With PEPPER (Toon Books), Karl Stevens brings us the latest adventures of existentialist housecat, Penny, and her eponymous sister. We talk about the fun of making a sequel to 2021's PENNY, the challenge of getting all the cats' markings right, how he found the right balance in the voices & outlooks of his main cat-characters, how giving Pepper mystical powers allowed him to get away from drawing his apartment over and over, and how cat comics PULL. We get into his realist drawing style and the underexamined potential of realistic art in comics, his upcoming gallery show of oil paintings, how he might fuse his interest in comics and oils by exploring narrative genre paintings, his collaborations with other writers (and the cartoonists he'd love to write for), and how listening to music on vinyl gives him an excuse to get up from the drawing table and stretch every 20 minutes. We also discuss Something Fell, the page-by-page podcast he co-hosts about Dave Sim's Cerebus comics to try to appreciate Sim's art and storytelling modes, his recent focus on Pre-Raphaelite painters, his progress with finishing the last book of Knausgaard's My Struggle, his thoughts on making one more big autobio book, life after having to say goodbye to Penny and whether he's drawn her since, and a lot more. Follow Karl on Instagram and check out his Linktree • More info at our site • Support The Virtual Memories Show via Stripe, Patreon, or Paypal, and subscribe to our e-newsletter