the illustrious IRIS JAY

Cover of Bhanu Pratap’s CUTTING SEASON

Excerpt from CUTTING SEASON

Another excerpt from CUTTNG SEASON

10. CUTTING SEASON, by Bhanu Pratap, 2024 - now THIS is comics, baby. These short stories are a moonlit blur of empty streets and wrung-out flesh. I love, love, love how Pratap draws the human figure in various states of doubling in on itself. One for the poets and the freaks!

A drawing of Spider-man swinging from his webs in the air, kicking one leg up, wearing Liam Conejo’s “blue bunny hat.” Black text reads: Dear Liam, I'm so sorry about what's happening Buddy. I know you must be super scared and confused right now. I saw that you're not feeling great. I thought maybe if I drew you a picture it might cheer you up, even just a little. Spidey is one of my favorites too! I wish I could do more. I hope if you see this someday you'll know that there were so many people thinking and worrying about you even though you don't know us. Sometimes when bad things happen Kids wonder if it was their fault but none of this was your fault Kiddo. You didn't do anything wrong. Nothing at all. I hope you feel better and that you and your Dad get to go back home to your Mami really soon! FOR LIAM 'CONEJO’ FROM YOUR NERDY TIO FREDDY -

With alt text

We are participating in the Friday, Jan. 30 National Shutdown Day. Every small or big action you take matters. Let's build this movement and continue to grow towards a General Strike.

generalstrikeus.com/demands

Please, please, please take this as another reminder to get involved with a local org, it is important to have your neighbors back. My neighborhood has a mix of open and shut places, many open are raising money with local orgs. Check out what people in your town/city/neighborhood are doing

I’m going to be shutting my shop down for the day and providing links to places where you can put your money instead.

Do what you can, keep pushing

I finalized the art for this tshirt and made it into layers for screenprinting, which is one of my favorite things to do, it's so soothing to put each color in its own layer and then turn the layers off and on to see the art build. Well I mean I think it's fun!!

My newest Doppleganger horror one-shot comic, NIRMAYA (2026), is now available @viz.com , edited by @sasaki-hisashi.bsky.social

FREE to READ here:
www.viz.com/vizmanga/nir...

Read it slowly. Perceive everything.

(Outside USA? Use VPN. Or wait for global edition in February)

More samples below⬇️

ad for Crossed Wires 03.197

"I built ALL of this! With my OWN TWO HANDS!!! And it was REALLY hard, okay?!" There's a new CROSSED WIRES comic page, free to read on https://crossedwires.irisjay.net !

yeah. and this is a little more complex than that, where it's shown that Ed behaves the way he does due to his paranoid mom neglecting and abusing him, and that's obviously very sad. but also, the story lacks the tools to unpack his or his mother's situation with the nuance and empathy they deserve

you and me both, honey

Longtime readers know that I can’t stand it when creators use mouth/teeth problems as a way of signifying someone’s inherent amorality. Like, all disabilities, yeah, but especially mouth stuff. Not everyone can afford years of expensive surgery and orthodontics! Lay the FUCK off!!!

“Redneck horror” just feels like a poor choice of genre for a book in 2026 in general, much less one about finding empathy in tragedy. Also: how did “let’s go with the fat, violent, green-skinned, cleft-palate, mentally disabled guy for our main antagonist” sound like a good idea AT ANY POINT, JESUS

9. PIG WIFE, by Abbey Luck, 2026 - idk how to feel about this one. I like its lysergic imagery and non-linear storytelling, and it’s got some things to say about gender and family trauma. But its rancid portrayals of people with physical and mental disabilities severely undercut its message. Yiiikes

8. BABY, by Patrick Kyle, 2023 - a petulant little guy named Baby, who is only a baby sometimes, goes on various metaphysical adventures. There are some cute gags and nifty abstract panels in this. Originally this was a series of improvised zines, which is real fun.

The big need at the moment is rent support. Many people in MN can’t safely get to work and rent is due in a few days.

Unless there is an eviction moratorium, lots of vulnerable folks could end up homeless.

Heal up soon! I’m so glad you got thru the surgery ok, you got this!! 💕💖🌟

KEEP HONKING!
I'm listening to
GEESE
(as in, I'm listening to the band Geese)
(I'm not pretending your car horn is an angry goose behind me)
(there really is a bomb in my car though)

brass solidarity band performing “stand by me” in the streets of whittier next to alex pretti’s memorial. the crowd started chanting “the people united will never be defeated” so they incorporated it into the song. i love minneapolis

From the minnesota community on Reddit: How You Can Help: MASTER LIST Explore this post and more from the minnesota community

If you're not in Minnesota and curious how to help, this is a week old but is well organized, includes multiple easy-to-understand bullet points, and seems like a good place to start: www.reddit.com/r/minnesota/...

a perfectly normal-seeming grove in the italian countryside on a clear sunny day, a farmhouse amid trees surrounded by vineyards. there is no evidence of anything untoward in the picture.

in light of today's events, i want to share a story i was told during a study abroad summer in italy, where i took a class on the rise of fascism.

the picture below is the site of a mass grave. captive partisans were brought here by nazis, forced to dig, and then executed on the spot.

oh these are FANTASTIC <3

DHS funding bill faces new Senate hurdles after another person killed in Minneapolis Some Democrats who voted for recent funding bills said they'll vote against any DHS bill without restrictions on enforcement operations. The deadline to avert a shutdown is Friday.

YOUR PHONE CALLS TO THE SENATE ARE WORKING. KEEP CALLING.

202–224-3121

Three Democrats who previously broke with the party and voted with the GOP are now saying they will not vote for the bill. That’s enough for the bill to be unpassable right now.

ad for Epiphany: Exegesis, pages 1:33 to 1:35. Val, Welles, Andrew and Eli cross a street in Savannah lined with old townhouses. They're silhouetted by the evening sun. Dialogue: "...I HAVEN'T TOLD HIM ABOUT MY CHAT IWTH DR. REED YET." "SMART MOVE. GOOD LUCK KEEPING THAT UNDER WRAPS, THOUGH."

What, no potluck contribution? There are newly annotated EPIPHANY: EXEGESIS pages live for subscribers on https://patreon.com/irisjay and https://subscribestar.adult/irisjay !

The first General Strike in 80 years We're at war, and now people are fighting back like never before

Today is the day. Right now hundreds of Minnesota businesses and institutions are shut down. Thousands of people are refusing to work. There’s a massive picket at the airport. Minnesota’s resistance to ICE today is changing the tenor our fight against fascism.

www.jphilll.com/p/the-first-...

Illustration of the statue of Liberty raising an arm above her head. The flaming torch in her hand is melting the word ICE over her. Text reads Abolish ICE

Solidarity for Minnesota and their general strike today.
It's incredibly inspiring seeing the community and mutual aid that's come together there.

#AbolishICE
#FuckICE

an ad for CROSSED WIRES 03.196. a big-ass robot is in the act of stomping its foot down.

Sometimes you just want your worst problem to be a shitty guy whose face is within punching range. There's a new comic page of CROSSED WIRES live on https://crossedwires.irisjay.net ! Pages 196, 197 and 198 are also live on https://patreon.com/irisjay and https://subscribestar.adult/irisjay !

I came to Minneapolis to report on what's going on, and one of the main questions I showed up with is "just what is the scale of the resistance?" After all, we're all used to the news calling Portland a "war zone" or whatever when it's just some protests in one part of town.

excerpt from Goodbye My Idol. the japanese title is "Sayonara Boku wa Idol", which provides more context for the whole conceit

7. GOODBYE MY IDOL, by Yuta Ito, 2026-ongoing - dipshit boy gets magically forcefemmed and hijacked into restarting his high school's pop idol club. this is 100% ecchi trash and i doubt it'll last. it does have some REALLY stupid jokes, though. and, well, i'll give any gender bend story a chance,

cover image for The Creepy And Freaky

excerpt from The Creepy And Freaky

excerpt from The Creepy And Freaky

6. THE CREEPY AND FREAKY, by Kamentotsu, 2025-ongoing - began as a simple series of creepypasta stories with a goofy Animal Crossing style framing device, but has since become something... stranger. i love how the artist uses drastic visual style shifts in unexpected and narratively relevant ways.

5. DELINQUENT GACHA, by Hiroshi Shimomoto, 2025-ongoing - it's Bully School. it's Fucked Up School Where Everyone Is Bullies. you know how it is. This is running on Shueisha's Manga+ app right now, but it's got some real indie zine funk on its art, like something that'd show up in Ax magazine. fun!