NEW STUFF ARCHIVES
New for December 2020
Mini-Kus #90: Banal Complications
by Marc Bell
Marc Bell pulls back the curtain and reveals the (less than) glamourous life of today's jet-setting international cartoonist! Readers will be privy to rarely seen behind the scene goings on that are the underpinnings of comics creation. Here you will vicariously encounter collectors, gallerists, accountants, visas, leases and taxes! All squeezed into 24 pages of Marc Bell TextToons™. These shenanigans will all be especially appreciated by other working cartoonists and artists. (Slightly stressful) fun!
retail price - $6.00 copacetic price - $6.00Mini-Kus #83: Chapter Two
by Keren Katz
Get ready for 24 pint-size pages filled with Keren Katz's beautiful and inimitably enigmatic drawings that when combined with her fairly straightforward text work together to tell one story – and show another.
retail price - $6.00 copacetic price - $6.00
retail price - $22.99 copacetic price - $20.00
Remina
by Junji Ito
What better way to spend the holiday season than curled up with an up close and intimate look at impending doom, in the form of an unknown planet on a collision course with Earth. Here you will find 200 pages of "universal scale" terror – that may not be what it seems. Is the threat from without – or from within? Is it a harsh inhuman fate, or an inborn evil? Only Junji Ito knows for sure. The answer lies with Remina...
The Eternaut 1969
All Time Comics Zerosis Deathscape
by Josh Bayer, Josh Simmons & Trevor Von Eeden, w/ Gabrielle Bell, Julia Gfrörer, Benjamin Marra, Ken Landgraf, Tom Toye, Dan Lee
Here it is, the complete collection of the brain bending All Time Comics epic, Zerosis Deathscape! Josh Bayer and Josh Simmons team up with Bronze Age Comics legend Trevor Von Eeden to deliver a throwback urban/cosmic tale that delivers old school cosmic comics from a gritty, new-school indy-alt perspective. This 224 page, full color trade paperback collects the entire seven-issue series (#0 + #1 - 6) along with all covers, and features contributions from Gabrielle Bell, Ken Landgraf, Julia Gfrorer, Benjamin Marra and Thomas Toye, and brain-scalding colors by Dan Lee. Get ready for some invigorating entertainment!
retail price - $24.99 copacetic price - $21.75
Object Compendium
by Kilian Eng
Anyone who was frustrated by missing out on Eng's delicately delineated and lushly colored (and, we must add, Moebius-inflected) artwork in its original release, here's an opportunity to put that frustration behind you. the all-in-one, definitive edition of Kilian Eng’s otherworldly landscapes and retro-futuristic illustrations. The Object Compendium is a massive, oversize (9.5" x 12.5") hardcover volume running 280 full color pages that collects all of Eng’s first three sold out monographs, Object 5, Object 10, Object 15 as well as unpublished work from that time period, including 30 pages of previously unpublished works, and opens with a foreword by Chris Jalufka.
retail price - $49.99 copacetic price - $44.75
retail price - $14.99 copacetic price - $13.75
These items and more may also be found at our eCommerce site, HERE.
New for November 2020
Vision
by Julia Gfrörer
Julia Gfrörer has honed the blade of her gothic comics to a fine, sharp edge, and in the pages of Vision she grips its haft firmly and plunges it deep within, mingling sex and death in 90 pages of comics arrayed in a relentless 9-panel grid. Gfrörer's pen is, here, the sword, and she employs it to first delineate then cut through the borders between light and dark, night and day, flesh and spirit, and, ultimately, life and death, as they existed in the world of the privileged class, before Freud...
retail price - $16.99 copacetic price - $15.00
Be Gay, Do Comics! – Queer History, Memoir, and Satire from The Nib
edited by Matt Bors & Matt Lubchansky
Be Gay, Do Comics! collects roughly 250 pages of full color comics from The Nib, that, taken together, run the LGBTQ+ gamut, in the process fleshing out quite a diverse spectrum of experiences. The 40 contributors to this volume, assembled here by (we believe) Matt Bors and Matt Lubchansky, including Kendra Wells, Hazel Newlevant, Maia Kobabe, Matt Lubchansky, Breena Nuñez, Sasha Velour, Shing Yin Khor, Levi Hastings, Mady G, Josh Trujillo, Bianca Xunise, Kazimir Lee, and many more, employ a wide variety of modes. Starting out with an important history lesson (and there are plenty more along the way) and moving on through personal accounts, jouralistic accounts and the unpacking of terms and definitions, all interspersed with wry one-pager reflections by Joey Alison Sayers, this collection is packed with positive energy and joyful vibes. Diverse as they are, all contributors, are united in their celebration of all things gay. Check this out for more.
retail price - $24.99 copacetic price - $21.75
Old Growth
by Niv Bavarsky & Michael Olivo
This 200+ page, full color, hardcover (featuring metallic ink!) has been released by Fantagraphics under its "FU" (Fantagraphics Underground, in case you were wondering) imprint, which usually indicates a print run of 1000, or less. Old Growth is a trippy, dreamy mythological/philosophical in comics form. Includes an semi-explicative interview with the creators by Jesse Balmer at the conclusion. Not really sure what to expect from that admittedly vague description? Get a nice taste of what's in store HERE (just keep scrolling down – and up, as the link seems to take you to the middle of the preview? – but take your time as the graphics may take a second to load).
retail price - $35.00 copacetic price - $29.75
Hokusai Manga
by Katsushika Hokusai
Now at last available in the USA, here is a look at where it all started – manga that is! This pint-sized box set is truly power-packed! While it’s pages measure a mere 4 1/4" x 5 3/4”, its three volumes contain well over 1000 pages total, over 900 of which are fully devoted to reproducing the most extensive selection of Hokusai’s ten-volume handbook of drawings – which he dubbed manga – that he originally published between 1814 and 1820 (although an additional five volumes were published long after his death, bringing the total to 15 – we think; read the notes accompanying these volumes for the full details) currently available in a popular edition – and nowhere even remotely close to this bargain price! Make sure to check this one out next time you’re in the shop. Online customers can get a sneak peek HERE. There is also a review (of the identical UK edition) accompanied by plenty of sample pages HERE.
retail price - $34.95 copacetic price - $29.75
Los Angeles Times
edited by Sammy Harkham, w/ Jordan Crane, Julie Doucet, Max , Lale Westvind, Archer Prewitt, Connor Willumsen, Matthew Thurber, John Pham, Ron Rege, Simon Hanselmann and more!
Happy Thanksgiving, indeed! Arriving just the day before, this 72-page tabloid newspaper edited by Sammy Harkham is packed cover to cover with comics – in (mostly) full color, duotone and black and white – and is an amazing amalgamation of artistry. Wow! And, oh yeah, it's FREE (In the shop, just ask for a copy. Here on the site it's not possible to make it's price zero, so it's a penny. Also, PLEASE NOTE: there is a LIMIT of ONE COPY per customer.)
copacetic price - FREE... GONE!
Gross Exaggerations
by Milt Gross
The latest gigantic (13" x 16") deluxe Sunday Press hardcovers, has arrived! Gross Exaggerations: The Meshuga Comic Strips of Milt Gross 1926-1934. A selection of Sunday strips and illustrations from the king of screwball comics, Milt Gross! This work was grew out of the Yiddish humor in vaudeville and went on to lampoon all the foibles and quirks of everyday life. Here is a curated collection of the major comic strips of Milt Gross— Nize Baby, Count Screwloose, and Dave’s Delicatessen —along with other comics, books and illustrations from his prolific career. Most of these lost gems have never been reprinted before! Ivan Brunetti sez: "Genius can manifest itself in two ways: the unfathomably complex, and the unfathomably simple. Milt Gross belongs to the latter category. He is one of the all-time great cartoonists because he makes the craft integral to the entire endeavor look so easy, even enjoyable. When I envision the word “cartooning” in the dictionary, the accompanying illustration is always a drawing by Gross: Nize Baby, Iggy, Count Screwloose, or any number of walk-on characters from his strips. These spirited drawings embody cartooning both as noun and verb. Gross is an elemental force, and his command of line and form convincingly argues for cartooning as the purest, the most natural, instinctive, and expressive—it’s tempting to say the only—way to draw. Mark Newgarden sez: "Gross was first and foremost a product of American popular culture and operated with the understanding that his latest gag had already begun disintegration on contact with oxygen (as all popular culture must). And while his generation’s bag of tricks has been long absorbed into the hardpacked humus of cartooning convention, this restless artist’s best work remains a revelation, compulsively energetic and still uncompromisingly funny. His mature line work in particular maintains a markedly fresh vigor and offhanded edginess that offers up as much a whiff of the avant-garde as of a Bronx-bound IRT." And check out this interview/conversation between screwball comics scholar, Paul Tumey and Sunday Press publisher, Peter Maresca.
retail price - $85.00 copacetic price - $78.75
These items and more may also be found at our eCommerce site, HERE.
New for October 2020
Michigan: On the Trail of a War Bride
by Lucas Varela & Julien Frey
Michigan is a highly engaging and thoroughly enjoyable graphic novel recounting of the story of how a Parisian woman came to live in Michigan in the aftermath of the Second World War. It is also, simultaneously, a look at contemporary America from a French perspective. This is accomplished by Michigan's narrative having two interwoven threads. One is the story of the travel of a grand niece of Odette – the war bride in the title – along with her husband, Julien – presumably the author – and their child, from Paris to Michigan to meet Odette and her daughters. The second is the story of how Odette came to America. The weaving together of these two strands is part of the pleasure of the text, the other is Varela's art, which fits the story to a T. His choice of employing the limited, and notably French, tri-color palette of pastel blue, pastel red and white throughout serves to preserve the French perspective in readers' minds while the story moves back and forth between France an the USA. Translated by Matt Madden!
retail price - $24.95 copacetic price - $21.75
Moms
by Yeong-Shin Ma
Inspired by the life of his own mother – and roughly based on written accounts and anecdotes that she provided about her life and that of her peers – Yeong-Shin Ma's Moms – translated into English from the Korean original by Janet Hong – is a strikingly empathic and highly engaging account of the lives of a group of 50-something Korean working women. In its 368 pages readers will experience the ups and downs of their loves, marriages and affairs (of which there are plenty) – including various intimate details – on the one hand, and their unrelenting working lives on the other. Scattered in between are child-rearing – with a focus on the stay-at-home son that is the stand-in for the author – and other family matters, like funerals. Through it all, there is the bond that the moms share with each other. It is this, perhaps more than anything else, that keeps them all going. And while the particulars of these women's lives will provide readers with insights into Korean life and culture – which is, if anything, even more patriarchal and paternalistic than that of the USA – there is a clear universality at the core of the stories and of the work as a whole. These moms are characters that live and breath on the page.
retail price - $29.95 copacetic price - $25.75
Ghostwriter
by Rayco Pulido
Rayco Pulido's Ghostwriter is a tale of derangement that doubles as an engaging mystery. Set in Spain during its fascist era, its narrative serves as a biting critique of that eras hypocrisies We don't want to give too much away here, as that is one of this text's primary pleasures. The other is its art. Any Love and Rockets fans jonesing for some of those crisp lines combined with solid black placement working together in well balanced compositions that are the Jaime Hernandez trademark will find the next best thing here. Pulido obviously studied Jaime quite closely and has clearly spent some time honing his chops, as he really delivers in the 96 magazine size pages of this value-priced, hardcover edition Ghostwriter. Fantagraphics has provided a nice preview here (scroll down to the bottom of the page for the preview), so you can get an idea of what we're talking about.
retail price - $19.95 copacetic price - $16.75
retail price - $22.99 copacetic price - $20.00
One Story
by Gipi
Italian comics auteur, Gipi's latest delivers a time-hopping tale that centers on the First World War. The somewhat ironically titled One Story is a graphic novel that "demonstrates how the choices our ancestors made dramatically affect generations to come" (sez US publisher, Fantagraphics). The US edition is an attractively printed – in both black & white pen & ink, , and full color watercolor – oversize hardcover volume, translated from the original Italian by Jaime Richards. Fantagraphics describes the narrative and it's representation thusly: "Silvano Landi is a successful writer who, at the age of 50, sees his family leave him and his life fall apart. Landi's great-grandfather, Mauro, is an anxious soldier being fed to the maw of carnage in the First World War. Alternating between past and present, a psych ward and the bloody trenches, and told through complex clues — a lone gas station, an apathetic baroness, found love letters, and shifting from scratchy black-and-white to lush watercolors (sometimes on the same page), A Story documents the origins of pain that serve as the roots of a twisted family tree, and allows the reader to trace the branches." John Sweven has penned a review on The Beat that will bring you up to speed, HERE. And, there's a nice preview that is well worth checking out, hosted by the new online literary magazine for comics, Solrad, HERE!
Ginseng Roots #6
by Craig Thompson
Yes, it's another great issue of Ginseng Roots from Craig Thompson! In this issue, the timeline crosses over into Craig's teen years, a threshold marked by his being baptised in the river in classic old school fashion. Long time readers will recognize that this issue overlaps with that time in Thompson's life that was thinly fictionalized in Blankets. As always, the art is thrilling, and his use of red & black duotone continues to amaze. Don't miss it!
retail price - $6.00 copacetic price - $5.50
retail price - $39.99 copacetic price - $34.75
Funky Town
by Mathilde Van Gheluwe
Funky Town is a modern fairy tale, of sorts. Mixing old and new, Mathilde Van Gheluwe's 132 page graphic novel presents the stresses and traumas of a pre-adolescent girl as she confronts and navigates the world of appetites and emotions – with Baba Yaga for a mother! Beautiful pencil art throughout. You can get a peek at a few pages which accompany Philippe Leblanc's review at The Beat, HERE (but beware of spoilers in the text of the review itself).
retail price - $18.00 copacetic price - $18.00
retail price - $34.95 copacetic price - $29.75
retail price - $100.00 copacetic price - $79.75
retail price - $100.00 copacetic price - $85.75Ditko Is... Strange!
by Steve Ditko & Stan Lee
Yowza! Here we have the COMPLETE Ditko run on Dr. Strange, from Strange Tales #110, 111 and 114-146, reproduced truly GIANT size, as in 14" x 22" (and weighing over 13 pounds)! All in full color. Perfect for the aging comics reader whose eyes aren't what they used to be – and who could use the workout provided by hoisting and holding this hefty tome. We've placed an original issue of Strange Tales in the photos at left for scale. 'Nuff said, indeed.
retail price - $19.99 copacetic price - $16.75
These items and more may also be found at our eCommerce site, HERE.
