetic fave:

In the 21, full color pages of "The Gigs," E.S. Glenn shows the comics reading world what he is capable of.  Socially constructed barriers between memory, dream, fiction and reality dissolve in Glenn's spirit world of clear line comics (and comics within comics!) in this densely packed (magnifying glass, anyone?), multi-layered graphic novella that takes readers deep into the comics dimension . Get ready for a treat!  

The inimitable Sami Alwani really knocked himself out here, with his piece,"The Misfortunes of Virtue," which is actually an agglomeration of short bits that coheres together into a whole that is greater than the sum of it's parts, an oroboros look at the artist in society that turns things inside-out and back again.

Noah van Sciver revisits a prior work in a meta/auto-bio take on "Saint Cole."

Walt Holcombe's "Cheminant avec Emily" integrates a poster graphics æsthetic with comics to illuminate the soundtrack of romance.

With "The Intoxicated," Maggie Umber employs a minimal but evocative black and white rendering reminiscent of faded celluloid images, to good effect.

Tara Booth takes on "Binge Eating."

New-to-us talents, Veronika Muchitsch, Henry McCausland and Zuzu all turn in excellent and quite varied pieces.

And it all starts off with an eye-catching Al Columbia cover followed by a Theo Ellsworth one-pager.

The New Now is here!