New for September 2019

The Hard Tomorrow
by Eleanor Davis
Before cracking open The Hard Tomorrow, it might be a good idea to mentally buckle up – and maybe even put on an emotionally protective helmet for good measure – as Eleanor Davis's new graphic novel lives up to its title.  It is indeed a hard hitting look at how the here and now could play out in what's coming – but certainly not one without hope, and that is, ultimately, the point.  Beautifully drawn, dramatically paced, and overflowing with empathy for its fully realized cast of characters, The Hard Tomorrow is vibrantly alive to being in the world in America in our time.  Davis's choice to set the work a few years in the future (apparently 2022) gives her leeway to ramp up the intensity by projecting current trends forward.  Here in these gritty black and white pages we encounter hard working people trying to live decent, moral lives, outside of the exploitative, callous and uncaring system that constitutes the mainstream of American life and culture, many of whom are also fighting to change this system – political activism is central to the narrative – and some who are simply trying to hide from it.  You'll have to read it to discover how it all plays out; you won't find out here!  The title has a very distinct noir/hardboiled fiction ring to it – think The Big Sleep, The Long Goodbye, The Hard Goodbye, et al, but, perhaps, most of all, The Long Tomorrow, which was a hard hitting post-apocalypse, science fiction novel written by the versatile Leigh Brackett who, while highly respected for her science fiction and fantasy novels, is perhaps most well known for her screenplays for the films of... The Big Sleep and The Long Goodbye.  In some respects, Eleanor Davis is in Frank Miller / David Lapham territory here.  But, Davis is in an entirely different place from Miller and Lapham in her understanding of and empathy for the physical and emotional lives of her characters; and, in locating their difficulties in structural inequality and America's political realities, her understanding is quite a bit more sophisticated and nuanced.  Davis takes the noir sensibility and reconfigures it in the light of parenthood (with a strong emphasis on motherhood) – prospective and actual – and in the process shows how hope grows out of the soil of vulnerability.  Additionally, the employment of the standard science fiction trope of forward projection of the present into the future enables Davis to mitigate the fatalism that normally permeates hardboiled noir, as the reality presented is thus necessarily speculative.  Suffice it to say, there are quite a few pleasures of the text to be had here – some of which will appeal to a different audience than her prior work.  While we are confident that nearly all current fans of Davis's work will fully appreciate what she is doing here, this is also a work that is likely to appeal comics readers who have never encountered her comics before.  We are excited by the prospect of readers drawn in by her comics chops and noir sensibility encountering her insightful worldview.  
retail price - $24.95  copacetic price - $21.75

Glenn Ganges in "The River at Night"
by Kevin Huizenga
At looooong last – the first issue of Ganges was published in 2006 – the complete Ganges has been collected in this excellent hardcover volume from Drawn and Quarterly.  And not just collected:  In preparing this work for its permanent home, Huizenga went through the original issues with his inspector's hat on and tweaked this here and fixed that there, with the goal of bringing it all together in the best shape and form possible.  Anyone who is looking for challenging, thought-provoking comics that push the boundaries of what comics can do – look no further, this is it!  We'll have more to say, but just wanted to let everyone know, it's here!  In the meantime, we have written extensively on each of the individual issues that make up this volume, so anyone interested in learning more about this series and/or who would like to have a better idea of what to expect, should consider checking out our Ganges series page, from which our write-up of each individual issue can be accessed.
retail price - $34.95  copacetic price - $29.75

Rusty Brown
by Chris Ware
The first thing that came to mind when lifting the first copy of Rusty Brown out of the shipping case upon its arrival is that this volume has the heft – and then some – and feel of the Frank King Walt & Skeezix collections, collecting the classic Gasoline Alley strips, that Mr. Ware has been long been assembling and designing for D & Q, grafted on to the design of the original Jimmy Corrigan hardcover.  This 356 page, full color, horizontally formatted graphic omnibus by Chris Ware is set to provide a substantial reading experience to all who crack its covers.  And, speaking of covers, Ware has once again designed a complex, diagrammatic, two-sided fold-out cover reminiscent of that which he created for Jimmy Corrigan.Of the 351 pages of comics herein, the first 113 were executed between 2000 and 2003, more or less immediately following the conclusion of Jimmy Corrigan, and were then published in/as ACME Novelty Library 16 & 17. The middle section, pages 114 - 263, were created between 2002 and 2006 and published as ACME Novelty Library 19 & 20 (aka Lint).  The final section, pages 264 - 351, were drawn and written between 2012 and 2018 and, with the exception of the first four pages, are previously unpublished.  And, we feel that it is only fair to warn you that this volume is but the first half of the Rusty Brown saga!  It concludes with a double page "intermission." Given that this volume was started nearly twenty years ago, we will hazard to state that this intermission is unlikely to be a brief one.
retail price - $35.00  copacetic price - $29.75

Cats of the Louvre
by Taiyo Matsumoto
428 pages of all new (in English, in North America) Taiyo Matsumoto, (Tekkonkinkreet, GoGo Monster, Sunny) featuring cats & and classical French art, in a nice dual-texture (cloth/gloss) hardcover from Viz  – what more do you want? Cats of the Louvre!
retail price - $29.95  copacetic price - $26.75

Drawing Power
edited by Diane Noomin
Subtitled "Women’s Stories of Sexual Violence, Harassment, and Survival," Drawing Power can be seen as the comics embodiment of the ongoing #MeToo movement.  Here, in the 260 pages of this full size hardcover, are the fruits of the labors of over 60 cartoonists from North American and around the world, recruited by editor Diane Noomin to to share their personal experiences with sexual violence and harassment in all new comics created especially for this anthology.  In black & white, duo-tone and full color, these comics cover a wide range of situations with a diverse cast of comics voices.  Check out the contributor list: Rachel Ang, Zoe Belsinger, Jennifer Camper, Caitlin Cass, Tyler Cohen, Marguerite Dabaie, Soumya Dhulekar, Wallis Eates, Trinidad Escobar, Kat Fajardo, Joyce Farmer, Emil Ferris, Liana Finck, Sarah Firth, Mary Fleener, Ebony Flowers, Claire Folkman, Noel Franklin, Katie Fricas, Siobhán Gallagher, Joamette Gil, J. Gonzalez-Blitz, Georgiana Goodwin, Roberta Gregory, Marian Henley, Soizick Jaffre, Avy Jetter, Sabba Khan, Kendra Josie Kirkpatrick, Aline Kominsky-Crumb, Nina Laden, Miss Lasko-Gross, Carol Lay, Miriam Libicki, Sarah Lightman, LubaDalu, Ajuan Mance, MariNaomi, Lee Marrs, Liz Mayorga, Lena Merhej, Bridget Meyne, Carta Monir, Hila Noam, Diane Noomin, Breena Nuñez, Meg O’Shea, Corinne Pearlman, Cathrin Peterslund, Minnie Phan, Kelly Phillips, Powerpaola, Sarah Allen Reed, Kaylee Rowena, Ariel Schrag, M. Louise Stanley, Maria Stoian, Nicola Streeten, Marcela Trujillo, Carol Tyler, Una, Lenora Yerkes & Ilana Zeffren.
retail price - $29.95  copacetic price - $25.75

Rat Time
by Keiler Roberts
Here's the third collection of witty and insightful observational diary comics from Keiler Roberts that work to remind us that it's often the little things that we remember, that make up a life...
retail price - $12.00  copacetic price - $10.75

 

Stunt
by Michael DeForge
A mighty mini from Michael DeForge!  Measuring a mere 3 1/2' x 8", this 72 page work punches above its weight.  Appropriately printed in black and blue – with a touch of red on the covers – Stunt is a tale of celebrity confusion doubling down in the dream factory that takes readers on a roller coaster ride of identity and illusion, escape and control, possession and loss, and the loop de loop of sex and death. 
retail price - $15.00  copacetic price - $11.75

Bubbles #4
edited by Brian Bubbles
Weighing in at bonus-sized 44 pages, this issue is the most jam-packed yet! Interviews with Matt Furie, Josh Pettinger and Archer Prewitt miongle with original comics by Cam Del Rosario, Mike Olson, Greg Steele and others.  There is a review of Simon Hanselmann's Bad Gateway exhibit at the Bellevue Arts Museum – the first we've seen – by Tyler Meese; a review of Yokoyama's Outdoors by Jef Alford; an article on Shigeru Suigura by James Bradshaw; as well as the standard features, "Comics You Should Read," and "Comics in my Mailbox"  and "Letter to Bubbles."  Still only $6!
retail price - $6.00  copacetic price - $5.75

Free Shit
by Charles Burns
Discreetly labeled, "FS", this long promised compilation of the 25 extant issues of the 8-page mini-comics/zines by Charles Burns that he has been making for many years and giving away at conventions, expos, and the like, has at last touched down here at Copacetic.  Get 'em while you can, as it is our understanding that Fantagraphics has already sold through on the entire print run!  Speaking of Fantagraphics, they have done a nice job on this perky little hardcover that fits snugly in the hand.  Glossy front and pack covers wrap over a bright orange cloth binding with metallic blue lettering emblazoned on the spine; over 200 pages or obscure Charles Burns weirdness!
retail price - $19.99  copacetic price - $17.75

These items and more may also be found at our eCommerce site, HERE.

New for August 2019

Pittsburgh
by Frank Santoro
A story that required years of fermentation to arrive at its requisite form, Pittsburgh is a comics meditation on family and identity that unfolds within a complex matrix of time, place and self as it is inscribed within memory.  On the surface, it is a memoir of the artist's parents' courtship, marriage and divorce – and its reverberations through his life.  There are also the supporting tales of two sets of grandparents and the crucial involvement of a neighborhood family, as well as the mute chorus of the family dog.  This surface is structurally undergirded by substantial formal constructions of great depth that connect this singular tale to a great multiplicity of significances which permeate contemporary society and resonate through our present moment.  The narrative in Pittsburgh is in part recursive, part repetition with variation, part symphonic, divided into movements, each restating the theme and then modulating variations – going over similar moments from different points of view and/or with different approaches both in visual and textual.  And, naturally, part comic book (and/or comic strip) series, in which themes and characters are continually recapitulated to familiarize readers who are (re)joining the story while it is already underway.  As this aspect of repetition with variation is deeply ingrained in the comics form, but not the novel – and not those "graphic novels” which derive from the prose novel form – this aspect of its structure will likely be unfamiliar – feel “different” – to some readers .  In so far as that the narrative structure of Pittsburgh is simultaneously rooted in the serial nature of comic books and the overarching, thematically unified nature of the prose novel, it serves to unite these two worlds.  Its thesis is that identity is constructed out of – and in – memory: Individual memory of one’s own experiences; absorption of others’ memories – particularly those of parents and other family members; cultural memories embodied in texts – works of art, novels, films, television, music, etc.  Together these memories form the individual’s sense of self which is the core of identity.  Its process of drawing from memory substantiating the visual construction of identity from memories through its embodiment in the style and manner of its artistic representation.  One of the most singular aspects of Pittsburgh is that the color scheme throughout is highly subjective:  the color of memory.  Some moments are represented in hyper-vivid, non-representational color schemes, others, deliberately subdued grey tones, also non-representational, but to the opposite effect.  These are mixed with scenes in which the color is to varying degrees representational, varying degrees subjective.  This way of working with color draws the reader into the subjectivity of memory, enabling them to enter into the space of the memories and see how they are “colored” by the emotions attached to them.  And, speaking of color, Pittsburgh is a work that fully exploits the capacity of modern scanning technology to present the work as close as possible to it’s actual physical appearance, which stands in marked contrast to the standard creative approach employed in the creation of comics and graphic novels today, with most, even sole creators – "comics auteurs" – continuing to employ some variation of the breakdown of labor into scripting, penciling, lettering, inking and coloring – especially with coloring. In most color comics, the color is added separately, at the end of the process, and much if not most coloring is done via computer.  The work in the pages of Pittsburgh, on the other hand, is “through composed” in the sense that the delineation of space and the emotional register of color are created simultaneously in a process that forges an inseparable unity between space and color, between the apprehension of place and the emotional register it engenders.   The book’s presentation  is designed to provide the reader with an experience that is as close as possible to that of being in the presence of the original art.  In fact, this book employs the same state-of-the-art scanning and printing technology that goes into the exorbitantly priced “Artist’s Editions”, but, crucially, Pittsburgh was conceived and executed with the idea of taking full advantage of this process, right from the start.  The resulting book is a work of visual spectacularity that is unparalleled in this capacity (and that is priced at a mere fraction of the aforementioned artist editions).  And, as in nearly all of Santoro’s work over the last decade (at least), the unit is the spread, as opposed to the page.  Again, this is an artistic choice and one in keeping with the currently available print technologies.  The page became the default unit in traditional comics production as, at the very outset of comics, in the newspaper, the artist was limited to a single (or partial) page, and then, as the comic book grew out of the comic strip, the initial comic book artists were, naturally enough, taking their cues form the comic strip artists who preceded them (and, in fact, were sometimes one and the same).  The original comic book artists also had little to no control over where/how their art would appear in the published, printed version, as nearly all comic books during the first decade or so were anthology titles with multiple stories and artists working for an editor/publisher and so the page order was generally unknown to the artist at the time of creation*.  In some respects it's surprising that more artists don’t compose in the spread, as this is what the reader takes in at a glance, each time they turn the page, and so seems a natural way of working.  Santoro’s dual background as a painter and comics maker has enabled him to intuitively grasp the advantage of working in the spread.  It is possible that the lack of this “painterly” perspective is what prevents other comics artists from approaching their work from this point of view.  A key component of Pittsburgh  – that its title makes explicit – is that the family at the center of the narrative, Santoro’s own, represents/embodies/is in some respects a stand-in for Pittsburgh, the city, as a whole.  This, in turn, can be seen as a synecdoche for the urban Rust Belt experience.  Pittsburgh points to ways in which the Vietnam War can now be seen as an inflection point in the "American Century,” when things that were once believed in proved to be false, or at least not what they purported to be, and moral decay – which, in an industrial setting, translates to the rust spread throughout the “rust belt” – began to settle in.  How is this family-as-city a two way street?  How does the implosion of social stability, political truths, and all the foundational assumptions that day-to-day life is set upon impact the individuals and families that make up the nation?  And, conversely, how can the reinvention of the individual and the family then in turn reconfigure social and political models and reinvigorate society?  In some ways, Pittsburgh, with it’s sub-title, “Never Comes Tomorrow,” envisions a society that, for the individually expressed identity, which it is the artist’s function to embody and represent, is, if not at a dead end, on a road to nowhere; more prosaically, that there seems to be no place for the self-aware and self-directed individual in the world of tomorrow that is envisioned and being constructed by the current powers that be (i.e., neoliberal global capitalism).  These themes, while not explicitly stated, are nonetheless implicitly explored in these pages.  In giving novel form to a story that took place in the past and was forged and carried into the present in memory only, and doing so in a way that calls out the human cost of the American Way of Life™ yet simultaneously celebrates those who pay the price, Pittsburgh may, perhaps, serve to illuminate, in some indefinable way, the existence of a path towards a society more accommodating to community and less in thrall to corporate and financial power.  Paradoxically positing a tomorrow when never comes in such a way as to welcome the possibility of the opposite: world without end. 
retail price - $29.95  copacetic price - $25.75

X-Men: Grand Design – X-Tinction
by Ed Piskor
And here's another work created entirely here in Pittsburgh, PA:  the third and final Treasury Edition of Ed Piskor's X-Men: Grand Design trilogy, his soup-to-nuts overview of the epic (his)story of the Mutant Marvel Masterwork known as... The X-Men!   As he revisits the home stretch of Chris Claremont's epic  – and defining – run on X-Men, Ed crams in so much story line that readers' heads will be spinning trying to keep up.  And then he tops it off with a twist (knot?) ending that wraps up the Grand Design into a neat package.  Grand Design is simultaneously a great way for newcomers to get introduced to the awesome X-Men saga, and for long time fans to revisit its highlights.  Both will come away with fresh insights and a better sense of the mechanics of this marvelous saga's construction and be better able to see its embedded inflection points, as the power of Piskor's X-ray vision builds to the revelation that its uncanny design is indeed grand. 
retail price - $29.99  copacetic price - $25.75

Akissi: More Tales of Mischief
by Marguerite Abouet & Mathieu Sapin
Move over, Dennis the Menace – Akissi is back!  Here, in the frantic, fun-filled, full color pages of More Tales of Mischief, Akissi romps through 20 all-new tales, all created on a standard template of splash page followed by five pages each laid out using a six panel grid – except for two Double-Size Specials that run for twelve pages total.  Here we have vital tales of growing up in Côte d'Ivoire (that's the Ivory Coast, located in west Africa, for all you Anglophones out there) – that are more or less based on the childhood experiences of Marguerite Abouet – that really capture the zaniness of a kids perspective on the world that – as embodied in the scintillating artwork of Mathieu Sapin – make for a great reading experience for all ages!   This is comics.
retail price - $14.99  copacetic price - $13.75






Clyde Fans

by Seth
Twenty years in the making, serialized entirely in the pages of his one-man anthology comic book series, Palookaville, Seth's career-spanning magnum opus has at long last reached its final destination in this deulxe (Seth-designed, 'natch) slipcased hardcover edition.  Twenty years represents a hefty chunk of any artist's career, and in Seth's case, it is a long enough period that you can see both his art style and his approach to storytelling significantly change and evolve over the course of the work, which in and of itself makes for an interesting – and rarely encountered – added layer to the reading experience.  Unsurprisingly, Clyde Fans has garnered plenty of reviews, including this one in the NY Times, and this one in the Globe & Mail, that includes a brief interview with Seth.  And, for those unfamiliar with this work, BoingBoing has provided a brief preview of this 488 page epic that is primarily taken from the earlier period of its execution.
retail price - $54.95  copacetic price - $45.75

Sky In Stereo, Volume 2
by Mardou
Sky in Stereo started out life in a series of digest-size, pamphlet comic books which were then collected with additional material as Volume One.  Now, at last, we have the long awaited conclusion to (Sacha) Mardou's graphic novel of growing up in a nameless British location (that likely bears more than a passing resemblance to the Manchester of Mardou's own youth).  While all children must cross the sea of adolescence to gain the continent of adulthood, each makes their own personal and unique crossing, and while some find this crossing relatively smooth, others may encounter stormy seas.  Here in the pages of the second and final volume of Sky in Stereo we have an up close and personal  – and highly engaging – look at one particularly challenging voyage from girl to woman in which these stormy seas are navigated and charted for the reader in page after page of great comics that were years in the making.
retail price - $13.99  copacetic price - $12.75

The Follies of Richard Wadsworth
by Nick Maandag
Here in the 150 pages of Nick Mandaag's Drawn and Quarterly debut, we are not only provided with the acutely painful title story of an intelligent but ultimately clueless university professor who does everything wrong, blows every opportunity, never misses a chance to take things from bad to worse, and, naturally enough, makes himself miserable in the process, but also two more tales, "Night School," and "The Disciple", which, taken together, make for the most successful work yet from this master of failure.
retail price - $19.95  copacetic price - $16.75

The Anthology of Mind
by Tommi Musturi
This 128 page, magazine-size, French-flapped, full color collection of Musturi's comics is printed on a highgrade newsprint for full color saturation.  And quite a collection it is!  37 pieces from Musturi's 20+ year career as one of Finland's finest comikers.  Musturi, one-time editor of Finland's premiere experimental comics anthology, Glomp, is a bold experimenter in his own right, and here's the proof.  This collection will be of special interest to comics makers as its chock full of innovate approaaches to the mediu.  Be sure to check it out next time you're in the shop.
retail price - $24.99  copacetic price - $21.75

Bicycle Day
by Brian Blomerth
Bicycle Day is an inspired underground comic book cum graphic novel that takes readers on the trip that started it all, Albert Hoffman's bicycle ride home from his lab at Sandoz Pharmaceuticals on April 16, 1943, where he had just resynthesized the 25th in his series of derivatives of the alkaloids of ergot fungus that were "scaffolded" on the lysergic acid compound, and in the process been exposed to the chemical compound that resulted, LSD-25.  Prepare yourself for a wild ride!  Line and color battle it out for 192 pages as Blomerth modulates the representations of Hoffman's shifting preceptions of reality and so provide reader's with a behind-the-eyeballs point of view.
retail price - $29.99  copacetic price - $26.75

What the Actual #2
by Jai Granofsky
What the Actual returns with an intriguing issue that is better read than explained.  The cover statement that this is "a new grindhouse comic" will point you in the right direction, as the structure of this issue likely owes something to Quentin Tarantino's Pulp Fiction, but the felxibility of the comic book form combined with Granofsky's instinctive understanding of how it is read will provide readers of this issue with plenty of surprising – and clever – twists.  Please be forewarned that there's a decent amount of gratuitous cartooned crudity, violence and gore that is central to Granofsky's sense of humor.  So, yes, this book is funny, but in a dark, angry sort of way.  Many long term, hard core comic book readers are likely to get a kick out this issue, which runs 36 magazine size pages, with black and white guts and full color covers and inside covers – but it's definitely not for everyone.
retail price - $7.00  copacetic price - $6.25

Marvel Masters of Suspense: Stan Lee & Steve Ditko, Volume 1
by Steve Ditko & Stan Lee
Sometimes, dreams do come true!  Here it is, at long last: the first of two volumes collecting the entirety of Steve Ditko's pre-superhero output for Marvel Comics, almost all of which was scripted by Stan Lee.  This massive, full color, slightly oversize, hardcover volume – the first of two! – collects a wallopin' 134 (!!!) tales, plus 16 bonus pages, ten of which are high quality reproductions of original pages.  It all starts off with a great Roger Stern introduction.  Yes!
retail price - $100.00  copacetic price - $79.75

These items and more may also be found at our eCommerce site, HERE.



New for July 2019

Kingdom
by Jon McNaught
Released in the UK at the close of 2018, the latest work from Jon McNaught is now, at last, available stateside.  A beautifully produced, 128 page, 8" x 11" hardcover, Kingdom is a real eye opener, and is surely his most accomplished work to date.  As in his previous works, forms and space are here articulated primarily through planes of color, an approach to comics-making derived from McNaught's print-making practice.  Employing a limited, variable, two-tone palette throughout, McNaught largely dispenses with line, depending instead on a careful placement of shapes, edges and color overlaps to construct his images, making for a unique and highly affecting æsthetic.  Readers will find themselves immediately immersed in McNaught's sharply observed comics, enjoying page after page of well balanced, crisp, clean panels, rigorously rendered and meticulously arrayed in metrical layouts so sure handed that they could do double duty as a demonstration of the capacities of the grid in comics storytelling, running the gamut from a single splash panel up to 35 panels to a page.  The decision to place the entirety of the narrative within the frame of one particular holiday excursion creates an explicit union of time and space that is fundamental to the concept of kingdom, and McNaught, helpfully, if somewhat ironically, points readers' thoughts in this direction by lending his title to the name of the coastal holiday park that is the work's primary setting.  That is but the opening salvo in his allusive use of the title, as it is also, clearly, intended – and successfully serves – to represent many layers of meaning, the most significant of which is the kingdom of memory, especially the memory of childhood held in the adult mind, as the work is imbued through and through with an evocation of that naivete and innocence that is the sine qua non of youth.  The adolescent male's bravado, evincing as it does the atavistic drives towards violence and conquest that once served the establishment of kingdom, is pointedly evoked as well, and is additionally linked to the problematic kingdom of technological capitalism that is shown here, as it has been in McNaught's previous works, to be intent on exploiting youth's naivete and thereby colonizing its innocent consciousness, displacing the natural world that is every human's birthright in order to rule in a virtual realm.  In fact, once the mind is focused on the concept of kingdom, it can be seen permeating practically every layer of the work (the animal kingdom, just for starters), and then, by extension, the reality it portrays (which is, of course, the point).  While there is an implicit centering of the narrative on the adolescent male character that is, more or less, a stand-in for the author's perspective, a great deal of empathy (manifestly informed by the adult consciousness housing the recollections of adolescence) is shown for the other members of his family, here his mother and younger sister, and, in one scene, a great aunt, each of whom are successfully fleshed out with distinct, independent identities and shown to have their own concerns and unique experiences; their own kingdoms, as it were.  The events depicted are, as they must be, spatially represented.  These representations can, at least in older readers, additionally serve as a means to an end:  the particular combination of images that McNaught has so succinctly rendered, together with their uncanny sequencing, unlocks static temporality and effects time travel in the mind of the reader, who will find themselves leaving the present behind on the reading chair and revisiting their youthful consciousness. These temporal experiences, stored and then reactivated and retrieved, take the recaller of them back into the spaces in which they took place, creating a dance between time and space that McNaught's two-tone approach is ideally suited to capture, and which the narrative itself explicitly alludes to.  One of the special pleasures of this text is how the childhood memories revisited here in the pages of Kingdom take on that particular majesty of the world as seen through a child's eyes, whereby it is once again made new...  Kingdom is a deeply studied work.  McNaught appears to have incorporated insights gleaned from works as diverse as Chris Ware's Acme Novelty Library, Seth's Palookaville, Kevin Huizenga's Ganges, Mariko and Jillian Tamaki's This One Summer, and Frank Santoro's Pompeii, and has welcomed them into the personal, hard won and unmistakable style that is his own, true kingdom.  It is a kingdom eminently worth visiting.
retail price - $19.99  copacetic price - $17.77

Kramers Ergot X
edited by Sammy Harkham, w/ R. Crumb, Dash Shaw, David Collier, Simon Hanselmann, Aisha Franz, Ron Rege, John Pham, Sherri Flenniken, Connor Willumsen, C. F., Lale Westvind, et al
It's here!  The long awaited return of Kramers Ergot!  Edited, as always, by Sammy Harkham, this time around Kramers is a whopping 11" x 14"!  This amped up format presents 168 full color pages by a host of today's most copacetic cartoonists and comics makers, heralded by an eye-scorching cover by Lale Westvind!  Check out the contributor list:  R. Crumb, Dash Shaw, David Collier, Anouk Ricard, C.F., Jason Murphy, Blutch, Shary Flenniken, Johnny Ryan, John Pham, Ron Regé Jr., Simon Hanselmann, Anna Haifisch, Ivan Brunetti, David Amram, Helge Reumann, Frank King, Steve Weissman, Aisha Franz, Leon Sadler, Adam Buttrick, Archer Prewitt, Connor Willumsen, Bendik Kaltenborn, Will Sweeney, Rick Altergott, Kim Deitch, Marc Bell, and, of course, Harkham himself.  There are some really amazing pieces in this issue, as creators leverage the larger format to stretch out.  A standout is C.F.'s pyrotechnical exposition, which works to transport its readers into an altered state, as he goes all out to tantalizingly suggest the nature of reality that our visual processors can't quite make out... and in the process delineates a heretofore undiscovered door of perception.  And that's just one!  Sammy has intimated that this will be the last Kramers for quite awhile, so you will want to take your time to savor this one. 
retail price - $34.99  copacetic price - $29.75

Love and Rockets: Volume IV #7
by Jaime Hernandez, Gilbert Hernandez
YES!  Summer wouldn't be the same without a new issue of Love and Rockets, and here it is.  Familial modes and their respective dynamics are a common thread that is woven throughout all the stories in this issue.  The issue starts out with a brief look at the state of Maggie and Ray, before moving on through a a look at the relationship between a found family in fandom and one's own biological family in the latest from Tonta (see the next listing for more).  Gilbert's "Punk Rock Reunion" goes all over the map as it charts the tortuous paths through the multifaceted complex of relationships that constitute Fritz's families.  Then Jaime closes it out with another chapter in the ongoing Animus saga, in which the thread of family is most deeply buried...
retail price - $4.99  copacetic price - $4.99

Tonta
by Jaime Hernandez
And, if a new issue of Love and Rockets isn’t already enough, 2019 has now provided us with an embarrassment of riches: two deluxe hardcover Jaime Hernandez collections in one year!  Here, a mere four months after Is This How You See Me?, we have Tonta, in all her glory (along with, of course, Viv and the rest of the clan).  Tonta is yet another character that beamed down into our world from the Perfect Sphere of True Comics via Hernandez Teleportation Services, Inc.  Debuting circa 2012 (see below*) in a walk-on role, she now has her name on the marquee of a hardcover graphic novel.  Who'd a thunk it?  Tonta was originally serialized in the pages of Love and Rockets: New Stories.  It is presented here in a larger, magazine size hardcover to enable readers and aficionados alike to better appreciate Jaime's amazing work.  Anyone not in a hurry should consider taking a detour to this 2012 interview with Jaime and Gilbert, conducted By Dan Nadel, Tim Hodler and Frank Santoro, here, during the course of which Jaime discusses the (then) just introduced Tonta...
retail price - $19.99  copacetic price - $15.99

Bad Gateway
by Simon Hanselmann
WOW!  It's clear that Simon Hanselmann is intent on taking it to the next level, and with Bad Gateway, he has.  It is a real beauty of a book, his first in the larger, A4 (roughly, magazine) size. Prepare yourself for a sumptuous package, expertly designed by Mr. Hanselmann himself, with assists from Keeli McCarthy and production by the ever able Paul Baresh.  Simon shows off his art (and art history) chops in the evocative covers and series of endpapers and double page spreads, all fully painted.  Once you get to the story itself, its page after page of a relentless, unforgiving 12-panel grid depicting non-stop desperation and mayhem.  Here, in Bad Gateway we have form and content balancing each other out from opposite ends of the spectrum: an extremely focused and disciplined art practice in the service of representing apotheotic laxity and despondency. 

retail price - $29.99  copacetic price - $25.75





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