New for March 2019
Andy: The Life and Times of
Andy Warhol
by Typex
Typex's Andy: The Life and Times of
Andy Warhol is a tour de force of comics
biography. It's 562 (silver-edged!) pages delve deeply
into the life and times of its subject. The work's
central organizing principle is that each of its 10
chapters is conceived and designed as an individual issue of
a comic book series, titled Andy®,
complete with it's own front and back covers (and, as an
added bonus, each also comes with its own uncut sheet
of collector trading cards!). The chapters
are chronologically arranged, with each tackling a
particular arc of Warhol’s life and work. Each of
the “issues" in this series has been
conceived and executed by Typex as a self-contained whole,
intended to read one at a time. Striving
to provide readers with an immersive
experience, each issue is drawn in a style and
designed in a manner that work together to
capture the feel of the period it covers, as well as the
mindset of Warhol's artistic mode during that time.
Quite a trick! Beginning with "Somewhere Over
the Rainbow: 1932-1946" (set right here in Pittsburgh) and
ending with "New York, New York: 1987", Andy (which has the
sub-subtitle, "A Factual Fairytale") is a heavily
researched work that provides plenty of historical
detail and psychological insight at the same time
that it makes for a highly engaging read. The
primary focus of Andy is
on Warhol as a social animal. The book’s thesis – if
there is one – is that it was the people he surrounded
himself with that largely determined the nature of the
work he produced, and that Warhol's particular genius
was in forging an artistic process that focused on his
social-scene-building abilities in a way
that incorporated – and formalized the channeling of
– the energies generated by these “scenes" into
significant, lasting and, crucially, marketable works
of art. The publisher has provided an all-too-brief
preview HERE that will at
least provide some idea of what's in store, but just
barely.
retail price
- $34.95 copacetic price - $29.75
Is This How You See Me?
by Jaime
Hernandez
Jaime whips readers back and forth across four decades in
this long awaited tale of Maggie and Hopey's reconnection
at a punk rock reunion, and in the process asks – and
answers – the question, "What are we today, but all our
yesterdays?" While Macbeth was
cursed by fate and living on borrowed time, and so
understandably down in the mouth, Maggie and Hopey are
ever in the present, ever linking the past to the future,
and carrying us, their followers on the other side of the
veil, along with them, and so are much more than the sum
of what has gone before. We are well aware that most
Copacetic customers were reading this saga as it was
originally serialized in the pages of Love and Rockets (vol. 3 #7
& 8 + vol. 4 #1 - 5), but for those who
have yet to experience this, the latest classic from the
mighty pen of Jaime Hernandez – and those who, while
having already read it (perhaps more than
once) nevertheless want to enshrine this tale in its
own standalone, deluxe, debossed hardcover volume –
here it is! Catch up with Jaime in his latest TCJ
interview, conducted by fellow Fantagraphics
cartoonist, Katie Skelly, HERE.
retail price
- $19.99 copacetic price - $15.99
Nobody's Fool: The Life and
Times of Schlitzie the Pinhead
by Bill Griffith
With Nobody's Fool, Bill
Griffith at long last gives us the real story of the
flesh and blood human behind his most famous pen &
ink creation, Zippy the Pinhead™. Here in this 248
page hardcover volume, we are given the scoop
on the life and times of Schlitzie the Pinhead, the
making of Tod Browning's Freaks, the film that
immortalized Schlitzie and gave him his widest exposure,
and much more, including the story of Griffith's
own discovery of this unique figure and how that led to
the creation of Zippy. Griffith is clearly
inspired by his subject and is in excellent form
here. Readers can look forward to being treated to
page after page of great comics. Gain some
insight's into where Griffith is coming from in this
recently conducted official TCJ interview with his
pal, Mark Newgarden, HERE.
Nobody's Fool is recommended reading for fans of
R. Crumb and Kim Deitch, and, of course, to anyone
who ever enjoyed Zippy the Pinhead!
Starseeds 2
by Charles Glaubitz
Visual vocabularies mix it up across generations in
Charles Glaubitz's second installment of his Starseeds saga.
Jack Kirby meets Michael DeForge (and Patrick Kyle,
Jesse Jacobs, C.F., Jim Woodring, et al) in this pulse
pounding, power packed sequel to Starseeds. Strap in
and get ready for take off! We've posted a preview
on Instagram, HERE.
retail
price - $29.99 copacetic price - $25.75
When I Arrived at the Castle
by Emily Carroll
Emily Carroll is back – with a vengeance! When I Arrived at the Castle is a 72 page,
graphic Gothic comics whirlwind in black, white and red.
Ms. Carroll has clearly been honing her craft
and makes the most of the larger canvas offered by the
8 1/2" x 11" format of this work, employing the 17" x 11"
spread as the primary visual unit and aiming for
maximum visual impact each time the reader turns the page.
Readers will be treated to one terrific composition after
another. When I Arrived at the
Castle is
a thrilling and sensual read.
retail price -
$14.95 copacetic price - $13.75
Jesusfreak
by Benjamin
Marra, & Joe Casey
Joe Casey and Ben Marra employ a highly idiosyncratic
reading of The Gospels to answer the question, "What If
the 1970s Marvel Comics series, Master of Kung-Fu
featured Jesus instead of Shang-Chi, but was still drawn
by Paul Gulacy?" Get ready for non-stop martial
arts action accompanying mind-altering
theological twists, all in the service of forging a comic
book spirituality that links the mind, body and
soul in this 60 page, full color, hard cover graphic
novella from Image Comics.
retail price
- $17.99 copacetic price - $15.75
MacDoodle St.
by Mark Alan
Stamaty
It's been almost 40 years, but worth the
wait. Mark Alan Stamaty's legendary, Village
Voice strip, MacDoodle St.
is back! The looooong out of
print (paperback only) collection has now
been reissued by New York Review Comics in a spiffy
hardcover edition that includes seven installations of
the precursor strip, "Garble Dee Goo" along with
an all new, 18 page
addendum, to boot! Mark Alan Stamaty's comics evince
a distractibility that borders on anarchy and leads to
mayhem and even chaos, yes, but attention deficit, no!
Stamaty focuses on the details at the same time as his mind
wanders all over creation (well, all over New York City)
producing some completely original, highly engaging and
hugely entertaining comics in the process. Fans of Ben
Katchor might find themselves feeling a familiar something
now and again as they make their way through MacDoodle St.
as that approach to the quotidian that is permeated by an
effervescent, off-kilter and unpindownable sensation is
present here as well, albeit in a much more frenetic
form. Don't miss this gem. We posted
a quickie preview on Instagram, HERE.
retail price -
$24.95 copacetic price - $22.22
Cannabis: The
Illegalization of Weed in America
by Box
Brown
Starting in the mythical past, then through India and
Mexico and finally to the United States of America, Box
Brown's latest comics compendium charts the history of
Cannabis with a particular focus on how it has been
stigmatized, politicized, and "othered" so as to
be used as a tool in the maintenence of ethnic
European (aka "white") cultural hegemony here in
the States.
retail price
- $24.95 copacetic price - $21.75
Leaving Richard's Valley
by Michael
DeForge
Leaving Richard's Valley collects all
475 installments of Michael DeForge's Instagram serial in
a chunky, square, mirror-chrome-finished hardcover volume. Leaving is an epic
comics allegory that puts us in the mind of Anders
Nilsen’s epic comics allegory, Big Questions – but only up
to a point. While both are lengthy meditations on a
quest for meaning in life, and both involve a cast of
sentient (and chatty!) animals as well as humans, and both
take place primarily outdoors, in natural settings, there
the similarities end. Intriguingly, it is the shift
in periodical comics delivery that is, at least in part,
responsible for, at least some of, the differences (Tracing the links
between the original formats of these two series and
their respective themes could be a fruitful endeavor,
but too much of one to pursue here.). When Big Questions was first
created, the best available approach to serialization was
in a series of individual comics, of which there were 15
(although the first two were more or less warm ups and not
directly related to the narrative, and were collected only
as the bonus section of the hardcover edition). When
DeForge set out on his journey of creation for Leaving Richard’s Valley,
roughly a decade and a half later, he decided to serialize
it as a series of daily Instagram posts, thus the square
format of this book. The posts/pages are primarily
composed of four square panels, with regularly
interspersed single-panel, full-page splashes. For
this hardcover edition, these posts have been “remastered”
for print, to interesting effect. DeForge is always
up for a formal challenge, and serializing a lengthy
graphic novel on Instagram was certainly a
challenge! With Leaving Richard’s Valley,
DeForge has blazed yet another trail through the
wilderness of comics. And, of course, the
focus and concerns of Leaving Richard’s Valley are entirely
DeForge’s, having only nominal overlap with Nilsen’s
in Big Questions. DeForge
here confronts – and ultimately demolishes –
conceptions and perceptions of the independence of
individual identity, demonstrating that all identities are
interdependent and contain underlying family
(parent/child/sibling/etc.) dynamics and that these
dynamics will continually reassert themselves in any given
situation; there is no escaping them. Amongst
these, there is the obvious, special focus on the
tendency, in patriarchal societies, to revert to reliance
on a paternal / “Big Brother” figure, embodied here in the
titular Richard. But, while DeForge asserts
that there is no such thing as a self-contained individual
identity that exists in isolation, he additionally asserts
that no identities are permanently fixed, that while each
of us posses physical, mental and psychological
characteristics that are to varying degrees fixed, as our
relationships shift and morph, so can – and will
– our identities. However, in our current
consumer society, the variables in our identities tend to
be sourced from the media and the marketplace, and as such
are often designed with consumer exploitation in mind,
engendering imbalanced power relationships and
leading to the secondary, parallel theme of the work,
namely, the difficulties, if not the outright
impossibility, of attaining/achieving/embodying
authenticity in our contemporary society, as currently
constituted in a world of appearances largely derived from
profit oriented enterprises. In other words, there's
plenty to chew on here.
retail price
- $32.95 copacetic price - $28.75
These
items and more
may also be
found at our
eCommerce
site, HERE.
New for February 2019
Worn Tuff Elbow #2
by Marc Bell
Marc Bell is back! It’s the long awaited return
of Worn Tuff Elbow! Actually, to
be honest, given that the last issue (which was also the
first) came out over 14 years ago, the truth of the matter
is that we had given up waiting and had long ago been
resigned to there being only the one issue. So, it was
all, “Lo! and Behold!” here at Copacetic when we caught
sight of this second issue. Seeing as 14 years is
quite a stretch, we’re figuring that many, if not most, of
the current readers of this space were heretofore entirely
unaware of (what we can now correctly refer to as) this
comic book series. We trust, however that most are
aware of WTE-creator, Marc Bell as it has only been a
handful of years since our last fresh delivery of Mr. Bell’s
idiosyncratic inkings in the form of his amazing
masterpiece, Stroppy. Worn Tuff Elbow #2 is a
fine-tuned, hand-crafted grab-bag, an anarchic assemblage of
pent-up pen & ink mayhem. This plus-size comic
book runs 36 pages, with a heavy cardstock cover, all
crisply printed in Canada. It starts in black &
white, but, unusually, gradually transitions to
intermittent spot color and then through
increasingly colorful pages on to full color – and then
back again to black & white! Along the way we are
treated to “Coffee Shop Comics”, “Tinkle Test”, "Bologna
Buffet”, “The Ten Eyed One Visits an Art Gallery”, “The Free
Lunch”, "Monsieur Moustache and the Tale of the Bologna”,
“Topless DaDa End of the World Comics” and more! We
will also get the chance to experience the full range of
comic book accoutrements, including introductory
acknowledgements, table of contents, shout-out page, and a
letters page – although, in a surprise twist, the letters
here are all from Marc Bell, preemptive responses to
letters he imagines having received (Bonus fun fact: the
longest off these is to Pittsburgh-Based, cartoonist
extraordinaire, Frank Santoro). It’s the return of Worn
Tuff Elbow!
retail
price - $8.00 copacetic price - $8.00
Off Season
by James
Sturm
James Sturm’s latest graphic novel takes on the challenge
of crafting a social realist narrative that is solidly set
in the mainstream of the American novelistic tradition,
and welding it to the visually expressive capacities of
comics. Centered on a married couple and extending
out to include their school-age children, parents,
siblings, peers, and then on to the community at large,
Off Season provides a unique portrait of our
times. The classic American novelistic form provides
opportunities to structurally integrate observations and
commentaries on the interplay of forces that connect
individual lives to the containing and sustaining society
in which they take place, allowing each to be revealed in
the other. The primary axis of reflection here is of
the Trump/Hillary split in the American psyche
reflecting/reinforcing/extending national attitudes down
into – or is up out of? – the marriage at the novel’s
center. The first thing that will strike the reader
upon opening the book is, of course, Sturm’s decision to
render all the characters in the book as anthropomorphic
dogs. The metaphorics of this decision are
hinted at in the narrative arc of the marriage being
connected to the husband and wife’s shared hallucinogenic
experiences. Given the capacity of acid to transform
one’s experience of normative/consensus/objective reality
into a radically subjective/contingent sense of being, and
then how this in turn reveals the fundamental mutability
of our intellects’ processing and interpretation of
sensory input – how something that at first seems strange
and outlandish can quickly become accepted as normal – it
might not be much of a leap to go from identifying
yourself as a dog-person to becoming an actual dog-person,
and then seeing the world around you as likewise
populated. The key here is not the fact that the
people are dogs, but that what constitutes human identity
is highly mutable and in a constant state of flux.
Representing the alterations of consciousness effected by
technological advances and shifts in the political
landscape is a very difficult task. The radical step of
having people represented as dogs immediately signals to
the reader that we are in a metaphorical space. This
shorthand is a big part of what comics is all about, and
highlights the fact that there are expressive options
available to the creators of graphic novels that are not
there for traditional prose works. Sturm, the founder and
director of The Center
for Cartoon Studies, knows this well, and in the
pages of Off Season he provides
an ample demonstration of some key advantages that inhere
in his chosen form.
Angel Claws
by Moebius & Alejandro
Jodorowsky
Take a disturbing trip through the psycho-sexual side of
Moebius, with Jodorowsky as your guide, in this fairly
decadent, very European take on embodying masculine
fantasies in feminine form – if you dare!
The black and white, pen and ink drawings that make up
this volume were, for the most part at least,
originally executed between 1992 and 1994. Here, the
process of composition was initiated by the drawings
alone, which were done by Moebius in
isolation. He then shared them with Jodorowsky,
who took up the challenge of forging a linking narrative
(and likely provided the title); it's up to the reader to
decide how successful he was. While the work as a
whole more or less falls into the category of Eurotica,
Moebius is such an exceedingly talented artist that he has
endowed the drawings with a hypnotic quality
that hold the viewer's attention and demand that their
significance be contemplated, which, we feel obligated to
state, is not altogether without danger, as
there are obsessive/compulsive
and sado-masochistic elements present throughout.
According to the afterword by Pablo Picasso's grand-daughter
(!), Diana Widmaier-Picasso, Moebius burned all the original
pages after the completion of this work, indicating that he
was trying to purge this aspect of his being and
thereby implying that he thought they were unhealthy or
harmful. You have been warned. Please Note:
contains graphic sexual imagery; adults only. Also:
will likely be considered highly sexist and
extremely patriarchal by some, perhaps many. Thus: this
work may perhaps most profitably be read in the spirit
of researching European male sexuality. The level of
artistry displayed by Moebius here
is spectacular, regardless of the problematics of
the images thereby created. The nature of the
connection between the form and the content is the ultimate
mystery it presents.
retail price -
$29.99 copacetic price - $26.75
Letter to Survivors
by Gébé
Trapped in a fallout shelter in a post-apocalyptic France,
a family of four receives letters from the dead zone
above, read through their air vent by someone in a hazmat
suit who has bicycled to their location for
that express purpose. Originally published in
1981, when fears of nuclear apocalypse still weighed heavy
(yes, the danger is as great as ever, but it seems we all
have other things on our minds...), Letters to Survivors employs a
post-apocalyptic setting to, on the one
hand, challenge bourgeois complacency, and on the
other, provide a meditation on living amidst the
presence of memories of what was being (and now has
been?) lost, as the self-determination of individuals and
families is usurped by powers hidden in plain sight.
Un requiem métaphorique pour le mode de vie
français.
retail
price - $15.95 copacetic price - $13.75
Bubbles #1
Mr.
Bubbles
Wow! Bubbles is an
honest-to-goodness, true-blue, old-school,
comics-(and-manga)-fanzine. Running 32 magazine-size pages
– with a 16-page, digest-size insert – Bubbles is a
materialization of its creator's
(creators') enthusiasm, clearly (a) serious fan(s).
Their self-effacing dedication is evident in
the fact that they neglected to credit themselves
anywhere in the publication (that we could find)! Here's
what's in store in the first, jam-packed issue:
- In depth
look at late 80s/early 90s alternative manga publisher
Blast Books
- Interview with Hiroo Yamagata (Translator of Hideshi
Hino's Hell Baby)
- Brief interview with Laura Lindgren (Founder of Blast
Books)
- Interview with James Hudnall (Translation assistant of
Mai, The Psychic Girl)
- Music From Nancy*** a retrospective, interviews with
all 3 creators, Jesse Poimboeuf, Steve Sweet, Steve
Cunningham, w/ 16 page insert of a Program for Music From Nancy!
- Interview with Shades7000 (Creator of the Scanlation
Group 'You're Welcome')
- Short essays on comic book artifacts found on
Ebay
- Comics you should read (reviews of contemporary
comics)
- Translation of The Road Home by Kuniko Tsurita (from
Garo #213)
***(watch HERE).
retail price - $6.00 copacetic price - $6.00
Comics Underground Japan
edited by
Kevin Quigley,
Originally published by Blast Books in 1996, Comics Underground Japan was
– and still is – a trailblazing anthology that provided most
American readers a first look at the powerful
creative ferment bubbling under the surface of the
massive Japanese manga scene, many of which appeared in
English here for the first time (and a few for the only
time!). In this anthology's 200+ pages, a dozen
creators unleash their personal visions in a wide variety of
graphic styles, ranging from brutally stripped down and
simplified to painstakingly detailed, relating tales of
humor, sexuality and violence, employing fantasy,
grotesquerie and satire – sometimes all at once!
Gaining plaudits from the like of S. Clay Wilson, Gary
Panter and Joe Coleman, Comics Underground Japan remains one
of the best single-volume anthologies of
alternative/underground manga in English translation. Now,
back in print! Here's what – and who – you'll
find: "Hell's Angel" by Yoshikaze Ebisu, "It's
All Right if You Don't Understand" by Yoshikaze
Ebisu, "Steel Pipe Melancholia" by Masakazu
Toma, "Future Sperm Brazil" by Takashi Nemoto, "A
Love Like Lemons" by Carol Shimoda, "Selfish Carol's
Summer, "Don Quixote #1 & #2" by Yasuji
Tanioka, "Planet of the Jap" by Suehiro
Maruo, "Mary’s Asshole" by Hanako
Yamada, "Volvox” by, "Bigger and Better" by Muddy
Wehara, "Laughing Ball" by Hideshi Hino & "Cat
Noodle Soup" by Hajime Yamano & Nekojiro.
Also, worth noting is the fact that while the cover is
oriented in the western fashion, the contents are
"unflipped" and read right to left – a forward looking
compromise for 1996!
retail
price - $14.99 copacetic price - $13.75
Cult of the Ibis
by Daria
Tessler
Small press comics star, Daria Tessler, makes her
Fantagraphics (well, technically, it's through
their FU [Fantagraphics Underground] Books
imprint) debut in this massive oversize hardcover.
Filled with page after page of detailed –
and largely silent/pantomime – cityscapes
cum dreamscapes, through which her protagonist
roams, seeking to uncover a hidden society and
its secrets, Cult of the Ibis is a journey
to the center of the mind. Think Bimbo's Initiation reimagined by
Kenneth Anger, and you'll start to get an idea. Kim
Deitch fans might want to go a bit out of their way and
check this out.
retail
price - $29.99 copacetic price - $25.75
The Perineum Technique
by Florent
Ruppert &
Jerome
Mulot
The latest from the renowned French comics team of Ruppert
& Mulot is, according to Fanta, "a contemporary meditation on
seduction and intimacy in our era of
hyperconnectivity. Playing skillfully with visual metaphor
in lieu of sexual explicitness, Florent Ruppert
and Jérôme Mulot invite you to follow them into
a charged maze of emotional head games, as experienced
through the subconscious of young romance." | Full Color
(with color by Isabelle Merlet) | Hardcover | 8 1/2" x 11"
| 104 pages
retail
price - $19.99 copacetic price - $16.75
Billie the Bee
by Mary Fleener
It's hard to believe, given the length of her career,
how much work she's produced, and how influential she
has been, but Billie the Bee is Mary
Fleener's first "graphic novel"! So, now's your
chance to spend 120 pages in the company of an
anthropomorphized animal kingdom as they romp through a
continuous, single, novel-length comics narrative!
retail price -
$14.99 copacetic price - $12.75
Normal Girl
by M.S. Harkness
In this high-octane, 28-page, black & white
(with black & gold
cover!), digest-size comic book, M.S.
Harkness blazes a trail through her mind – while
washing dishes to SZA's title track anthem. In
the process clearly demonstrating that it's all
about where your head is at; that the mundane can
be transformed – perhaps even transcended – but that
it won't happen by itself. And that comics have
what it takes to make it happen, provided you have the
chops.
retail
price - $4.00 copacetic price - $4.00
Sweet Little Cunt: The Graphic Work
of Julie Doucet
by Anne
Elizabeth Moore
By far the most substantial entry yet published under
the Critical Cartoons imprint, Uncivilized
Book's series of comics analysis, Elizabeth Anne Moore's Sweet Little Cunt provides
fresh perspectives and important insight's into the life
and work of Julie Doucet, the most significant North
American female comics creator of the late 1980s and early
1990s. Doucet's hard won, highly imaginative,
idiosyncratic, absorbing, labor intensive, trailblazing,
gender-bending comics for her personal (single-creator)
anthology series, Dirty Plotte (Note:
for those unaware, plotte is French for cunt,
allowing Doucet's series to slide under the Anglophone
radar – and thus the title of Moore's
book) were game changers in more ways than one.
Her imagination, degree of craft, size of
output, and artistic fearlessness put her creative
talent on par with the best comics being done during
that time and conclusively cracked the
alternative/independent comics boys' club. A
true original, Doucet explored – and contested –
definitions of gender and mental health in ways
at once humorous and scary, but ultimately empowering.
Anyone looking for an intellectual framework within
which to better appreciate her work need look no further:
this is it.
retail
price - $14.95 copacetic price - $13.75
These
items and more
may also be
found at our
eCommerce
site, HERE.
New for January 2019
Thee Collected Cyanide
Milkshake
by Liz
Suburbia
We're starting the year off with a double-dose of Liz
Suburbia comics! Punk comics don't get any punker –
or better – than Liz Suburbia's Cyanide Milkshake.
Small press publisher, Gimme
Action has
now brought the entire run* together in this spiffy 176
page softcover collection. These are true comics.
Funny, sexy, insightful, energizing – and
excellent! The comics that make up Cyanide Milkshake – and all of
Liz Suburbia's work – amply demonstrate her strong drawing
abilities and firm grasp of the comics form.
Unabashed, raw energy powers strong confident lines
in the service of well composed pages that flow together
like a great mix-tape. Born not long after Love and Rockets made it's
debut, her work shows her to be an authentic heir – both
stylistically and philosophically – of the
original punk comics greats, the Hernandez brothers,
extending their legacy into the next generation. And
while her work naturally shows the stamp of her artistic
forebears, the uses she puts it to, and her artistic
voice, are all her own. RECOMMENDED! ((
*The story behind which is detailed in the all new 5-page
comics-introduction that starts off the book. ))
retail
price - $19.99 copacetic price - $17.77
Egg Cream #1
by Liz Suburbia
Wow! The first issue of Liz Suburbia's
new series, Egg Cream, is a knockout!
Her crisp, confident line in combination
with artfully balanced
blackspotting creates comics that come alive
in smartly arranged panels filling one
well-composed page after another – 96 pages in all
– in this squarebound volume of all new comics
work, printed just right in black and white on newsprint
with cardstock covers, which we have been led to
understand will be an annual
publication. Starting off with a hefty
installment of the follow up, second volume of Sacred Heart, and
concluding with the graphically advenutrous
"Goth Ex GF," Egg Cream is easily
the best new series yet seen in 2019! Anyone
unfamiliar with Liz Suburbia can get an idea not only of
where she's coming from, but also that she is
as strong and articulate in conversation as
she is in her comics, by heading over to
read this 2016 interview with her on Razorcake, HERE.
retail price -
$12.99 copacetic price - $11.75
Yearly
2018
by Andrew White
And, speaking of annuals, Yearly 2018 is the
debut issue of Andrew White's projected ongoing series
of comics annuals. Weighing in at 72, full
color, magazine-size (8 1/2" x 11") pages, it
offers a substantial chunk of comics that will
lead the reader through an engaging exploration
of a significant amount of comics terrain.
The cover image, of a figure hovering, dreamlike, just
above the ground amid a dune-like clearing with ruins
silhouetted in the background, reaching down to the
ground and touching it with a finger tip, suggests
itself as a symbolic representation of White's
approach to the comics that follow. The grid is in
(nearly) full-effect here, with stories laid out in
regular rhythms ranging from two to twenty panels per
page. The issue contains five major pieces along
with a sizable assortment of minor, short
pieces. The centerpiece is the tripartate
"Ghosts," which takes up about half the issue.
This rumination on the presence of absence
brought about by death as well as by the loss of
abilities is the central statement of White's thesis
as he weaves together a number of techniques while
modulating their interactions: a light
black-line over strong color fields, the latter
registering emotional temperature,
which pivots back and forth along the
scale by varying levels of yellow or blue being
combined an omnipresent red, while, taken
together, the interplay between line and color serves
additionally to express the sense of spatial clarity
experienced by the characters, which in turn serves to
express the presence of absence; all this is overlaid
by the grid, which shifts from 20-panel to
16-panel before dramatically shifting to 2-panel at
the same time eliminating the black line.
In "Earth," the absent presence of telephone
conversations is revealed through an ingenious graphic
device, along with the ramifications of not being
fully "there." "Larsen C" attempts to open up a
new mental space for imagining global warming by
manipulating its temporal and spatial
coordinates. An excerpt from James Baldwin's
novel, Go Tell It on the Mountain is
provided with an
intriguing visual adaptation.
Employing an eight panel grid
throughout, with an almost complete lack of text,
White has chosen to tackle visualizing
a "vision." The representation of the external
physical reality in which the vision
transpires is set apart from the vision itself by the
panels having lined borders, while those depticting
the vision itself, are, fittingly, open. On the
narrative side, both the opening tale, "Ten Thoughts,"
and the closing 20-panel back cover piece, "Compiled,"
have a notably Borgesian air about them, perhaps
indicating a future direction for the series. On
the visual side, while White's art has a
host of precursors, incorporating numerous influences,
as in much of his previous work, certain of
Cezanne's techniques show through
here. Techniques and ideas employed
by Frank Santoro, Dash Shaw and Warren Craghead
are also in evidence, making for an interesting
mix. Here's to Yearly being indeed
yearly for years to come!
retail
price - $18.00 copacetic price - $15.75
Voyage to the Deep
by Sam Glanzman;
introduction bv
Stephen Bissette
This classic of the Cold War era has just been
reissued by IDW in this 176 page full coilor
hardcover. Originally published in
1962-1963 by Dell Comics, in a series
of four 12¢ comics books, Voyage to the Deep presents
a science fiction of tale of man-made climate
catastrophe, which, in the context of the Cold War,
is represented as originating as a commie plot from
which a group of heroic American submariners must
save us! As Steve Bissette's in-depth,
illustrated introduction explains, this particular
theme was rooted in the then-widespread fascination
with the nuclear submarines that also provided the
impetus for movies such as The Atomic Submarine,
and most germane to this comic book, the televsion
series Voyage to the Bottom of the
Sea. What sets Voyage to the Deep
apart, is the riveting art by Sam Glanzman,
whose spectacular depictions of catastrophic
flooding are visually conflated with
the end of civilization(s) to make for a unique
reading experience.
retail
price - $24.99 copacetic price - $21.75
Daygloayhole #1
by Ben Passmore
We've been carrying this series – which is now on
its third issue – in the shop for
awhile, but perseveratewd about getting up here on
the site. But no more! Daygloayhole is
Ben Passmore's one-man show (with a little help
from his friends and fans). This first issue
plunges us into the mire of
a Nawlins-inflected, (post-)apocolyptic state
of mind. 32 full (dayglow) color pages, with
cardstock cover. Letters page! If
you enjoy well drawn, irony-drenched,
saracsm-packed, humorious action comics, then look
no further – this is it!
retail price -
$6.00 copacetic price - $5.40
Ellipsis
by Cole Johnson
Spare, evocative, poetic, slice of life
comics fill this 32-page, black and white,
plus-size digest. Cole Johnson has a fully
formed comics voice that combines a
concise line, an understanding of the space
of a page, and, crucially, a
strong, organic sense of pacing.
These comics are a joy to read.
Check some (different ones) out online
at http://johnsoncole.com .
retail price
- $5.00 copacetic price - $5.00
Rookie Moves
by
November Garcia
Rookie Moves by
November Garcia is a 20-page, digest-size
comic book (with cardstock covers)
that provides a window on the soul of the
small press, self-publishing comics scene.
In these pages we are provided with
a look at some of the social aspects of the
scene in general, and an example of
an instince of crossing the divide
from consumer to producer, in particular.
All comics creators are first comics
readers. Many, including one November
Garcia, are so inspired by the comics
they encounter that they are led to
aspire to become a comics creator
themselves, naturally grvitating
towards the ranks of those creators
whose work most inpired them. While this
process/cycle holds true in practically all
artistic endeavors, in the world of small
press and self-published comics, the border
between reader and maker is among the most
porous, where readers who so desire will
encounter little resistance, with people
continually crossing back and forth. In
oither words, any habitué of the world of
small press comics will find plenty to relate
to here.
retail
price - $5.00 copacetic price - $5.00
Hideout
by
Keren Katz, Ovadia
Benishu, Omer
Hoffman, Geffen
Refaeli, Dan
Allon, Hila
Noam & Hadar
Reuven
Hideout is a 100+ page, digest-size,
full color,
French-flapped, squarebound comics
anthology, the third published so far by the
Humdrum comics collective in Israel.
Check out this massive preview HERE.
retail
price - $12.00 copacetic price - $12.00
TRUTH ZONE -
Thee "Official" Complete Bootleg
by Simon Hanselmann
We have got a hold of a small number of
these hand-assembled collections.
Each is stored in a
one-of-a-kind hand-lettered
box, depicted on lower left in the photo.
Each box set contains all 91 Truth Zone strips
that appeared on Comics Workbook in 2012 and
2013. These caustic – and hilarious –
one-page strips are the comics that
introduced Simon Hanselmann – along with Megg,
Mogg, Owl and Werewolf Jones – to his
American audience. These one-page strips
are collected on individual, unbound plates,
portfolio style. Each box set also
includes a booklet prepared especially (and
exclusively) for this edition by Mr. Hanselmann,
in which he offers his own commentary on each of
the strips. All are stored together in a
unique hand-lettered, snap-close, vinyl
portfolio envelope, depicted on the upper right,
which fits snugly inside the box.
LIMIT:
ONE per customer.
retail
price - $60.00 copacetic price - $60.00
Black Leopard, Red Wolf
by
Marlon James
This just released fantasy adventure novel,
the first of a projected trilogy, by
the Booker Prize winning author, Marlon
James, is getting a lot of attention and seems
likely to be of interest to some Copacetic
customers. James himself is an
avid literary ecumenicist who views many
academic categories dividing types of
literature as promoting
artificial distinctions between
works that have more to do with their origins
than functions. In Black
Leopard, Red Wolf he
provides a demonstration of principles in
a work that defies categorization.
Anyone who finds themselves intrigued by the
above should take a moment to check out
his far ranging comments in this
recent installment of "By the Book"
at the New York Times, and then, Michiko
Kakutani's review of Black
Leopard, Red Wolf, also at the
NY Times.
retail
price - $30.00 copacetic price - $25.75
These
items and more
may also be
found at our
eCommerce
site, HERE.
Want to keep
going? There's tons more great stuff here,
most of which is still in stock. Check out our
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last updated 31 March 2019
