Tarot of the Absurd

Jessica Shanahan works only in black and white here, flowing lines across a limited edition capped at six hundred copies, self-published rather than picked up by a house. The archive leads with a strong reaction to that restraint: real uniqueness credited to the monochrome palette and the line work itself, with the small print run named as another layer of the same feeling rather than a separate selling point. Working in black and white only is a real constraint, not a neutral one, and whether it reads as confident restraint or a self-published budget limit depends on the cards themselves, which the available excerpt does not show beyond the archive's enthusiasm for the line work. Six hundred copies is small enough that most readers encounter this deck secondhand or not at all, which fits its self-published, outsider footing more than a wide release would have. It suits collectors of small press and monochrome decks who want line drawing alone to carry a reading.