Cartoon Clouds
by Joseph Remnant
With Cartoon Clouds, Joseph Remnant at long last delivers on his promise.  First coming to comics prominence through his art chores on his collaboration with Harvey Pekar's love letter to his hometown, the hardcover graphic memoir, Cleveland, Remnant has also published three issues of his solo title, Blindspot, as well as the short story, "I Told You So," that appeared first in the Little Heart anthology, and was recently reprinted in the latest issue of Kilgore Quarterly, and which was obviously the seed from which Cartoon Clouds grew, and in which he reveals his proclivity for romanticism.  Here we have the latest iteration of The Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, but it is a good one, well told and a much appreciated tonic to the shrill tenor of these times.  Starting with the front cover image, which evokes a young, "Freewheelin'" Bob Dylan, and – with a single leaf in the sky – Pekar's (via Crumb) "American Splendor," Remnant's hard won comics deliver flesh & blood characters who live and breath on the page.  These characters love and yearn and gradually learn as they make their way through lives that orbit the sphere of art, powered by creativity and on the quest for inspiration.

retail price - $22.99  copacetic price - $20.00

Zegas
by Michel Fiffe
Fiffe goes Fanta! Zegas, an original graphic novel by Michel Fiffe has been published by Fantagraphics.  Most noted for his epic, inventive reworking of superhero tropes in Copra, here in the pages of Zegas, he comes down to earth and applies his substantial cartooning chops to a relationship tale – although not without a few fantastic forays into the imaginative realm.  Fiffe's comics have a look and feel like none other.  There is an indefinable zest to his pages that is transmitted to the brain via the optic nerve.All fans of Fiffe's work on Copra should enjoy Zegas on the strength of the art alone – which here is in the larger, magazine-page size, giving it more room to stretch out and try a few new things – but more to the point here is that those readers who had declined to give Copra a try due to its focus on heroic fantasy now have an opportunity to experience Fiffe's work in the service of a story they might find more to theri liking, a tale of life and love... and imagination's role in it all.
retail price - $19.99  copacetic price - $17.77

Unreal City
by D.J. Bryant
Unreal City is D.J. Bryant's first solo book (that we are aware of).  Some Copacetic customers will be familiar with the second story in this collection, as it originally appeared in MOME #19.  This 21 page story, "Evelyn Dalton-Hoyt", is his brutally brilliant re-envisionment of "Driven to Destruction" by Steve Ditko (which, for all you comics collectors and scholars out there, is in the February 1972 [V.2#4] issue of Haunted, from Charlton), in which an explicit (very) sexual subtext for the characters is supplied by Bryant's vivid imagination and conveyed through his high octane pencilling and inking, the combination of which may generate a vertiginous reeling in the reader (especially if they are a Ditko fan) by the time they reach the last page.  The same could be said, to varying degrees, about every other story in this crisply printed, oversize (and budget priced), 100 page hardcover collection.  Four of the five stories collected here are in the sharply inked, black & white style which readers of "Evelyn Dalton-Hoyt" will immediately recognize – somewhere between Dan Clowes and Tim Lane (to keep things in a Fantagraphics frame of reference) –  with the sole standout being "The Yellowknife Retrospective," which is rendered in a more minimal, color cartoon style that tilts a bit (but only a bit) in the direction of Tim Hensley's Walter Gropius comics in its reduced line weight and reliance on color for representing spatial relations.  The stories all share an inside-out / outside-in / through-the-looking-glass narrative style that has something in common with Paul Auster's novels (at least the earlier ones), albeit more highly sexualized.  And, yes, there are some quite explicit depictions of human sexual behavior that appear in these pages, and, yes, these depictions represent "the male gaze", but they appear to do so consciously, and in the context of critique (at least to some extent; there is clearly a compulsive component to these depictions, as well).  These ways of seeing are linked narratively to mental instability and breakdown, suggesting an inherent danger to looking in this direction; to seeing in this way.  A danger that Bryant has himself perhaps experienced, and so knows all too well...
retail price - $16.99  copacetic price - $15.00

Grixly #41
by Nate McDonough
OK all you GRIXLY fans – this is the issue you've been waiting for! You'll gasp in shock, laugh in recognition and shake your head in dismay as Grixly-Master, Nate McDonough at long last reveals the secret origin of his horror obsession in this issue-length comics memoir. GRIXLY 41. Don't miss it. Still only $2!
retail price - $2.00  copacetic price - $2.00

Poor Little Joanie
by Caleb Orecchio
Here it is: Poor Little Joanie, the latest - and without doubt, the greatest - print collection of Joanie and Jordie strips by Caleb Orecchio, whose chops you can see developing and improving right before your eyes. The 56 one-page, four-panel strips start out in B & W and then progress through two different two-color palettes, each of which maintains its own particular approach. Action, humor, drama: it's all here. And while we don't doubt that most readers of this space have already seen many of these strips when they first appeared in Comics Workbook, we're here to tell you that you haven't truly experienced this work until you've read it in print - and this meaty saddle-stapled edition is the jam!  And, even though these were drawn over the border in Ohio, Caleb plays such an active role in the Pittsburgh-based Comics Workbook, we've given this book an honorary "Made-in-Pittsburgh" designation.
retail price - $10.00  copacetic price - $8.75