Josie Long’s latest show, Now Is the Time of Monsters, combines her trademark leftist politics with a newfound fascination for prehistoric megafauna. The title is taken from a quote by Antonio Gramsci: “The old world is dying, and the new world struggles to be born. Now is the time of monsters.” Long, now 43, delivers a candid dispatch from her life, navigating a painful separation from her children’s father while grappling with the state of the world.
The show opens with sketches of prehistoric predators on flashcards, a hobby Long shares with her children. These domestic snapshots also include tales of her recent concussion, which altered her perception of time, and a near-death experience involving the family hamster. Long’s children appear, testing her patience with early rises and demands to be carried, while she coaches them in far-left politics.
Long’s attention soon turns to larger beasts, exploring how every animal today had a surprisingly larger or smaller ancestor. She highlights the giant ground sloth, as big as an elephant, and reflects on humanity’s removal of almost all other animals of our size from the environment. The show toggles between dark despair at our capacity for destruction and wonder, imagining her family living in the painted Chauvet caves 30,000 years ago.
This image is both playful and poignant, in a show that ranges across territory other comics seldom approach. Long deftly uses the conceit of extinct animals to excavate optimism in the cycle of extinction and recovery. As her fans know, optimism is the Long game.
