Issue 49: From the Pulp Lit Pulpit

Never Just One Thing

In our Winter 2026 issue of Pulp Literature, Sierra Louie contemplates comics, change, and the cold. Challenge what you know about seasons and storytelling with this glimpse at our editorial from Pulp Literature Issue 49.

From the Pulp Lit Pulpit: Never Just One Thing

by Sierra Louie

Cole Degenstein opens his comic It Really Is with an illustration of a discarded mattress, a wilted house plant, and some trash bags all huddled up along the side of the road. Scrawled over top of this image are the words Winter treats the body like a mess to be cleaned up later.

I think the days leading up to the new year feel a lot like this. Few things are completely lost — the trees are bare but will grow leaves again, the birds fly south but inevitably find their way back home. We know this, but there is something disorienting about the in-between. What do we do once the earth has finished freezing over? I suppose we wait for it to thaw.

Winter is a strange season. With it, we retreat indoors, fill the empty landscape with ideas of loss. And yet, in the thick of it all, we choose this time to celebrate a new year. Most days, the sky is dark, but nothing illuminates quite like the sun on fresh snow. This season is rarely ever just one thing. While the natural world is steeped in decay, the cold has the power to preserve. We experience the shortest of days, but from then on our evenings only get lighter. And just when we think it might never end, a crocus juts out from the frost. We don’t talk about how their endurance of the cold is the very thing that allows them to bloom come spring.

The stories that make up this issue are much the same — never just one thing, always challenging what we think we know. They remind us to embrace the beauty in the strange and horrific, to find comfort in the things we didn’t realize we were seeking, and to understand that some reunions first necessitate a separation.

Rarely static, these works remind us that even a moment of pause exists on the precipice of change. Maybe the cold is just what we need to prepare us for what comes next.

~ Sierra Louie

See what else Pulp Literature Issue 49, Winter 2026 has in store!

Sierra Louie is a Chinese-Canadian writer, artist, and editor working on unceded Musqueam, Squamish, and Tsleil-Waututh land. She holds an MFA in Creative Writing from the University of British Columbia and writes across multiple genres including comics, fiction, and poetry. Her work has appeared in CV2, Grain, SAD Mag, and elsewhere. Find her comics in issues 41 and 48 of Pulp Literature.