Pepper. Karl Stevens. Toon Books – PenguinRandomHouse. 2026. 128pp. $19.99.
Karl Stevens is one of our most distinguished comic artists–and his humorous work is hilarious. Not a bad combination: great competence and he can make you laugh. A few years ago, he contributed a comic to the ongoing series, Drawn to MoMA, and shared this insight about how he gets his cat to say the darnedest things in his work: “When writing Penny’s inner monologues I try to walk that fine line between total ignorance and infinite wisdom. I tend to start out with her thinking that everything around her is new and wondrous, but then she’ll—by accident—say something that’s profound or witty. In other words, I try to approach her dialogue in the way a Surrealist would.” And therein lies a key, a portal if you will, into the latest work by Stevens.
Some comics just need to be out in the world, due to their sparkling originality. Pepper, by Karl Stevens, is one of them. There’s not a false note anywhere and it is such a pleasure to read. You just dive in and you’re transported into a world of visual treats, intriguing narrative and zany humor. Cat lover, or not, there’s something her for everyone.
It’s not easy to create a work such as this that can so fully immerse the reader. Karl Stevens has been creating comics for many years with great love and care. So, this stuff that you can genuinely give a hoot about, comes natural to him. The level of artistry in the drawing and writing is at the highest level. That has a lot to do with the fact that Stevens is a very well-rounded person with a strong liberal arts background. And, like any good writer, he’s learned a lot, and gained a lot of wisdom. It informs the vibe to his work, fluctuating on different cultural frequencies. Just as the air gets rarefied by a lofty observation, a perfect cutting remark brings it all down to size.
Here is where I need to jump in and say something about what a long strange trip it’s been. The last collected work of “cat comics,” if I should put it so rudely, from Karl Stevens was Penny: A Graphic Memoir, in 2021. I pored my heart out in a review and so glad that I did. I pointed out that the book was the culmination of years of creating an ongoing comic strip that appeared in The Village Voice (2016-17). It was the end of an era but, during that process, the comic strip took on a life of its own. A comic strip is a complicated device serving to entertain in the moment while also accumulating a bigger vision. By the time Penny came out as a book, it was a collection greater than the sum of its parts, speaking to one era and entering a new one, the COVID-BLM era, which aptly underscored Penny’s isolated and “privileged” status. And now here we are, all these years later, and a second Penny book is all the more in tune with its themes and areas of discourse. And still managing to keep its wits about it and striking the right balance.
The first half of this book is an all-out interstellar misadventure, thanks to the entry of Penny’s seeming long lost sister, Pepper. Here’s where it can get a little confusing since Pepper maintains she has been around all along and that Penny is so self-absorbed that she simply hadn’t noticed her! Well, notice her she does moving forward as Pepper proves to be a force to reckon with, able to open portals to other dimensions at will. In this case, hopping through a portal is essential and Penny and Pepper must prove to be up to the challenge.
The second half of the book brings the reader closer to home with a series of domestic scenes, a number of which can function as stand-alone vignettes. Penny gets to complain about Pepper. And, usually, Penny finds a way to keep Pepper in her place. And then there’s room for one final misadventure, again with Pepper leading the call to action. This time, Pepper urges Penny to make peace with her mother and so the two hop into another portal and do their best to connect Penny’s refined present with the humble origins of the past. Whether Penny will, or won’t, or is obligated to evolve, shake off any notions to being entitled, is really besides the point or maybe the whole point. If a house cat can’t enjoy just living an unencumbered life, filled with banality, then we are all surely the lesser for it.
Book Launch: Pepper by Karl Stevens, in conversation with Joel Christian Gill
Join us for an evening of graphic novelists as we celebrate the launch of Pepper, the sequel to Karl Steven’s iconic Penny! Stevens will be in conversation with fellow artist Joel Christian Gill.
Karl Stevens is an award-winning graphic novelist whose titles include Penny: A Graphic Memoir, The Winner, and Mother Nature which was written by Jamie Lee Curtis and Russell Goldman. He is an Ignatz Award nominee, a Los Angeles Times Book Prize finalist, and has contributed comics to The New Yorker, Village Voice, and Boston Phoenix. He lives in Boston with his wife, Alex, and their two cats, Penny and Pepper.
Joel Christian Gill is the Chair of the MFA in Visual Narrative at Boston University. He is a cartoonist and historian who speaks nationally on the importance of sharing stories. He is the author of the acclaimed memoir Fights: One Boy’s Triumph Over Violence, cited as one of the best graphic novels of 2020 by The New York Times and for which he was awarded the 2021 Cartoonist Studio Prize. He wrote the words and drew the pictures for Fast Enough: Bessie Stringfield’s First Ride and the award-winning graphic novel series Strange Fruit: Uncelebrated Narratives from Black History, and Tales of The Talented Tenth, which tell the stories of Bass Reeves, Bessie Stringfield, and Robert Smalls.
