Writer/Artist: Paul Rainey
Publisher: www.bookoflists.com
Rainey has been self-published for what seems like donkey's years. I first remember seeing his work on his superhero title Memory Man, at a one-off UK con "Independents Day" in Nottingham, more years ago than I care to remember. Through the intervening years he's refined his technique, obviously learnt an awful lot about writing and pacing - and been disciplined enough to provide a new webcomic each and every day on his website The Book of Lists.
There's No Time Like The Present takes everything he's learnt about writing and drawing comics in the last ten years, and distills it down into a finite-length series, ostensibly about the lives of Cliff and Kelly - they are friends (no more), he's just moved out of his dad's house and into hers as a lodger, and this is the story of their frustrating lives in modern day Britain.
Except it isn't really, because there's this weird undercurrent that occasionally hits you hard: the devil stands waiting for a bus; you can download future episodes of television before they've even been made; you can dip into future plans to see if a favourite shop is going to still be around in five years time, or if something even better is on the way. Rainey expertly underplays this - dropping in references here and there, but keeping it low-key and in the background, whilst casting out tantalising details for the reader to prevent us going up to him, punching him in the face and shouting "what the fuck is going on, Rainey?". We know all will be revealed eventually - until then it's up to us to piece the clues together and work it out.
And that's just the background detail - in the meantime we have Cliff (who to the mind of this reader is desperate to shack up with Kelly but is too insecure to actually ask her or anything) leading a somewhat unfulfilled life (although he has possibly the best use of a copy of Previews that anyone could ever devise). We have Kelly, who hates her job (her experiences seem to be very much drawn from Rainey's, and will resonate strongly with anyone who has ever worked in an office environment). We have Cliff's dad, his weird mate Barry, an extremely dodgy guy from the local comics shop...whom everyone dislikes but they just can't stop going there), and a great suggestion as to how comics shops can reinvigorate their trade by teaming up with massage parlours.
I haven't even had time to get into the expertly crafted dialogue, nor the exquisite panel layout (Rainey understands that to depict real life, a structured approach is essential, eight panels per page in a 4x2 grid - with occasional half-page panels to set the scene, or make a dramatic impact, or give a shocking change of pace. Issue two does this best of all, with three such panels hitting the reader hard - one where we find out who (or what) Derek is (I will say no more on this subject to prevent spoiling the surprise), and a further pair of panels, very similar to each other with one important difference, separated by a few pages.
The second issue is slightly superior to the first, and although it has a good recap page at the start, you really can't afford to miss the unique use of Previews from issue one - order them both from the website The Book of Lists.
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