From Lin Visel and Joseph Bergin III, also known as Owlin, the co-creators of the graphic novel “How Do You Smoke a Weed?” — comes “THAT SEXY BEAR!” a witty and campy graphic novel filled to the brim with metatextual humor. The book, which is now being crowdfunded on Kickstarter by Spike Trotman’s Iron Circus Comics, is a satirical graphic novel about two bears in Cascadia Falls National Park who become the unwitting faces of an advertising campaign for a product polluting their home. The launch for the campaign is now live on Kickstarter.

Owlin

“THAT SEXY BEAR! is about advertising’s effect on nature & how nature advertises. It’s a love letter to 50s and 60s television. We wanted to pay respect to cartoonists like Ed Benedict and Gene Hazelton, along with the mama bears that raised us.”

Now, just in time for the Kickstarter campaign’s launch, the good folks at Iron Circus Comics and the Duo Owlin are sharing these exclusive preview pages of their latest book, “That Sexy Bear.”

A park ranger looks through binoculars and sees a singing woman on a tree; musical notes and "BADA DUH DA!" appear in the air. A group of people in a forest spot a bear eating berries; they react with surprise and admiration while hiding behind bushes. A comic strip shows two men in safari hats admiring a curvy woman in the jungle, reacting with surprise and excitement as she walks by. Two people stand by a lake, talking about missing people and food. One asks about berries, the other prefers donuts. The scene is set outdoors with trees and mountains in the background. Two women in swimsuits stand by a lake; one points to a group of approaching park rangers, then shouts at them to leave after a brief exchange. Three people observe Bigfoot-like creatures in a forest; one holds a bottle, another takes notes, and the creatures wear fashionable outfits while running away. Three women jog through a forest trail. One talks about fashion, another says she's hot and cool, and the third suggests going to a picnic area because she's hungry.

That Sexy Bear

Welcome to beautiful and scenic Cascadia Falls National Park! Commodified, gentrified, consumerized, and digitized, the Elysian environs of 21st-century Cascadia is now just more Content©™… and so are its hopelessly-acclimatized-to-tourists bears, Ginger and Yaya. Involuntary beer mascots and social media stars, they’ve forgotten how to bear entirely, much to the frustration and chagrin of their park ranger caretakers, Eggs and Ricardo. But things are getting weird now, even for Cascadia. The exploitation’s been kicked up a notch, with a mysterious SUV and colonizing copycat among the new crop of troubles threatening the park! Can bear and ranger, hand-in-paw, push back against the invasion? Or are they as doomed to digestion for digital gain as the rest of us?

Iron Circus Founder Spike Trotman

“THAT SEXY BEAR! is just the right amount of Completely Nuts. Equal parts insight, homage, whimsy and weird. Echoes of classic mid-century cartoons, crossed with 21st century sociopolitical anxiety and TikTok shitposting. It’s a terrible but familiar vision of eking out an existence in an Always Online America. Y’all are gonna dig this one.”

The Kickstarter Campaign for “That Sexy Bear” by The Dynamic Duo Owlin launches on April 22nd under the auspices of Spike Trotman’s Iron Circus Comics. You can find the link for the campaign here.

Black-and-white comic-style image of a bear wearing glasses running through a forest with honey, pursued by two distressed people; text promotes an adult comedy graphic novel.