Just In (Case You Missed It) - New Stuff Archives 1Q 2013

New for March 2013

BK-HD

Hand-Drying in America and Other Stories
by Ben Katchor
Pulses raced throughout the shop as these meticulously designed and printed 11 5/8" x 12 1/4" hardcover books emerged from the box they were shipped in. This book is cover to cover fabulosity; not a square inch of wasted space is to be found. What we have on hand here are the more than 150 (!) full color – and what color! Katchor is revealed here to be a colorist par excellence (think Pierre Bonnard) – full page strips Katchor has been producing since 1988 for Metropolis, the excellent and, crucially for our enjoyment of these Katchor strips, oversize magazine devoted to architecture, design and, as the name suggests, urban living. Rather than struggle to find the words to adequately describe this gem, we are going to refer you to the ever insightful and always articulate Jeet Heer's review in The Globe and Mail. Is this Katchor's best book yet? It's too soon to say, but the answer may very well be yes. Regardless of the verdict, what's certain is that Hand-Drying in America is an æsthetically delightful and intellectually stimulating work that will leave its readers with a truer understanding and better appreciation of city life than they had before cracking its covers. Recommended!
retail price - $29.95 copacetic price - $25.95

OTR

On the Ropes
by Dan E. Burr and James Vance
Will wonders never cease? Who knew that writer, James Vance, and illustrator Dan Burr had been hard at work on a massive sequel to Kings in Disguise, their highly original series depicting depression-era America that originally saw print as a six-issue mini-series from Kitchen Sink Press way back in 1988? Not us! On the Ropes is a 248 page oversize hardcover that takes us to the year 1937, where Fred Bloch – the protagonist of Kings in Disguise – has found a temporary home in a WPA-sponsored traveling circus! Here's what Alan Moore has to say about this just released work: "More than twenty years in its construction and worth every moment of the wait, James Vance and Dan Burr's On the Ropes is that most rare of animals, a sequel that's as powerful, as vital, and as necessary as the work that it continues. A quietly epic human tale that beautifully and expertly employs the comic medium in its telling, On the Ropes is very possible the most affecting graphic narrative that you will read the next couple of decades." High praise, indeed, from someone who should know.
retail price - $24.95 copacetic price - $22.22

LIG

Letting It Go
by Miriam Katin
While we're on the subject of long-in-the-making sequels, now would be a good time to bring Miriam Katin's follow up memoir. Her previous work, We Are On Our Own was a memoir of her childhood escape from the Nazis during World War II. This time around we find Katin struggling to come to terms with her son's decision to move to Berlin, the former center of the Nazi menace and so origin of the trauma at the center of her life, and, needless to say, the lives – and, of course, deaths – of so many others. Travel with Katin in the vehicle of her expressive, pencil-drawn comics – this time around in full color – as she twice travels from her home in New York to Berlin, first to visit her son and the to attend a museum opening for a show that features her own artwork. Get a head start with this PDF preview.
retail price - $24.95 copacetic price - $22.22

Hair Shirt
by Patrick McEown
This work was released in French by Gaillimard in 2010, then in the UK in 2011, and now it has at last made its way into the North American distribution system and onto the Copacetic new releases table. Published by SelfMadeHero, the same folks who brought us Nao of Brown, Hair Shirt is another finely printed, well produced work by a talented artist given free reign to follow their particular muse and see where it leads them. Patrick McEown is a Canadian cartoonist who has been working since the mid-80s (anybody remember Aircel's Samurai?) and may be best known for his work with Matt Wagner on Grendel. While there's a hint of his pal Dave Cooper in McEown's inking, he has clearly established his own voice in comics. Nowhere is this more true than in the distinctive palette of his coloring, which is amply on display here, in the primarily nocturnal settings of Hair Shirt's action. McEown's muse has led him to to produce a sensually rendered account of youthful sexual exploration and discovery in a nameless Canadian "City" under the cover of night.
retail price - $24.95 copacetic price - $22.22

BJ1

Men's Group: The Video
by Ben Jones
Best known to Copacetic customers as 1/3 of the comics/art/animation/music/performance group Paper Rad, Ben Jones has been using that part of his day not spent devoted to his animation work establishing himself in the international fine arts community with exhibits at museums and galleries around the world, including The Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles, The Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth and the Loyal Gallery, Malmö – at which three institutions much of the work to be found here was shown. Men's Group: The Video is a unique book, BJ2

edited by Dan Nadel, designed by Norman Hathaway and published by PictureBox (of course). Bound together in a slick cardstock ringbinder that evokes a vague space somewhere between high school locker and corporate business meeting are eight distinct sections, each defined by a specific combination of page dimensions and paper stock: a collection of InstaGram™ photos taken by visitors to Jones's installation for the exhibit TransmissionLA at MOCA LA; a collections of writings on Jones, his work and the concept of manhood by Joe Bradley, Byron Coley, Phil Grauer, Dacid Kramer, Keith McColluch, Gary Panter, Nicole Rudick and Peter Saul and an interview/conversation between Dan Nadel and Ben Jones; and a series of separate selections of paintings, video paintings, drawings, comics, manufactured products and "Black Math". We have a (very) few signed copies that come with a BJ/PB tote bag that will enable you to leave Whole Foods in style. First come first served. (still a couple left!)
retail price - $34.95 copacetic price - $31.75

True Chubbo presents Infinidick
by Family Sohn
Infinidick is a 44 page signed (well, initialed, actually) and numbered (300 copies) Risograph collection of True Chubbo, the "beloved" strip of cartooned, scatologically leaning, sexually oriented humor by the husband-and-wife team known as Family Sohn, that appears weekly on the PictureBox site. To call this strip unique is putting it mildly. Release your inner child into the world of contemporary urban adult sexuality, if you dare.
retail price - $12.00 copacetic price - $10.75

Negron
by Johnny Negron
We have had this one at the shop for a bit, but were late in getting it up here: the PictureBox collection of Johnny Negron's sumptuous, full color, pinup style renderings of zaftig girls, skinny boys and... ants – but mostly girls. There are also a couple black and white continuity comics thrown in for good measure: "Violence City" and "Library"; and the dustjacket unfolds to reveal life in "The Year 3000." Negron!
retail price - $19.95 copacetic price - $17.77

TCJ302

The Comics Journal #302
Another mammoth 600+ pages of top notch articles, surveys, reviews, new comics by Joe Sacco and Lewis Trondheim, and epic length interviews with Maurice Sendak and Jacques Tardi. Surprise bonuses include a late (last?) interview with adventure strip legend, Roy Crane along with the never-before-published "How to Draw Buz Sawyer" manual that Crane prepared for his apprentice. Plus in-depth and unexpected looks at Mort Weisinger and Fredric Wertham. And a transcription of the internet-enabled roundtable discussion that preceded the creation of Spiegelman and Mouly's massive collection of children's comics from several years back. More!
retail price - $30.00 copacetic price - $25.00

MiaB

Messages In a Bottle
by Bernie Krigstein
This softcover edition is likely to be the definitive collection of this Atomic Age master's comic book work. Krigstein was fully conversant in multiple genres and this volume contains a full complement of his best stories. Many were previously issued in the now out of print 2004 Fantagraphics hardcover, B. Krigstein Comics. Messages includes additional stories, most notably his most famous work, the EC classic, "Master Race", from Impact #1. All the artwork has been cleaned up, remastered for truer color reproduction and looks great as a result. The work on dislay here has exerted – and continues to exert – a tremendous influence on the development of the comics form and language. Comics apprentices and novices, along with aficionados and conoisseurs, take note.
retail price - $35.00 copacetic price - $29.75

TDT2

Tales Designed to Thrizzle, Volume Two
by Michael Kupperman
Among the legions of Thrizzle fans, those few who shun the comic book floppy pamphlet in favor of book collections can at last rejoice, as this second colection will end their long drought and bring them several years worth of Thrizzling Tales in one go. Tales Designed to Thrizzle, Volume Two collects in their entirety the fifth through the eighth issues of this definitive twenty-first century take on absurdity in four-color comic book form.
retail price - $24.99 copacetic price - $22.22

Cartooning: Philosophy and Practice
by Ivan Brunetti
This slim tome contains the essence of Brunetti's course in cartooning at Chicago's Columbia College. It was initially packaged together with Comic Art #9, the last issue of this fabled magazine, which was a best seller here at Copacetic (and which we still have in stock). It was subsequently issued as a stand alone volume by Yale University Press, publisher of the two Brunetti-edited anthologies of comics and graphic fiction that are our go-to volumes for introducing new readers to the splendors of the form. Erudite, entertaining, and, of course, educational, Brunetti's Cartooning is well worth the while of anyone interested in learning how comics are constructed. Get a taste from this Chicago Mag preview.
retail price - $13.00 copacetic price - $11.75

BowieNew

The Next Day (CD)
by David Bowie
Push the Sky Away (CD/DVD)
by Nick Cave
It is probably doing a disservice both to lump these two new releases together, but it's too late now. It is highly likely that

those reading this who have even a passing interest in either of these two celebrated musical artist/performers are already well aware of their recent releases, but there is always the chance that there are some who are unaware that we have them in stock here at Copacetic. Anyone curious about The Next Day who has yet to check out the two videos released thus far may do so now by clicking here and here.
The Next Day – "deluxe" edition, w/ 3 extra tracks - copacetic price - $15.75
Push the Sky Away – "deluxe" edition, w/ DVD, packaged in hardcover book(let) - copacetic price - $19.75

I Dreamed I Was a Very Clean Tramp
by Richard Hell
Richard Hell can certainly count himself among the founders of punk rock; if anyone can be credited with pioneering the spiky hair, ripped T-shirt and safety pin look that became the visual hallmark of punk, it is Richard Meyers, who most know and love – or hate, or love to hate, or hate to love – as Richard Hell. Of course, there is much more to punk than the pose, and Richard Hell was in at the birth of the form, singing, writing songs, and playing bass with, first and foremost, Tom Verlaine (née Miller) in the original Television, as one of The Heartbreakers with legendary rock martyr Johnny Thunders, and, perhaps most importantly, fronting the Voidoids with guitar-master Robert Quine. Between these two covers, we get his take on his punk years and more. Richard Hell has been considering himself more of a writer than a musician for quite a while now, and not without reason: he has developed a cogent and readable style that is easily several notches above that found in typical a rock memoir and that is pretty much guaranteed to be of interest to anyone with a yen to learn more about those halcyon punk days; but don't expect another Just Kids.
retail price - $25.99 copacetic price - $23.75

One Tick Rip-Off + Deep Cuts
by Paul Pope
The long Paul Pope drought has at last ended, although with a reprint edition rather than a new work. The works in this 288 page hardcover edition are, however, new in that most of them are presented in full color for the first time. All the works collected here are from the 1990s, covering the years in which Pope transitioned from his native Columbus, OH to NYC, via Toronto and Tokyo. Taken as a whole, the works provide a solid slice of Pope's oeuvre. While many, perhaps most, fans of Pope's work may already have these works in their collections, anyone who is only familiar with his works via his work for DC's Vertigo imprint – and, of course, anyone heretofore unfamiliar with his work – would do well to check out this volume. Pope is a gifted cartoonist whose work is informed by the energies of art rock and fine art as well as comics and manga, and the years covered in this volume represent his most fertile period. Here's a Preview.
retail price - $29.99 copacetic price - $27.50

Copra #5
by Michel FIffe
All readers who number themselves among the burgeoning legion of Copra fans are hereby notified that the fifth issue of this full color comic book, written, pencilled, inked, colored, edited, published and distributed by Michel Fiffe, is here.
retail price - $5.00 copacetic price - $5.00

Items from our March 2013 listings may now be purchased online at our eCommerce site, HERE.

New for February 2013

Copra #1 - 4
by Michel Fiffe

There's been a lot of interest and excitement generated by this self-published (monthly!), 24 page, full color title written and drawn by Michel Fiffe, and now that we have the comics in the shop we can see why! It may be the first true post-Fort Thunder superhero team book (we'd like to know what Chippendale thinks of this...). Our first impressions were something along the lines of: the drawing energy of Frank Miller's Ronin via some of the conceptual aspects of Grant Morrison's Doom Patrol seasoned with a bit of the cosmic quirkiness of Joe Casey and Tom Scioli 's Godland. Evidently, however, Copra is inspired – at least in part – by Fiffe's quasi-obsession with Suicide Squad, the 1980s DC title by John Ostrander, Luke McDonnell, Kim Yale & Co. Regardless, this is an artistically original and highly enthusiastic take on the the superhero team book that is invigorating its readership. These issues are small batch print runs (although he is, evidently, not averse to reprinting; our copies of #1 are 2nd prints) so don't spend too much time making up your mind about this one. Once you get an eyeful at Fiffe's site, we think you'll be able to come to a decision pretty quickly.
retail price - $5.00@ copacetic price - $5.00@

c55

Cometbus #55: Pen Pals
by Aaron Cometbus
The latest issue of the ur-punkzine has arrived out of the blue. Set primarily in Berkeley, CA this issue starts off in the summer of 1988 and runs for 40 chapters filling 72 pages. Sporting a snazzy wraparound cover by Jordan Crane this cultural mainstay costs but a mere three dollars. It's the new Cometbus! What more do you need to know?
retail price - $3.00 copacetic price - $3.00

45 #7: Radon
by Travis Fristoe & Aaron Cometbus
And here's a treat, a second work by Mr. Cometbus, this one (co-)authored with Travis Fristoe. In this slim 44-page take-off on Continuum's popular 33 1/3 series of LP monographs, he and fellow traveler Fristoe each take a stab at laying down their thoughts and feelings on the obscure-yet-legendary Gainesville, FL 90s punk band, Radon.
retail price - $4.00 copacetic price - $4.00

SOB

St. Owl's Bay
by Simon Hanselmann
Tasmanian internet sensation Simon "Truth Zone" Hanselmann has, with St. Owl's Bay, produced an all-new work that is the third in the series of massive – 15" x 22" – full color broadsheets being published by Portland, Oregon's Floating World bookshop. This eight-page adventure takes Hanselmann's tower block apartment protagonists on their first ever camping trip. How will these jaded virtual reality habituès fare in the great out-of-doors? No one will be surprised to learn that things don't go as planned...
retail price - $5.00 copacetic price - $4.50

Freddie Stories
by Lynda Barry
Here's the next installment of Drawn and Quarterly's Complete Comics of Lynda Barry project. It is the first to mimic the horizontal format of the majority of previous collections of Barry's work, although, of course, unlike the previous (pre-D&Q) editions, this one is a deluxe hardcover – no cheap, flimsy paperback here. And, also unlike the previous edition of Freddie Stories, this comes with a large number of heretofore unpublished strips!
retail price - $19.95 copacetic price - $17.77

CPG

Cursed Pirate Girl
by Jeremy Bastian
This all-ages fantasy tale of a girl pirate in search of her father is packaged in a ragged-edge edition with an embossed hardcover upon which it is billed as a "nautical fairy tale of strange creatures, whimsical characters, swashbuckling danger and the the most bizarre pirates you could hope for." In addition to the appeal offered by this description, we will also offer the fact that fans of detailed pen and ink rendering will be sure to find what they're looking for here. Take a gander of some of what is in store for readers with this full-screen preview.
retail price - $24.95 copacetic price - $22.22

Sgc

Susceptible
by Geneviéve Castrée
It's been awhile since we were last treated to a solid chunk of Ms. Castrée's lush linework in print form may now at lat rejoice. This black and white hardcover volume from Drawn and Quarterly is "a devastating graphic novel ... about the heartbreaking loss of innocence when a child is forced to be the adult amongst grownups" that relates the childhood and young adult years of a "daydreamer" who finds her way to adulthood through a path constructed of "punk rock, drawing and the promise of true independence." Here's a nice PDF preview courtesy of D&Q.
retail price - $19.95 copacetic price - $17.77

MdF

Molecules
by Michael DeForge
This new, 8-page, B & W micro-comic, with color cardstock cover, from Space Face Books presents a visually enticing dose of absurdo-science which engages the reader in their alienation from the scientification of the everyday.
retail price - $3.00 copacetic price - gone!

Henry & Glenn Forever + Ever
by Tom Neely, Ed Luce, Ben Marra, et al
32 more pages of comics that probe contemporary youth's conceptions of masculinity and its relationship to sexual orientation through two iconic counter-culture figures that emerged from the musical underground in the early 1980s and, evidently, continue to resonate with audiences thirty years later. Now available in this destined-to-be-a-collector's-item edition sporting the definitive rendering of this concept by Jim Rugg drawing in the manner of Tom of Finland.
retail price - $5.00 copacetic price - $5.00

Gray Is Not a Color
by Sally Madden
The latest (as of this writing) in the series of Retrofit Comics oneshots, Gray Is Not a Color presents its readers with a humorous – and informative – tale of the author's (high school [see below] senior) year working in, of all places, the basement of the The Mutter Museum (of medical oddities!) at The College of Physicians of Philadelphia. An abundance of playful anecdotes, vignettes, reminiscences, and just plain old stories fill this comic book to overflowing, giving readers quite a bang for their buck.
retail price - $5.00 copacetic price - $4.50

NMSD17

Not My Small Diary #17: Stories from High School
edited by Delaine Derry Green
It is clear that stories that harken back to high school days are a perennial staple of comics publishing, and so we suppose that it was ineveitbale that NMSD would devote an issue to this very popular theme. This time around we have a 136 page perfectbound collection of over fifty (!) tales from those oh-so formative years by a host of alphabetically ordered contributors including T. Edward Bak, Donna Barr, Box Brown, Brad Foster, Roberta Gregory, Dave Kiersh, Carrie McNinch, Dan Moynihan, Misun Oh, John Porcellino, Liz Prince, Lizzee Solomon, Julia Wertz, Shannon Wheeler, and many others.
retail price - $7.00 copacetic price - $6.00

Banksy: The Man Behind the Wall
by Will Ellsworth-Jones
The unauthorized (could there be any other kind?) bio of the undisputed king of using public spaces for his own (artistic) ends. To learn more about this book, read this review in the New Republic by Sophie Gilbert.
retail price - $27.99 copacetic price - $25.00

The Bird King: An Artist's Notebook
by Shaun Tan
A sketch book cum idea file by the author of The Arrival, this is an attractively produced clothbound hardcover printed in full color and black and white. See the creative mind in action, exploring visual concepts and ideas. This guy can draw!
retail price - $19.99 copacetic price - $17.77

Items from our February 2013 listings may now be purchased online at our eCommerce site, HERE.

New for January 2013

BTA

Beta Testing the Apocalypse
by Tom Kaczynski
Here they are, at last under one cover: the tales of extreme alienation and deeply seated paranoia, of emotions replaced by systems and humanity crushed by its own technology, all leading to the inevitable crumbling of civilization, that ran in MOME between 2007 and 2011, including the masterful "Million Year Boom," about which we enthused on the occasion of its original release in MOME 11, "(It) will knock your socks off. It is probably the first wholly successful translation of the Ballardian (as in J.G. Ballard) narrative approach to science fiction yet achieved in comics form. This deeply creepy tale brings us face to face with a world where major corporate leaders so deeply internalize their own marketing messages and stock market hype that they become untethered from consensus reality and move into the ambiguous landscapes of delusion, paranoia and insanity that were so successfully mined by Ballard (and, to be fair, by many others, most notably Philip K Dick; but none so well as Ballard, who is most convincingly evoked here). While the influence of Clowes is certainly evident in Kaczynski's work, he has created a wholly original synthesis here." But wait, there's more! Beta Testing the Apocalypse also contains the previously unpublished – and thus aptly titled – "The New," a 32 page epoch spanning epic that might be Kaczynski's most ambitious tale yet. This flexi-cover volume then concludes with an intriguingly detailed index of the people, places, subjects, objects, themes and concepts it contains, which should serve to inspire readers to dive right back in and revisit the works in a fresh light.
retail price - $19.99 copacetic price - $17.77

AyaLove

Aya: Love in Yop City
by Marguerite Abouet & Clément Ouberie
This 360 page, full color volume is the follow-up to last year's omnibus collection Aya: Life in Yop City, which collected the first three, previously published, volumes in the series, Aya, Aya of Yop CIty and Aya, the Secrets Come Out. This time around we get to go straight to the omnibus collection and the fantastic value if offers. The three volumes are contained in Aya: Love in Yop City are published here for the first time in English, and represent the conclusion to this exuberantly written and lushly illustrated series of life in the Côte d'Ivoire during the 1970s. Written by Ivoirian native, Abouet and illustrated by her French husband, Ouberie, the Aya books have met with great success in their homeland of France, including taking home an award from the Angoulême Festival, and there are plans for a film version. Anyone not yet familiar with this series would do well to take a taste via this PDF preview. This is a great series!
retail price - $24.95 copacetic price - $22.22

Jack Jackson's American History: Los Tejanos and Lost Cause
by Jack Jackson
This volume is sure to become the definitive edition of these two pioneering works of comics history by one of the founders of the underground comics revolution. Jack Jackson (or Jaxon, the Gilbert Shelton supplied nom de plume by which he was widely known during the his underground comics heyday) published God Nose in Texas way back in 1964, before moving to San Francisco in 1966 to co-found Rip Off Press with Gilbert. Los Tejanos was one of the first graphic novels published by Fantagraphics, way back in 1982, at which time it was a total anomaly in the comics market: a work of serious history in comics form. As Ron Hansen writes in his introduction to this volume, "The range of tone, the irony, and the seriousness of his subject matter created a market resistance to Jackson's art that he never overcame. Over twenty years, Los Tejanos sold only 4,000 copies." Lost Cause (the full title of which is Lost Cause: John Wesley Hardin, the Taylor-Sutton Feud, and Reconstruction Texas) was published after a long gestation in 1998 by Kitchen Sink Press. This 313 page hardcover volume features excellent black and white reproductions printed on flat, off-white stock and includes Jackson's 1998 Comics Journal interview, a list of sources, a brief biography by Patrick Rosenkranz, maps and more.
retail price - $35.00 copacetic price - $29.75

JWP

Problematic: Sketchbook Drawings, 2004 - 2012
by Jim Woodring
Despite this book's fairly diminutive dimensions – 5" x 8" – Woodring state in his introduction that the drawings it contains "have been enlarged approximately 140% from the originals." This means two things: 1) Jim Woodring works small; and 2) readers are treated to an up close and personal look at the artist's methods. Pencils are clearly visible under the inks of most drawings, allowing artists curious to learn Woodring's artistic modus operandi plenty of opportunity to do so in this chunky tome's 364 pages of nothing but drawing.
retail price - $28.99 copacetic price - $25.00

The Blonde Woman
by Aidan Koch
Aidan Koch is currently at the forefront of efforts to bring painterly values to comics. Continuing a tradition with forebears including Jeffrey Jones, Jon J Muth and Frank Santoro, Ms. Koch creates comics in which the content is to be found as much through the process of representation as in that which is being represented. The Blonde Woman is a 48 page, full color, graphic novella, printed & perfect bound in a numbered edition of 500 with the assistance of one of the last grants from the Xeric Foundation. The story, as such, is one of doubling, of seeing oneself (or not) in the other, of the projection of subject onto object and the gleaning of awareness that this process offers. As is often the case in narratives such as this, the artist renders her hard won insights unto the reader of the work, who receives illumination, while the characters portrayed remain in the dark. That said, the primary benefits on offer here are æsthetic. Ms. Koch is forging a unique synthesis of the values of classical drawing and painting with those of contemporary cartooning, and The Blonde Woman is the most substantial embodiment of this synthesis she has produced thus far. Well worth a look for anyone who like to extend their appreciations in either direction. And to encourage Copacetic customers to take this look, we are offering a substantial incentive discount for a limited time.
retail price - $20.00 copacetic special price - $13.75

Marbles: Mania, Depression, Michelangelo + Me
by Ellen Forney
Marbles (as in "she's lost her marbles") is the latest widely heralded "graphic memoir" release from a major publisher, in this case, the Gotham Books imprint of Penguin. Maus, Persepolis, Fun Home: these are but the most widely known of among countless others in this quite successful publishing category. There's something about comics that allows an up close and personal communion unequaled by other forms and that makes it perhaps the ideal medium for confessional tales, as first revealed back in 1972 by Justin Green with his Binky Brown Meets the Holy Virgin Mary. As the title suggests, this work focuses on Forney's grappling with a diagnosis of bipolar disorder. No stranger to the graphic memoir, Forney has been a published cartoonist for fifteen years, and and can count among her works the zesty and zany look at her 1970s childhood, Monkey Food. In its focus on psychiatry, coming out and coping, Marbles is a satisfying read and might be a good suggestion for anyone looking to follow up Alison Bechdel's latest, Are You My Mother?, which occupies a similar terrain, albeit on very different terms.
retail price - $20.00 copacetic price - $17.77

BoM

Barrel of Monkeys
by Florent Ruppert and Jérôme Mulot
The creative collaboration between Ruppert and Mulot – who written and drawn by both artists in a "shared visual style" – began when they met at the National School of Arts in Dijon, France. Their work has been published in France for close to a decade. Astute Copacetic customers may recall seeing their 2008 work, Le Tricheur (The Cheat), in the Finnish edition published by Huuda Huuda, in the import area of our small press table. Originally published in France in 2006, Barrel of Monkeys is their first work to be published in an English-language edition, and is the first release of Rebus Books, the newly launched publisher headed by noted comics scholar, Bill Kartalopoulos. It is, like all of Ruppert and Mulot's works that we have been exposed to, a graphically inventive presentation of people behaving badly. It's been getting plenty of good press, much of which you can access via the Rebus Books Tumblr page.
retail price - $19.95 copacetic price - $17.77

The Libertarian
by Nick Maandag
The Libertarian is Canadian cartoonist, Nick Maandag's follow up work to his cultishly popular 2011 comics novella, Streakers. This 41 page digest size comic book follows the adventures of Rob Vanderbranch, the titular libertarian, who sets himself to the unlikely task of courting a "vegan-socialist-feminist." High jinx ensue.
retail price - $5.00 copacetic price - $5.00

Heartless
by Nina Bunjevac
Ms. Bunjevac is a talented cartoonist and illustrator of Yugoslavian heritage currently living and working in Toronto, Ontario. Heartless collects a hundred page chunk of her comics along with a dozen or so illustrations. Her work is finely crafted, highly detailed and skillfully designed; the drawing is carefully stippled and heavy on black tones; the content is both sexual and surreal, often both at once! Comics pros like Kim Deitch and Jay Lynch, as well as top UK critic, Paul Gravett all sing her praises. Get a better idea of what we're talking about by taking a trip over to her website and scoping out some of her work.
retail price - $20.00 copacetic price - $17.77
FaR

Fanny and Romeo
by Pascal Girard and Yves Pelletier
Here's a treat! A 128 page, full color graphic novel that is a collaboration between the Doug Wright Award-winning Canadian cartoonist, Pascal Girard, and "first time author", the Québécois comic actor, Yves Pelletier. The story is romantic comedy that stands out for its steadfastly domestic character.
retail price - $20.00 copacetic price - $17.77

W2-NF

Weird #2
by Noel Freibert
This aptly titled 68 page magazine sports a hand silk-screened cover that encloses a variety of work: primarily comics, but also stories and illustrations. The lion's share of the work on hand is by Mr. Freibert, but he has recruited a team of contributors including Sasha Wiseman, Max Mose, Ben Stiegler, Brian Nicholson, and others. Get an idea of what to expect by tuning into the Weird Magazine Tumblr.
retail price - $10.00 copacetic price - $9.00

S12

S! #12
The latest issue of this anthology of international comics art published in Latvia (with state support, no less!) may be the best yet. Sub-titled "Future 2.0" and co-edited by Annie Koyama, this pint-sized (A6 format; roughly 4" x 6") powerhouse (180 full color pages) packs a cartoon wallop, presenting all new work by the likes of Michael DeForge, Jesse Jacobs, Charles Forsman, Dustin Harbin, Ryan Cecil Smith, Julie Delporte, and plenty of other talented cartoonists from Europe and North America.
retail price - $12.00 copacetic price - $12.00

A33

Arthur No. 33
edited by Jay Babcock
Having spent several years in an online-only existence (which still continues, complimenting the relaunched print edition), Editor Jay Babcock has teamed up with Floating World's Jason Leivian to co-pilot Arthur's return to print. Picking up where the print edition's numbering left off, #33 is a massive 14" x 22", 16 page, newspaper printed in full color and black & white that sports a terrific cover by the lead interview subject, Rick Veitch, and includes new comics by Gabby Schulz along with reviews by long time Arthur regulars, Byron Coley and Thurston Moore, an interview with and discography of Guitarist Jack Rose, and plenty more.
retail price - $5.00 copacetic price - $4.50

Pogo, Volume 2 – 1951-1952: Bona Fide Balderdash
by Walt Kelly; forward by Stan Freberg
Two more complete years of Pogo dailies and full color Sundays, in the ongoing Fantagraphics project to collect the complete edition of this undisputed comics masterwork by Walt Kelly in annotated, lushly produced, 12" x 9", horizontally formatted, clothbound editions.
retail price - $39.99 copacetic price - $35.00

Nexus Omnibus, Volume 1
by Mike Baron and Steve Rude
One of the very few notable achievements made during the 1980 & 90s in heroic fantasy comics, in Nexus Baron & Rude created a wholly original concept and proceeded to put together one of the most elaborate and fully fleshed out comics universes, one that is both fully engaging on its own terms, but that also allegorically corresponds to the history of the twentieth century in many instances – particularly where totalitarianism is concerned. This 424 page edition collects the rare three issue original black & white run published by the short-lived Capital Comics Imprint, and then the first eleven issues of the full color series, the first six issues of which were published by Capital Comics, before handing the series off to the (then) newly formed First Comics, who published the remainder of the original 80 issue run, after which point Dark Horse Comics took over.
retail price - $24.99 copacetic price - $22.22

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