The Pit is a cartoon-filled newspaper about swamps, mommies and ice fishing

The Pit is a quarterly themed newspaper mostly distributed around coffee shops in Providence, New York City, but if you happen to pass by its creator Jules Sharpe’s studio, you’ll see it in a physical newspaper box that’s been redesigned as a house on fire, a symbolic representation of the newspaper itself. Clustered, quirky and cute, The Pit is a multi-layered, multi-media project from Jules’ cartoon-filled mind. After some bad experiences with the publishing and editorial industry, Jules shifted to comics and claimed a space where they could become their own industry – through Risograph printing and eccentric illustrations.

After graduating from RISD, and joining a print studio in Providence called Binch Press, which is a studio that centers queer/trans and BIPOC artists, Jules focused on drawing with radiographic pens, operating Risograph presses and scanning images. Each issue of The Pit follows a new theme, whether it be about ice fishing or swamps. One is even themed around mommies. The colour schemes and art styles follow suit, with a frosty blue palette for the ice fishing issue and sickly greens for the swamp – the intuitive colouring immediately makes the viewer feel like they’ve been placed in a lively cartoon world. The drawings feature ‘halloween pickers’, talking dogs, quaint characters fishing on a frozen over lake and a ton of hand-drawn letters that make the universe inside The Pit feel completely handmade.

“It’s been awesome making a paper, I feel like I’ve gotten to know a lot of people through submissions or just distributing the paper around randomly” says Jules. “It feels like something that makes me optimistic in these times. It’s nice to make something that’s sustaining itself, and that’s not reliant on an internet platform, a gallery space, or grant funding.” With sustainability as a main focus, Jules distributes the newspapers for free and in person – with their icky feelings about the publishing industry in mind, Jules subverts this by getting right to the heart of alternative magazine fans.

Another quirk of The Pit is the advertisements inside, a concept borrowed by Jules’ friend Jacob Berendes, creator of Mothers News. Through the ads, Jules can support local businesses in their signature whimsical style. “A recent favorite is an ad for Rename Victory Day, an ad I made for Lois Harada, who has been running a political and print campaign to rename a holiday in Rhode Island currently called Victory Day,” says Jules.

As well as creating The Pit, Jules has also learned how to code from their friend who owns the server ‘cancelled.work’, a network which hosts a haven of alternative websites. On The Pit’s site, people can access all of the PDF files of all four issues as well as links on how to submit and advertise – Jules intends to work on it some more and “make it even sillier”.

“Sometimes it feels like I’m doing a book report, which I really love,” says Jules, who is interested in education outside of university contexts. It’s kind of like light, fun investigative journalism – everything about The Pit is a breath of fresh air, from its dense, imaginative pages full of information to the lightness of the topics and cute characters. This zine-esque, cartoon filled newspaper of sorts is anything but traditional, but that’s what makes it worthwhile. “I’m a cartoonist, so most of my publishing and design experience comes from self-publishing comics and zines!” says Jules. “I feel like it just makes sense in my brain.”