This week is the last week you will be able to order comics in print from Peow Studio. The beloved European micro-press closes its physical doors at the end of the year. If you can read this, there isn’t much time. Their digital shop isn’t going anywhere. But Peow were printmakers first and these books are all beautifully produced and bound. So now is all the time you have to grip this essential ink.

The Sci Fi You’ve Heard About

• Stages of Rot by Linnea Sterte. Absolutely jaw-dropping beauty in the form of a whale carcass decomposing. Imagine the different ways in which the body returns to the Earth, the many who break it down, its entropy a pollination of life. Now imagine it as warriors and war, the culture of spores like a civilization, famers and their children, workers to queens. There’s a Charles Vess dignity to Sterte’s work, pre-Raphaelite beauty in biological armor crosses a fantasy landscape, an alien expanse all mysterious and alluring. Underexplained to the perfect degree, the poetry of showing you just enough of what you know.
• Gleem by Feddy Carrasco. Dynamic cyberpunk in a Taiyō Matsumoto vein. Androids beating the gears off each other gets all wrapped up in seeing things from a childish, unclouded perspective. Cyberpunk as a genre can become hollow, a dream of dystopia that is already happening to less privileged lives than the author’s; Blackness exists in a dangerous place outside the security of citizenship- in the real world. The cyberpunk is developed from instead of inserted into.
• Ex.Mag #4 and Ex.Mag #2. The mecha one and the paranormal romance one. They do these flavored genre themes for each of the anthologies in the series, taken as a kind of post-genre prompt by the creators. A lot of deconstruction and analysis guiding the storytelling, but still told as speculative fiction stories. Substantive and varied takes from a nice mix of Peow regulars and folks in others circles (like animation and the direct market) who get to jump in on the short format. Thoughtful about it without getting in the way of fun or flow.

Give A Deep Cut A Chance!

• Brush Paradise by Mathilde Kitteh. It’s a fight manga, but an office comedy as well, where the fighting is just part of everyone’s job in sales. The protagonist is the guy who cannot sell a brush to save his life, and his meteoric rise to legendary status from infamous failure to a hero of brush sales is kind of uh crushing. The tragedy of getting swept up in doing a great job you wish you never had, how hard the little things are to hold on to when you’re grabbing grabbing grabbing, these big heavy sads come at you through a deadpan satire of absurdly titanic proportions.
• Berzerkid by Michael Lopez and Gax Vallez. This is also a hero comedy, a multifaceted fracture of an old school adventure comic. Buddy team following clues and cracking wise, the prodigal returns to the hustle and bustle of robot metropolis to settle hash, alliances turn over when history is revealed, pulp. Lots of smashing swashbuckling roughneck fun. If your thing is a super stylized aesthetic going after the cape story with a sly grin and an art degree, the Madman or Coda reader who wants to have a Good Time, here you go.
• On Tour by Moa Romanova. A diary comic: on working the merch table for a friend’s band, touring Europe with the Melvins. As weird and debauched and real as you could ask for, and drawn in this sublime melting Yellow Submarine retro style, a Milton Glaser meets Michael DeForge vintage psychedelia. It is surreal without a drop of overkill, the weird look compliments the weird times instead of competing with them. The folks who have been on tour will recognize that for every story about the guy at the party with a rabbit there’s two that involve being in a hotel room and feeling miserable. It’s a cool book.

What Did I Get?

• Ice Cream & Beast by Iggy Craig. I was recently firmly floored by Silver Sprocket’s amazing horny heartfelt mech pilot romance Sad Girl Space Lizard by the same cartoonist, and figured it was now or never if I wanted to read whatever the heck is going on in the image above.

The best way to say goodbye to a publisher like Peow is to give some quiet name a shot. There are a few books besides these ones, but only a few. Discover something wholly different in comics— while you still have the chance to. US orders are only open until December 30th so head over to the Peow Studio book store now.

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