Yes, it's that time, the new Now is here!  Starting off once again with a Theo Ellsworth one-pager, this issue immediately proceeds to the feature attraction: the 40-page epic, "Misguided Love" by Raquelle Jac, a relatively unheralded newcomer whose work also graces the front cover of this issue.  There are likely to be quite a wide variety of reactions to this story, which is powerful to the point of feeling like it risks running off its rails at any moment.  One thing most readers will agree on is that Ms. Jac's cartooning represents a bold, original synthesis – one can register hints of many cartoonists and comics makers here – as authentic as it is cathartic.  After that we are treated to the quite controlled stylings and musings of Keren Katz, followed by the amazing sight of an all new episode of Basil Wolverton's Spacehawk... by Noah Van Sciver!  Then Emil Friis Ernst delivers "Zoom", a finely composed, color saturated 10-pager which harkens back to the glory days (read: 1970s) of Metal Hurlant (Heavy Metal), particularly some of those enigmatic Moebius shorts.  The issue closes out with back-to-back 20-pagers that, while employing quite distinct graphic approaches, each provide their own window on life in our times: "Quarryhouse" by Ben Nadler and "How Mums Annoy You" by Ethel Wolfe.  Another great issue!

We last heard from Raquelle Jac six years ago via her much talked about debut feature in NOW #9.  It had been long enough that it seemed like, maybe that was it...?  But no!  It turns out that Ms. Jac(queline) had actually been struggling to bring forth this very work.  Bimbo Agitprop is a 360 page behemoth of an autobio confessional wherein self-consciousness runs amok and the forging of identity is explored.

Here's the Fanta hype-up:

Bimbo Agitprop captures the reality of growing up in West Texas in the early 21st century, through Satanic Panics, Y2K, a recession, abusive parents, shitty men, identity-centric politics, and woke/anti-woke pendulum swings. Reflective of the author’s era (born in the late 1990s) of hyperindividualist over-sharing of late 2010s internet, while being firmly grounded in the unfiltered, handmade, radically anti-establishment art of the 1960s underground comix, Raquelle Jac keeps her wounds fresh and open to both remember the past and protect herself in the future. At turns explicit, hilarious, profane, and defiant, Bimbo Agitprop is both an act of self-preservation and a call to arms.

Jac boldly embraces frivolity, “bimboism,” comedy, memory, and storytelling to interrogate reality in the 2020s, ping-ponging among relationships, psychedelic trips, good sex, bad sex, romance, and trauma. Her dense, obsessive pages read like a manifesto, announcing the arrival of a remarkable new voice in comics.

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