Present

“Clamorous, colorful pages swoon between childhood memories and anecdotes of daily life… Like Kandinsky illustrating Virginia Woolf.”Globe & Mail“Stein combines minimalist, but highly expressive, linework with delicate painted colors and there’s a lot of strength in the simplicity of her storytelling.”AV Club

Leslie Stein is the creator of the Eye of the Majestic Creature series, as well as the diary comic Bright-Eyed at Midnight. Her diary comics appear regularly on Vice. She lives in Brooklyn, NY.

A lyrical exploration of the city and memory, as drawn by a Vice cartoonistLeslie Stein takes us on a sinuous urban stroll divorced from destination, glimpsing New York City through her open eyes. Stein’s curiosity about and generosity toward the world around her come through powerfully: each colorful story flows with vivid watercolors and delicate ink lines. Stein asks us to take a moment to be here now, while acknowledging the other places and people we always carry with us.. Stein is a master storyteller, an urban explorer, and a loyal guide through dark days and simple, blissful encounters. With an introduction and new material, Present will be a deluxe die-cut hardcover that is a meditation on memory. Here, an autobiography is built through memories and moments tied together by loose lines, evoking a beautiful dreamlike yet endlessly relatable glimpse into the world of a thirty-something woman carving out a life for herself, one step at a time.Known for her acclaimed Eye of the Majestic Creature series, collected here are Stein’s serialized Vice comics which have become a staple for the site, showcasing her storytelling abilities with a freer style. While she is closing up a bar late at night, she is also an adolescent at a rave in the mountains, an adult grappling with her grandfather’s fading memory or at one of her first waitressing jobs