So-called “creative types” have been using their art to process loss since time immemorial, but seldom does it come across as raw, as unfettered, and yet as understated as it does in the pages of issue 27 of veteran cartoonist/illustrator Mike Taylor’s Late Era Clash. Between these two-color riso covers (interior pages also coming off a riso, but in stark black and white) is an unmediated primal scream delivered at whisper-quite volume in response to a silent and gaping void of nothingness, as large and as unfathomable as the universe itself.

Here’s the thing, though : it was all supposed to be something entirely different.

When Taylor started work on this ‘zine in 2015 (it’s just starting to get some distribution today, though) his idea was to throw the veil off his artistic process — and those early pages survive, complete with his ever-present, insistent questioning of his tools…