Just In (Case You Missed It) - New Stuff Archives 2Q 2014

New for June 2014

It Never Happened Again
by Sam Alden
Courtesy of Uncivilized Books, we finally have a Sam Alden collection, an actual book, with a spine! It Never Happened Again collects two works: the 64 page "Hawaii 1997" and the 90 page "Anime." "Hawaii 1997" is the work through which many readers first encountered Alden. When it was first posted on Tumblr, it blazed through the eyeballs of many an internet surfer. The pencils here are strong, bold and decisive, executed with quick, deft strokes which crackle with emotional energy. The figures and landscapes in "Hawaii 1997" feel like they are flowing non-stop out the tip of Alden's pencil and onto the paper in an automatic recollection that is magically transmitted from the mind to the hand. In this respect the energetic linework recalls some of the pages in Frank Santoro's seminal masterwork, Storeyville, which was originally published in 1995. Like "Hawaii 1997", "Anime" is a story told largely through images. It is a more calibrated work, however, one that spans family, work, relationships and continents in a bold attempt to portray the perceptions of a personality that had been led to, and a consciousness that has been shaped by, animé. Employing an informed and disciplined use of the grid, Alden is successful in implicitly conveying a sense of the irrevocable ticking of the clock, as time marches on while the concurrent personal growth necessary to survival sometimes has trouble keeping up...
retail price - $11.95 copacetic price - $10.00

The Man Dancing in the Meadow
by Sam Alden
Sam Alden is one of the most challenging and engaging artists on the comics scene. Here, he has crafted a comics work that deftly characterizes the unconscious blurring of interior conceptions and exterior perceptions that can occur under duress, and creates some extraordinary images in the process. Sexual frustration combines with technological alienation and job dissatisfaction to make for some disconcerting – yet revealing – mental states that are rendered by Alden with a remarkable visual fluency. At the very least, be sure to check it out on his Tumblr. Years from now, when Sam Alden is a household name (well, among comics reading households, at least), everybody is going to be claiming, "Oh yeah, I was into him back in the day," but only those who actually support him now, by buying some of his work, will be able to back up their claim. Recommended.
retail price - $5.00 copacetic price - $5.00

Bohemians: A Graphic History
edited by Paul Buhle and David Berger
Published by one of the leading lights of the Left, Verso Books, this anthology is jam-packed full of engaging, entertaining, enjoyable and, especially, educational comics about a wide swath of historical figures – ranging from Walt Whitman to Charlie Parker and including Gertrude Stein, Mabel Dodge, Billie Holiday, Josephine Baker and far too many others to mention here – that have been collected together under the umbrella of "Bohemians." There are some great comics on hand here, by the likes of Sharon Rudahl, Dan Steffan, Sabrina Jones, Matt Howarth, Lance Tooks, David Lasky, Milton Knight, Ellen Lindner, Peter Kuper, Afua Richardson, and the late, great Spain Rodriguez, whose participation here indicates that this has been a long fermenting project. All in all it makes for a great read, and it's a good deal! Laugh and learn, for less. Recommended.
retail price - $16.95 copacetic price - $15.25

Andre the Giant: Life and Legend
by Box Brown
240 pages of drinking, fighting, riding around in buses, staying in hotels, visiting japan, throwing insults, making the occasional lewd remark, and, oh yeah, wrestling are what fill this non-stop, manly graphic novel about the world of men without women. Bonus Extra: glossary of wrestling terms!
retail price - $17.95 copacetic price - $16.25

This One Summer
by Jillian Tamaki and Mariko Tamaki
First Second simultaneously released this volume with Andre the Giant, balancing out the gender scale with this tale of girls in summer. This One Summer is a finely nuanced portrait of pubescents at the dawning of their age of sexuality that will have readers slowing down if not stopping in their tracks to pause and soak up every line of this amazing work. The Tamaki sisters enter Hernandez brothers territory here, with their deftly characterized and deeply empathic portraits of each pen & ink participant in the drama that unfolds on these pages. There are echoes, too, of Charles Burns’s Black Hole, in the presentation of the protagonists' stumbling upon detritus strewn outdoor settings, which stands as a synecdoche for innocence’s discovering the mysteries of sexual fecundity, flesh, decay and death to come. Innocence and its loss, the gaining of reproductive maturity and its consequences, the linkages between character formation and parental nurturing styles and much more besides are eloquently delineated page after page of incisive story-telling powered by breathtakingly good illustration. While the narrative is likely to particularly resonate with those readers in the demographic portrayed, we can unstintingly recommend This One Summer to all who appreciate fine comics: it is a real stand out; miss at your own peril. Available in both hardcover and softcover.
softcover -- retail price - $17.95 copacetic price - $16.25
hardcover -- retail price - $21.95 copacetic price - $19.75

Whispered Words
by Takashi Ikeda
This volume is a massive, eighteen part serial of same-sex friendship, crushes, and love, along with a side-helping of gender bending and cross-dressing all taking place within a highschool milieu. Whispered Words covers some of the same emotional terrain as Rumiko Takahashi's immortal Ranma 1/2, but with the fantastic elements replaced with a more realistic naturalism.
retail price - $16.95 copacetic price - $15.25

The Lizard Laughed
More Mundane
by Noah van Sciver
It appears we've joined Mr. van Sciver in the middle of the alphabet here (next up, Nearly Nowhere?). More Mundane provides readers with a day-by-day comics diary accounting of a month in the life of a struggling indy cartoonist: Noah van Sciver. You'll laugh, you'll cry, and, if you too are a struggling indy cartoonist, chances are you'll relate. You'll thrill to days where Noah, "woke up really depressed," or "had to go to work really early." Then there is the day where he is "stressing out about how many projects (he's) committed to." Which leads us to The Lizard Laughed, from Oily Comics. A deluxe (by Oily standards) 32-page, digest-size comic book, complete with duo-tone cover that "is the story of an estranged father and son." Set in New Mexico, it accomplishes the task it set out to do without wasting a line: straight and to the point, The Laughing Lizard was certainly a project worth committing to.
retail price - $5.00@ copacetic price - $5.00@

Weird Love #1
edited by Craig Yoe; featuring Ogden Whitney and others
Weird Love is a new collector series from the House of Yoe. Featuring 48 pages of old school romance comics from back in the day – in this case from betwen 1953 and 1968 – this issue is well worth the price of admission. The cover story, "The Love of a Lunatic" is an ACG classic – originally published in Romantic Adventures #50 in 1954 – drawn by the one and only Ogden Whitney. This issue opens with another early romance comic classic, "I Fell for a Commie," from Love Secrets #32, published in 1953. As usual with Yoe productions, the selection of material is great, the production is good, and the presentation is schmaltzy to the point of misrepresentation. The stories collected here – a least the pre-code ones – are actually relatively straightforward tales that address common concerns of the day, albeit in the highly melodramatic fashion required by squeezing complex stories into 6 to 12 pages of comics (quite an accomplishment, when you stop to think about it), that are created month after month. It is, in our opinion, a disservice to the material to emblazon "OMG" "Kinky" "Sick" and "Bizarro" across the cover (and, "Yoe-mance"? was that really necessary?) of a comic book containing solid, engaging works of comics melodrama – again, at least in the case of the pre-code stories. That the stories presented here that originate in the late 1960s are indeed relatively trite and occasionally ludicrous it is hard to argue, but even these do not warrant the labels being applied here. So, read these great stories, but "Don't Believe the Hype."
retail price - $3.99 copacetic price - $3.99

The Forgotten Man
by Paul Rivoche, Chuck Dixon and Amity Shlaes
This work of graphic history is "based on the New York Times bestseller". It has been adapted by Chuck Dixon and illustrated by Paul Rivoche. Unless we've missed something, The Forgotten Man marks the single most significant comics work in the career of Mr. X co-creator, Paul Rivoche. This Canadian artist has turned in here a great piece of comics work that makes for an informative and engaging read in providing some interesting aspects of the Great Depression as well as the years leading up to it. However, it appears as though this work was intended as a polemic in support of a "new history" of this era that is supposed to overturn readers received notions related to this period in American – and world – history. In this regard, The Forgotten Man makes for a fascinating look into the psychology of those embracing this revisionist view of history. It appears as though the creators of this work take it as self-evident that readers of The Forgotten Man will come away from reading this with their eyes opened to the value and importance of this "new history" and will realize... something; it's hard to say what they were thinking. The actual take away from this book is fairly different. It is clear that the creators are partisans who identify with the "forgotten man" and have their differences with the policies that steered the USA through the depression. They have put together an immense cast of characters and struggle to do their best to show how they are related, but while the characters themselves are well delineated, the construction of their relationships with each other and the overall flow of history are thoroughly muddled and superficial, at best, and reveal that the authors of this work possess a remarkably poor grasp of historical forces and processes, which together with a moral naiveté combine to create a disturbingly solipsistic world view that heartily embraces self-pity; unless, of course, this graphic edition was actually intended as a work of irony along the lines of Robert Altman's Nashville, in which case we say, bravo, well done! Worthy of special note is Wendell Willkie masquerading as Dick Tracy (on page 210). Given the graphic similarities of Chester Gould's star creation to caricatures of Ronald Reagan, this homage seemed especially apt. Taken as a whole, the big plus is that there is enough ambiguity on hand here to make it possible for any comics reader to enjoy the classic old school comics story telling on hand here in this history of the era which, not coincidentally, gave birth to the comic book.
retail price - $19.99 copacetic price - $17.77

dhp36

Dark Horse Presents #36
by Jaime Hernandez (only 8 pages, but thus its inclusion here)
OK, this one's for the hardcore Jaime Hernandez fans (we know you're out there): This issue, the series' last, contains an 8 page, full color Jaime Story, "Merlon the Magician", which, in the way of Jaime, focuses more on Merlon's assistant, Lumina than on the titular lead; plus 72 pages of other stuff that you may or may not read. Yes, it works out to a dollar a page for the Jaime story, but, if you ask us if it's worth it, we're going to say, "Yes!"
retail price - $7.95 copacetic price - $7.25

2014 Summer Reading Part One

Carsick
by John Waters
It's here! It's two part fantasy, one part fact, and all John Waters.
Here's The Washington Post review.
And here's an "exclusive excerpt" from FrontiersLA.
retail price - $26.00 copacetic price - $22.75

Another Great Day at Sea: Life Aboard the U.S.S. George H.W. Bush
by Geoff Dyer
Geoff Dyer's latest takes a bit (a bit!) of a detour from his normal appointed rounds.
Reviews: Pro & Con
retail price - $24.95 copacetic price - $21.75

The Gray Notebook
by Josep Pla
We couldn't pass this one up. Check out NYRB's page on it and see what you think.
retail price - $19.95 copacetic price - $17.77

and two by Stuart Dybek:
Ecstatic Cahoots (retail price - $14.00 copacetic price - $12.50)
Paper Lantern Love Stories (retail price - $24.95 copacetic price - $21.75)
Here's his hometown paper's take on both.

Items from our May 2014 listings may now be purchased online at our eCommerce site, HERE.

New for May 2014

The Love Bunglers
by Jaime Hernandez
It's hard to know where to begin with a work as remarkable as this. Originally published in six chapters in Love and Rockets: New Stories 3 & 4 in 2010 and 2011, it includes a flashback chapter titled "Browntown" that, in comic book parlance, could be said to be the – or, at least, a – "Secret Origin of Maggie", as readers are finally made privy to heretofore undisclosed primal scenes at the root of significant swaths of Maggie's personality and character. While it may be a commonplace to state that character is forged in the crucible of family, it is rare indeed to be given the opportunity of witnessing an incidence of this that has been prepared with such consummate skill that it achieves the degree of verisimilitude achieved in The Love Bunglers, sharing such startling psychological insights in the process. Naturally, parents predominate in scenarios set within the family arena; their characters are asserted and consequently imprinted upon the children. This scenario certainly plays out in "Browntown", but intriguingly – and crucially to the understanding of Jaime's world view and working method and sense of character construction – much of what is revealed here, that is linked to the formation of Maggie's persona, transpired in her absence, to other members of her family. Here, the unintentional looms large, as revelations of hidden parental acts become keys in the children's hands, used to decode their parents' motivations and values and learn the actual reality undergirding the constructed reality as it had been given to the children by the parents. The drama here simultaneously reveals the quotation marks around "truth" and the effect that this revelation has on all concerned – in one of the great three-panel sequences (establishing - POV - reaction) in the history of comics as one particular revelation is is registered. There are the corollary experiences of Maggie's brother, Calvin (adding yet another layer to this historically significant name...), which, while primarily serving the self-contained narrative of The Love Bunglers, carry the added charge of immediately registering to long-time Love and Rockets readers as being integral to the development of Maggie's character and personality. And, finally, the family-is-destiny theme returns with a vengeance in the novel's climax. Employing the heretofore hidden sequence of events revealed in "Browntown" as the dramatic catalyst, Jaime triggers the release of thirty years worth of potential energy and converts it into an emotionally devastating catharsis of great power. Upon reaching the conclusion of The Love Bunglers there is an inescapable feeling of finality and closure to the the saga of the life and times of Maggie Chascarillo. While it is almost certain that we will be seeing more of Maggie in future issues of Love and Rockets, Jaime's discovery of these hidden pieces of the puzzle of Maggie's persona seems to have allowed him to at last reach the holistic understanding of her character and it's fundamental relationship to Ray as its terminus that he had been striving for these thirty years – and communicate this understanding to his readers in this magisterial work.
retail price - $19.99 copacetic price - $15.99

aBB

A Body Beneath
by Michael DeForge
A Body Beneath collects DeForge's flagship title, Lose in a single, affordable volume designed with reading in mind. The release of this volume marks another milestone in the establishment of DeForge at the forefront of contemporary comics, as with its release the bulk of his corpus is now easily available, in this and two other volumes – 2013's Very Casual, also from Koyama, and Ant Colony, a hardcover released earlier this year by Drawn and Quarterly. To be sure, there are still plenty of obscurities out there that are worth hunting for, including recent anthology work in a variety of publications, three issues of Kid Mafia, The Boy in Question, Elizabeth of Canada (an Oily Comic) and, most notably, Lose #1, which DeForge declined to include in this collection. A note to collectors: Considering his current popularity and status among the comics cognoscenti, combined with the fact that DeForge states in the introductory strip prepared for A Body Beneath that he began work on Lose #1 "right after" a failed (whew!) 2009 suicide attempt, pretty much assures that it won't be long before Lose #1 becomes one of the most sought after comic books around (in fact, we wouldn't be at all surprised to see a bootleg edition surface at some point...). Others have written well on DeForge's work, so we direct readers intrigued to learn more about this artist to Rob Clough's 2011 piece in The Comics Journal, Sean Rogers writing on Ant Colony for The Globe and Mail, and James Romberger's insightful article in Publisher's Weekly (which includes an engaging interview with DeForge). And anyone so inspired can start digging into DeForge's world right now, over at What Things Do.
retail price - $15.00 copacetic price - $13.75

Cat Person
by Seo Kim
Another new Koyama release, Cat Person is a charming portrait of learning to live with – and, ultimately, love – the quotidian frustrations of cat-centric existence. Cat Person is filled with short but sweet comics vignettes that will provoke pleasing bursts of neurotransmitters in most readers; pick it up and read a few next time you're in and see if doing so puts you in touch with your inner purr.
retail price - $20.00 copacetic price - $16.75

CAC2

Cut-Away Comics #2
by Dan Zettwoch
Sixteen more pages of "Diagrammatic" Dan Zettwoch's mini-comic madness for a mere one dollar! Need we say more? (Didn't think so...)
retail price - $1.00 copacetic price - $1.00

nb9

NoBrow #9: It's Oh So Quiet
by Jon McNaught, Ben Newman, et al
It's another absolutely fabulous oversize flip-cover edition of NoBrow in which one side features comics and the other prints, all on the same theme – this time around, silence – and all featuring the trademarked NoBrow house æsthetic of space delineated by color planes. This issue's comics side starts off with another elegiac piece by Copacetic fave, Jon McNaught, who also did the cover. We're taking our time going through this one, as we want to make it last...
retail price - $24.95 copacetic price - $21.25

Safari Honeymoon
by Jesse Jacobs
Another mind-bending, tri-color comics extravaganza from Jesse Jacobs and Koyama Press, following in the footsteps of the well received By This You Shall Know Him, only this time around, think green. Check out this KP preview and you'll quickly see it's another wow!
retail price - $14.95 copacetic price - $13.75

Everywhere Antennas
by Julie Delporte
Despite the evident angst inhabiting it, the comics work of Julie Delporte has a relaxed, free feel to it; reading it, one gradually becomes immersed in her colorful world constructed in page after page of lush colored pencil drawings (along with a single section entirely – and appropriately – rendered in graphite pencil) that are somewhat haphazardly cobbled together with scissors and tape yet nevertheless manage to successfully coalesce around the primarily diaristic text with an artistic savoir faire. As the reader makes their way through Everywhere Antennas, it becomes increasingly apparent that savoir faire is precisely what its protagonist unfortunately lacks. It is ironic that Delporte's work can provide readers with those feelings of release and peeling away of stress that the character within her narrative is searching for. One imagines that the creation of this work provides Delporte herself with similar feelings of release; such are the mysterious ways of art...
retail price - $19.95 copacetic price - $17.77

s17

S!: The Baltic Comics Magazine #17
The latest from Latvia has arrived! S! #17 sports a multi-layered wraparound cover by Patrick Kyle and is chock full of swell full color comics – 164 pages worth – from around the globe - with an accent on the Baltics. This issue's theme – as you may have guessed from the cover – is "Sweet Romance." While we suspect that most of the contributors to this issue will be unfamiliar to most Copacetic customers, readers who have checked out past S! volumes know that these books offer a unique comics reading experience, and we hereby offer encouragement to those who have yet to do so to extend their comics horizons by picking up this issue and so offer a vote of encouragement to their comics friends in the Baltics, who could use it right now...
retail price - $12.00 copacetic price - $12.00

cwm4

Comics Workbook Magazine #4
This issue features an interview with A. Degen by Graham Sigurdson, an essay on the Rothko Chapel (and minimalism in comics) by L. Nichols, a review of Andy Douglas Day’s Miss Hennipin by Sara Lautman, a translation of Barthélémy Schwartz’s "73 Notes on Comics" from the French by Andrew White (with help from Schwartz), and new comic strips by Andrea Bjurst, Krystal DiFronzo, Inés Estrada, and Emma Louthan. The cover was drawn by A. Degen. Comics Workbook Magazine is put together by Andrew White (Editor / Wrangler), Zach Mason (Editorial Assistance + Design), and Frank Santoro (Editorial Supervision).
retail price - $2.50 copacetic price - $2.00

EdvsYummy

Ed vs. Yummy Fur
by Brian Everson, w/ Chester Brown
It was bound to happen sooner or later, and now it has: a uniform series of critical essays on comics; each focusing on a single work, series and/or creator; in book form á la the BFI FIlm Classics and 33 1/3 series, which focus on cinema and music respectively. The series is titled Critical Cartoons, and it is being published by Uncivilized Books in Minneapolis. Ed vs. Yummy Fur is the premiere volume in the series (the next focuses on Carl Barks). What we have here is a 136 page softcover that is heavily illustrated with selected panels and also includes an 8-page glossy insert (at the back) that reproduces select covers in full color. The book itself provides an in-depth look at the various forms which Ed, the Happy Clown has taken – five in all, by our count – each of which is distinct from the others (some vary from the others to a great degree, others only minorly). We can easily recommend this book to Chester Brown fanatics (hello, are you out there? anyone?), but anyone interested in learning about the transition/translation of serialized, periodically released comics to stand alone "graphic novel" form will find plenty of food for thought here. Few, if any (OK, OK - Chris Ware probably takes home the prize in this category), have spent as much time obsessing over how to present their works in the various forms available to them as Chester Brown, and nowhere more so than with Ed, the Happy Clown, the work that put him on the artistic map, and still stands as a major and unique achievement. Readers who are only familiar with this work through its 21st century incarnations from Drawn and Quarterly may be surprised to learn that over a quarter of the original work as it appeared in Yummy Fur was excised in the editions they have read, and that this portion of the tale is, in fact, only available in the original issues. This is covered here in the chapter, "Lost Pages," perhaps the most intriguing section of this book. ADDED BONUS: there's also a twenty page interview with Chester, conducted specifically for this book, in which he specifically addresses many of the issues raised by the text.
retail price - $12.95 copacetic price - $11.75

Kid Mafia Digest
by Michael DeForge
This chunky square-format digest collects the first three issues of the Kid Mafia series. Yes, you can read these online here (along with the just released fourth issue), but it doesn't count unless you have the book, right? No matter how you look at it, here at Copacetic, there are now plenty of Michael DeForge comics to go around. He's got the pedal to the metal...
retail price - $10.00 copacetic price - $9.00

C14

Copra #14
by Michel Fiffe
And, speaking of hyper-productive comickers, there's no let up in the pace here, as Fiffe keeps it coming in another full color monthly issue!
retail price - $5.00 copacetic price - $4.50

MC1

Sam Hill, 1939: The Mysterious Case – Issue One
by Rich Tommaso
And then there's Rich Tomasso! He, too is putting out new comic books like there's no tomorrow, and here's his latest. Do you like noir fiction and/or film noir? Do you like smartly drawn, clearly laid out, cleanly delineated comics art? Do you like well designed and printed comic books? Does the Los Angeles of 1939 sound like a place you'd like to visit? Well then, welcome to Rich Tommaso's latest comic book series from Recoil Crime/Suspense Comics. We hope you enjoy your stay...
retail price - $7.95 copacetic price - $7.25

ss17

Smoke Signal #17 & 18
by Chris Ware, Dan Zettwoch, Michael DeForge, Ben Marra, Ivan Brunetti, Aidan Koch, Anders Nilsen, more...
Smoke Signal #17 & 18 both feature 36 mammoth-size pages of eye-popping comics on bright white newsprint (shades of Mediascene!). #17 sports a Chris Ware wraparound cover!
retail price - $5.00@ copacetic price - $5.00@

The Trail of the Unicorn and Other Stories
by Carl Barks
One comics creator whose work can truly be appreciated by all ages is Carl Barks. Here is another splendiferous hardcover volume in the fifteen-year Fantagraphics Books project of bringing the entirety of his work for The Walt Disney Company back into print in a complete, thirty-volume edition of The Carl Barks Library. This is the sixth volume to be released (but is the eighth position, chronologically speaking, of the series as they are being released out of order) so it looks like we're a fifth of the way there. In this volume readers will get the chance to enjoy Barksian takes on the world of 1949 in graphic novellas such as the titular "Trail of the Unicorn", along with the mega-classics “Luck of the North” and “Land of the Totem Poles.” An out-of-season Christmas classic is also on hand here – "Letter to Santa" – along with a bevy of immortal WDC&S 10-pagers and a handful of one-pagers. This volume is introduced by Diary of a Wimpy Kid creator, Jeff Kinney.
retail price - $29.99 copacetic price - $25.75

Items from our May 2014 listings may now be purchased online at our eCommerce site, HERE.

New for April 2014

MK1

Maple Key Comics #1
edited by Joyana McDairmid
We're super excited to have received the first issue of Maple Key Comics! A new comics anthology series published out of White River Junction, Vermont, by a group of Center for Cartoon Studies grads and their immediate circle, and edited and designed by Joyana McDiarmid, this series shows a lot of promise. The concept here is to produce a big, fat comics anthology filled with ongoing, continuing series by a wide variety of artists and writers on a regular basis. While this is a common practice in Japan, it is pretty much unheard of here in the US. The first issue is a massive 327 pages (!) and features some really great work by the likes of Jon Chad, Sophie Goldstein, Carl Antonowicz, Sasha Steinberg, Rachel Lindsay and many others. While we're still working our way through this issue here at Copacetic, everything so far has been a thoroughly enjoyable read. There is a definite – and welcome! – tilt towards science fiction in a number of the stories here, but, as we stated, there in plenty of variety here, and teen romance, nautical adventure, gothic horror, cooking, and many other sorts of tales are to be found within these pages – something for everyone! Make sure to take a look next time you're in the shop. We're already looking forward to the next issue, which is due in June.
retail price - $15.00 copacetic price - $13.75

AQ6

Andromeda Quarterly #6
edited by Andy Scott
And since we're on the subject of great, regularly published comics anthologies, we would be remiss if we failed to bring to your attention the sixth issue of what we consider to be a strong contender for the title of the best regularly published comics anthology going, the Made-in-Pittsburgh Andromeda Quarterly! Packed with an even dozen contributors turning in 68 pages of comics and illustration, AQ#6 may be the biggest and best issue yet. The issue gets off to a fine start with an artfully accomplished, if darkly desolate, cover by editor/publisher Andy Scott, which provides the gateway for some "far out comix": from the slapstick comedy of Corey Ruffin to the childhood fantasies of powerlessness transformed in "Tin Foil" (a Kid Brother™ tale) by Alex Williams, the work presented here truly does range far and wide. Nils Balls delivers a pair of deft slice of life comics with "Turbo" and "The New Boyfriend". The issue's longest story is "An Itty Bitty Teenie Punk Summoning" by Caitlin Rose Boyle, which employs a fully formed cartoon style wedded to a solid sense of storytelling and pacing in the service of what is ultimately a slight and silly tale, but one that the level of craft on display makes enjoyable and engaging nonetheless. The centerpiece is "We Are Stars" by Shannon Durdin, a touching reminiscence of adolescent innocence that makes good use of AQ's ability/policy of printing in both black and white and full color by switching from one to the other at the crucial juncture to highlight the shift in emotional register. Childhood is revisited again in "Heart Shaped Box" (starring Champ™) by Jed Collins, specifically a 5th grade Valentine's Day. Alex Strader turns in four pages filled with some great, highly appealing cartooning that put us in mind of Peter Bagge merged with Michael DeForge. Andromeda mainstay, Nate McDonough turns in five full-page illustrations in which he tackles a few American pop-culture icons & clichés along with turning in a couple of indefinable Grixly-Moments™. Juan Fernandez turns in a freewheeling one-pager designed to raise readers' spirits. The issue closes out with a lively space satire, "Captain Ferguson in: Screw This!" by Boris Bayo, which artfully and effectively punctures the classic Sci-Fi myth of the heroic Space Captain; a tale for our times (sadly). All in all, a great issue, well worth any comics-reader's $5!
retail price - $5.00 copacetic price - $4.50

Cosplayers
by Dash Shaw
As the increasingly pervasive mediated reality in which we find ourselves here in North America, in all its ever-more-varying-(and dazzling!) forms, gradually gains ground in its encroachment on the natural reality that we had formerly, and throughout the entirety of human evolution, taken for granted, our sense of who we are and what constitutes appropriate behavior in the broad spectrum of human endeavor and social interaction, is undergoing a shift. Lucky for us, Dash Shaw is here to help us find our way with this insightful comics examination of the changes that are going on right behind our noses.
retail price - $5.00 copacetic price - $5.00

C13

Copra #13
by Michel Fiffe
It's back! After what seems like barely a hiatus at all, Michel Fiffe has delivered the 13th issue of Copra. A whole new adventure is launched in this issue, which comes shrink-wrapped with a full color fold-out poster at no extra cost! A good jumping on point for new readers.
retail price - $5.00 copacetic price - $5.00

White Cube
by Brecht Vandenbroucke
The North American debut of Belgian comicker, Brecht Vandenbrouke, White Cube is a 64 page, full color hardcover packed with lushly painted wordless gag-strips. Oh, what a wacky world! Here's a sneak preview courtesy of Robot6.
retail price - $22.95 copacetic price - $20.00

BAL

Basewood
by Alex Longstreth
A great read, Basewood is a younger reader-friendly, meticulously drawn and beautifully produced, hefty hardcover volume that is quite modestly priced. Once you've picked it up, it's hard to put down.
retail price - $19.95 copacetic price - $17.77

B + F
by Gregory Benton
Here's a big, Ninja-size book of the comics adventures of a girl and her dog that appears to be informed by the work of Matt Brinkman and Brian Chippendale, while employing an enticing color palette (and is that Craft Tint™?) that makes the pages pop.
retail price - $24.95 copacetic price - $22.22

On Loving Women
by Diane Obomsawin
A pithy collection of vignettes from this Francophone Montreal native who grew up in France, each comprising the recounting of a first love of a woman by a woman.
retail price - $16.95 copacetic price - $15.25

Island of Memory
by T Edward Bak
Bak is back! (Sorry, couldn't resist...). Island of Memory is the first volume in Bak's projected epic, Wild Man, which focuses on the Bavarian naturalist, Georg Wihelm Steller, who, in the first half of the 18th century, accompanied the explorer Vitus Bering across the strait separating Russia and Alaska that now bears his name. Historical adventure comics!
retail price - $11.95 copacetic price - $10.75

Field Studies
by Aidan Koch
The latest collection from the northwest artist/illustrator/comicker is finally on our shelves. Field Studies is, much like its name suggests, a compendium of drawings done by Koch during her 2012 travels. Running 96 pages, Koch focuses her attention on a wide breadth of objects that shows her revealing layers, depths and nuance to her field of study.
retail price - $12.00 copacetic price - $10.00

Over Easy
by Mimi Pond
A comics memoir that centers on the author's time spent working her way through art school at a straight-up, old-school, California diner during the late 1970s. Pond provides an engaging comics accounting of those pivotal years of jumping out into the world with both feet for the first time and discovering adulthood. This period in Pond's life found her elbow-deep in diner dishwater and up to her neck in co-workers and customers. Sex and drugs and rock 'n' roll are here in all their rite-of-passage glory, but most of all Over Easy is a story of navigating the sometimes treacherous waters of forming an adult identity amidst work and peers.
retail price - $24.95 copacetic price - $22.22

Neurocomic
by Dr. Matteo Farinella & Dr. Hana Ros
Wow! a work of science comics – neuroscience, to be more exact – by actual, practicing, PhD-holding, (neuro)scientists. Who knew scientists could make comics, and not just any old comics, but, solid, eminently readable and thoroughly enjoyable comics! Neurocomic is another beautifully produced volume from NoBrow, who have this to say about it: "Neurocomic is a journey through the human brain: a place of neuron forests, memory caves and castles of deception. Along the way, you'll encounter Boschean beasts, giant squid, guitar-playing sea slugs and the great pioneers of neuroscience."
retail price - $24.95 copacetic price - $22.22

GES

The Garden
by Ed Steck
The increased understanding of brain function gained by reading Neurocomic will be put to good use in decoding the dense, elliptically referential prose on hand in the latest work by Pittsburgh author, Ed Steck – his most substantial work yet. Employing novel organizational strategies, grafted vocabularies, and arcane grammars, Steck linguistically reveals the tectonic shifts in consciousness perpetuated by technology.
retail price - $16.00 copacetic price - $15.00

SBU

Stray Bullets: Über Alles Edition
by David Lapham
It's all here, all 41 issues of the definitive noir comic book series which has spawned a host of imitators. This 1000+ pages tome is a lot for anyone to handle. Page after page of cons, retribution, vengeance and loss, filled with surprise, pain, shock and trauma. It is perhaps the greatest irony of this series that these expertly produced comics, painstakingly constructed with an eye towards precision timing and fully constituting the author's original formal vision, created a masterpiece the aim of which was to paint a portrait of a known world slipping away into chaos.
retail price - $59.95 copacetic price - $49.95

Items from our April 2014 listings may now be purchased online at our eCommerce site, HERE.

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Want to keep going? There's tons more great stuff here, most of which is still in stock. Check out our New Arrivals Archives:

1Q 2014: January - March, New Arrivals

4Q 2013: October - December, New Arrivals
3Q 2013: July - September, New Arrivals