New for December 2021

The Shiatsung Project
by
Brigitte Archambault
The Shiatsung Project is
an intriguing debut graphic novel by Brigitte Archimbault,
a francophone artist from Montreal. While this is
her first graphic novel, she has been a working artist for
sometime, starting out her career as a painter and
sculptor, then branching out to make animated short films
before at last taking the graphic novel plunge. Her
animation experience clearly informs her work in The Shiatsung Project, which
is cleanly delineated and filled with bold swathes of
color for a clear and concise look that is a good formal
match for the work's content. The
Shiatsung Project presents
readers with a frighteningly mundane portrait of a not too
distant future in which the our society continues unabated
and unimpeded along its current path of technological
systems following the dictates of capitalism to isolate
and control individuals, leading, "logically" and
inevitably to this cul de sac. Intrigued? If
so, check out the publisher's page on it, HERE – and make
sure to keep scrolling for a substantial preview.
retail
price - $20.00 copacetic price - $17.75
Bat Kid
by Inoue
Kazuo & Ryan
Holmberg
A project of Bubbles Press and a companion to the latest
issue of Bubbles (#12), Bat Kid is the work
that initiated what became a major manga genre:
Baseball! Beautifully printed (in Canada) on
newsprint, in black and white, with spot reds on select
signatures – presumably as in the original – and with many
full color illustrations peppered throughout Ryan
Holmberg's critical essay (see below). In other
words: nice! Bubbles
sez: "Before Ichiro, before Star of the Giants,
even before the Nippon Professional Baseball league, there
was Inoue Kazuo’s Bat Kid (1947-49),
celebrated as the first major baseball manga in Japan.
Originally serialized in the legendary magazine Manga
Shonen, Bat Kid played an essential role in the growth of
postwar manga. Its popularity drew aspiring cartoonists to
Manga Shonen’s famous amateur submissions section, many of
whom would later go pro. It kept Manga Shonen in business
long enough to host Tezuka Osamu’s first major magazine
serial, Jungle Emperor. After Inoue died suddenly in 1949,
the artist who oversaw the continuation of Bat Kid, Fukui
Eiichi, later went on to revolutionize manga by creating
the groundwork for sports manga and gekiga both. The
condensed book edition of Bat Kid—on which this English
edition is based—was crowned the top children’s manga by
Tokyo’s Mitsukoshi department store in 1948. The many
baseball manga that began appearing in the ‘50s, leading
to an explosion of sports manga in the ‘60s, all drew
inspiration from Inoue’s pioneering work. A rare
opportunity to read early postwar manga in English, this
edition of Bat Kid also contains a copiously illustrated
sixty (!) page essay by historian and translator Ryan
Holmberg explaining the significance of Bat Kid, artist Inoue
Kazuo’s career, and the popularity of baseball in Japan
before and after World War II. Whether you’re manga mad or
baseball crazy, this unique volume will not disappoint.
Pick up a copy today and experience for yourself the
baseball manga that started it all!"
retail
price - $14.95 copacetic price - $13.75

Mycelium
Wassonii
by Brian
Blomerth
We sold out of our original stock of these before we had a
chance to list this here... and then it took a minute to
get it back in. Most suppliers are taking considerably longer than
usual to fulfill orders this holiday season.
Regardless, we now have our restock of Brian Blomerth's
highly anticipated follow up to Bicycle Day. Mycelium Wassonii is a
similarly spectacular documentary, this time around
focusing on the pioneers of psilocybin research.
Hold onto your hats!
retail
price - $32.00 copacetic price - $28.75

Deserter
by Junji
Ito
The new Junji Ito
collection has arrived! This time around, however,
rather than the latest, readers are at last provided with
a look at a dozen Ito's earliest works contains a
selection of his earliest works. In Deserter, you can see how
today's horror manga master started out, and based on the
evidence of the works collected here, Ito was strong out
of the gate, with solid drawing and pacing chops, but with
his deep creepiness just beginning to ooze out onto the
page...
retail
price - $22.95 copacetic price - $20.00

A Punkhouse in the Deep South: The Oral History of 309
by Aaron
Cometbus &
Scott
Satterwhite
Documenting and celebrating 25 years (and more!) of the
309 Punkhouse in Pensacola, Florida in 152 pages, this
softcover book was (thankfully) edited and coordinated by
former Punkhouse residents Aaron Cometbus and Scott
Satterwhite and (fittingly) published by The University
Press of Florida. Here, in a series of thirteen
interviews with former residents – including Aaron and
Scott – readers are treated to a multipoint-persepctive on
the lives that intersected with the Punkhouse. These
interviews seek to examine and analyze not only how the
tenants created and formed the (ever-evolving) 309
Punkhouse, but also how the Punkhouse then in turn
nurtured their own personal growth and enabled their own
subsequent personal evolutions in an ongoing, spatially
and temporally unique dynamic; a nexus of people, place
and time that we now know as Punkouse 309. Also
includes a twelve page spread of black and white
photographs!
retail
price - $19.99 copacetic price - $17.75
These
items and more may
also be found at
our eCommerce
site, HERE.
New for November 2021

Tunnels
by Rutu Modan
The mysteries of the ancient past intersect with
the complexities of the present day in this tour de
force graphic novel from Israeli cartoonist and
educator, Rutu Modan. Fact, fiction, myth, history,
politics, religion, sexualities and rivalries both sibling
and professional all mix it up in the 284 full color pages
of Tunnels. This quite aptly titled work
demonstrates how we are all moving through our own tunnels
that extend before, through and after our own lives and
that these tunnels run in parallel, over, under and across
the tunnels of others in one vast network the entirety of
which no single participant can hope to grasp. That
the physical tunnels in which the action plays out here
move under and across the border between Israel and the
Palestinian Territories makes all that transpires that
much more fraught. An engrossing and entertaining –
not to mention educational – read. | Translated from the
Hebrew by Ishai Mishory | Hardcover
retail
price - $29.95 copacetic price - $26.75

The
Waiting
by Keum Suk
Gendry-Kim
Talk about a story that pulls at the
heart-strings! While The Waiting is
"fictional," it is loosely based on that of the author's
own family history; focused particularly on that of her
mother, who fled to what is now South Korea during the
onset of the Korean War that divided the country.
Told through a framing bracket of the daughter/author's
relationship (á la Maus) the mother's story
gradually unspools in page after page of well composed
comics, affectingly employing bold brushwork.
Starting with the mother's harsh yet still bucolic
childhood under the Japanese occupation, which was
filled with its own sorrows, the story takes an abrupt
turn with the start of hostilities between the Soviet
and Chinese-backed North and the US-backed South, and
the mother is forced to flee, along with her own, newly
formed family. While the story focuses on one
extended family, it can easily be read as a stand-in for
the experience – and tragedy – of Korea as a
whole. Reader's familiar with Korea's twentieth
century history will probably already have some idea of
the rough outlines that this narrative will take, but
we'll nevertheless refrain from giving them away here,
so as to not take away any of the impact. | Translated
from the Korean by Janet Hong
retail
price - $24.95 copacetic price - $21.75

This Is How I Disappear
by Mirion Malle
Mirion Malle is a French cartoonist living in
Montreal. This Is How I Disappear is
her second book to be translated into English (by
Aleshia Jensen and Bronwyn Haslam). Its portrait
of 21st urban living – that includes overcoming
depression, finding community and, finally, making
connections – has won quite a few fans, including those
among her cartooning peers; some of whom have gone on
record with their praise: "I want to give this
book to all the people I love! Mirion Malle's unique
sensitivity and amazing poetic drawings are like a
bandaid and a treat at the same time. This
Is How I Disappear is my favorite comic of the
year." – Penelope Bagieu | "A stunning
portrayal. Malle gives us just enough to keep
going – just enough to root for Clara as we stumble
with her through anxiety, depression and a culture of
shame. The journey is well worth it." –
Sophie Yanow | "Malle's characters come thorugh so
vibrantly on the page. I wish they could be my
friends, too! Especially Clara, the heroine of
the story. With strikingly accurate detail and a
subtly political lens, the book examines issues like
the obstacles to obtaining psychological support and
the lasting impacts of abuse, without ever being
didactic. Malle is a wonderful storyteller." –
Julie Delporte
retail
price - $24.95 copacetic price - $21.75

Afternoon
at McBurger's
by Ana Galvañ
Here's Ana Galvañ's follow-up to Press Enter to
Continue. It's another full color hardcover
from Fantagraphics, but this time around we're getting a
single graphic novella. Once again, Galvañ employs
her crisp minimal drawings combined with bright, angular
high contrast color schemes to provide a
science-fiction perspective on psychological
realities. Here that of the onset of adolescence
within our current consumer capitalistic culture.
Oblique, but intriguing... Check out a nice preview,
courtesy of Fantagraphics, HERE. |
Translated from Spanish by Jamie Richards
retail
price - $16.99 copacetic price - $15.00

No One
Else
by R. Kikuo
Johnson
Here's a graphic novel filled with a highly empathic,
pitch perfect portrait of a family going through a
stressful moment of transition that serves both to
reveal the development of each family member's
respective character – along with the way in which each
of their characters grew out of their relationships to
each other – and then shape them in new ways. The
entire work is rendered with a mood capturing exactitude
very much (and quite successfully) in the mode of The
Master (aka Jaime Hernandez) and is a real pleasure to
read. Need a little more convincing? There's
a mini-interview with R. Kikuo Johnson along with a nice
preview in The New Yorker, HERE.
retail
price - $16.99 copacetic price - $15.00

Avocado
Ibuprofen
by Jaakko
Pallasvuo
Thoughts within thoughts within thoughts play out in
comics fashion here as an independent intelligence
grapples with the quandaries, paradoxes, illusions, and
structural inconsistencies of our civilization's current
hisorical moment in this handsomely designed, horizontally
formatted, permanent print collection home for 59 strips
from Avocado Ibuprofen's Instagram,
lovingly produced and assembled by Perfectly Acceptable
Press. These strips have a unique flavor, are
intellectually nutritious, and may help to soothe the
headaches brought on by our trying times.
retail
price - $25.00 copacetic price - $22.75

Pond Life
by Hiller
Goodspeed
Pond Life is a friendly, litttle (6" x 7"),
debossed, casebound hardcover edition collecting 146
single-page reflections composed in words and pictures by
the Vancouver-based artist, Hiller Goodspeed – plus a
fun-filled appendix! Another beautiful edition from
Perfectly Acceptable Press, who have this to say about the
book: "Pond Life collects 146 new drawings by
Hiller Goodspeed addressing today's most pressing issues:
cardboard boxes, art, understanding, haircuts, time,
space, Florida, and many others. Includes an appendix with
book club discussion questions, alternative titles, and an
index." If you aren't hep to Hiller, you can get a
good idea of what's in store – and also potentially spend
some enjoyable minutes – by visiting his Instagram, HERE.
retail
price - $30.00 copacetic price - $26.75

Ginseng Roots #9
by Craig
Thompson
After a long delay – the result of a highly mobile, and
doubtless stressful, period in Craig Thompson's life
(see note at issue's end for details) – the ninth issue
of Ginseng Roots has at long last
arrived! This time around we are given a detailed
look at the business side of Wisconsin ginseng and its
strong links to mainland China and Taiwan. Another
amazing, highly informative, educational and
entertaining issue of this epochal series. Don't
miss it!
retail
price - $8.00 copacetic price - $7.50

Sleep of History: Paintings and Books of David Sandlin
by David Sandlin,
w/ Dennis Harper, John Fields, et al
Here is your best single opportunity to
experience the full range of the uncategorizable works of
David Sandlin. Schooled in art and painting at the
University of Alabama, Birmingham (UAB) during the late
1970s, but harboring within a deep love of comics
(especially those of Jack Kirby) and a burgeoning affair
with Punk Rock, Sandlin quickly made his way to New York
City upon graduation and became enmeshed in the early '80s
art and music scene there; in the process coming to the
attention of Art Spiegelmen and François Moulay (among
others) and ending up in their groundbreaking comics
anthology, Raw, while at the same time producing prints and
paintings and getting shown by Gracie Mansion in SoHo.
And, well, as they say, the rest is... (all here in Sleep
of) History. Sleep of History is a 192 page,
full color exhibition catalogue – from Sandlin's show
at the Abrams-Engel Institute for Visual Arts at UAB that
took place in the summer of 2017 – cum artist
monograph. While his paintings – rightly – take center
stage here, there is also quite a good look at his elaborate
print/book work. If any book lives up to the hype of
being a feast for the eyes, this one does! And for
anyone reading this entirely unfamiliar with Sandlin's work,
while we can categorically state that formulaic comparisons
uniformly fail to do justice to artists, in order to point
potentially interested customers' expectations in the
general vicinity of Sandlin's work, we will state that it
lies somewhere in the artistic territory bounded by Robert
Williams and Mark Ryden on the one side and Art Spiegelman,
Mark Alan Stamaty and Ben Katchor on the other (with a dash
of the anarchy of Marc Bell thrown in). But, again,
that comparison only should be considered as serving as
guide posts pointing towards the work, and does not in
anyway attempt to describe the actual crux of the work,
which is deeply personal and rooted in Sandlin's personal
history as someone born and raised in Northern Ireland, who
was then transplanted in Alabama as a teenager.
Sandlin's work shines a bright, sharp light on dark and
ill-defined areas of the American Psyche, and anyone who
pays attention will come away with insights offered nowhere
else.
retail
price - $25.00 copacetic price - $25.00
These
items and more may also
be found at our
eCommerce site, HERE.
New for
October 2021
Lure
by Lane
Milburn
Hot off the press, it's Lane Milburn's long-in-the-works
epic meta-science fiction masterwork! Packed
with page after page of
sumptuous, otherworldly vistas, Lure dives deep into
the science fiction realm, stimulating the
reader's visual cortex and carrying them out of
the ordinary and into fantastic realms. The
story that unfolds is, however, a somewhat different
animal from what the art might lead one to expect.
Without giving away any plot particulars, we can say
that the story gradually emerges from
its science fiction trappings
and evolves into a cautionary tale about
the fraught relationship between art and commerce;
one in which the slope is very slippery,
indeed. There is a clear allegorical dimension
to Lure, one that is present
from the outset, with the alien world that is the locale
where the story largely unfolds sharing the name with the
title of the work. There is also a meta-fictional
probing that goes on throughout Lure, starting with the
transparent substitution of the planet’s name by the
work’s central thematic concern – the multi-leveled
problematics of the lure of the "success" offered by
global capitalism – and continuing throughout the work, in
a series of simultaneous deconstructions of some of the
basic underlying mechanics of science fiction: of how
projecting current dilemmas from our present into a
posited future make it easier to show things that might
otherwise remain hidden in plain
sight; how speaking of the normative and
familiar in terms of the alien and the other further
direct our perceptions and awarenesses through our
imaginations in such ways to allow the unearthing of
buried conflicts. Suffice it to say there’s plenty
of food for thought here in the pages of Lure. Regardless of
the implications of the story, this 192 page, full
size, full color hardcover (that was five years in the
making!) makes for an engaging read that
also provides a true feast for the
eyes. Page after page of stunning tableaus
that mesh the natural and the technological provide
the settings for an unfolding of
events filled with memorable, fully realized
and authentically interacting characters – the
most central of which, it is worth noting, are women,
including Lure's protagonist, Jo. Anyone
who'd like to get a foretaste can scroll
through a hefty review/preview at Screenrant, HERE (there's
enough here that a spoiler warning might apply).
retail
price - $29.99 copacetic price - $26.75

Ex Libris
by Matt Madden
It's been a minute, but Matt Madden is back with
his long-in-the-works love letter to comics, Ex Libris! There's a
bit of Hicksville as well
as City of Glass here –
along with a dollop of classic Harvey Kurtzman, a
dash of Spiegelman, a pinch of Sikoryak and
hints of Burns and Seth – but most of all
there's an unabashed love of the world of comics
(including a special focus on the subset of comics
in book form / graphic novels). Ex Libris
provides that rare treat: comics about reading comics.
Sure, you could say it's a meta-comic, but the way
it's meta is fairly unique. Madden
captures the experience of reading comics, its
subtle and piquant pleasures – in comics, naturellement! But
there's more. As hinted at the outset and
gradually revealed, there's the interlocking of reality
and comics, their reflection of one in the
other and transformation of one to the
other. A fun read that is a gift to comics
readers, one that could also, perhaps, serve as an
introduction to the pleasures – and dangers!
– of comics for the novice, or the one who just
doesn't "get" comics.
retail
price - $29.95 copacetic price - $26.75

Visual Crime
by Jerry Moriarty
This giant-size (10" x 13") hardcover volume is the
latest from the self proclaimed (and coiner of the term)
paintoonist, Jerry Moriarty. This
intriguing work is rendered in a combination of rich,
fully saturated color oil paintings, bare-bones black
& white pen and ink drawings – along with some that
include watercolor highlights – combinations of
text with black and white reproductions of drawings and
paintings (à la newspaper stories) and more!
You won't find another work like it!
Moriarty came to the attention of the comics world with
his signature series, Jack Survives, which was
published in Art Spiegelman & Francois Mouly's Raw Magazine back in the
1980s, and he has been busy blurring the boundaries
between cartooning and painting ever since. Here
in the pages of Visual Crime,
he brings his 83 years on this planet
fully to bear on this insightful look at art's place in
the world.
retail
price - $24.95 copacetic price - $21.75

Red Flowers
by Yoshiharu Tsuge
It took a minute to finally get here, but Red Flowers has at
last arrived! The dozen works that comprise
this 278 page hardcover volume – the second in Drawn
& Quarterly's ongoing series collecting Tsuge's
work – were all originally published
between April 1967 and June 1968. So, while R.
Crumb & Co. were pioneering a new,
"underground" form of comics in the USA, Tsuge
Yoshiharu & Co. were blazing a comparably
important and influential new, "literary" way of manga
in Japan. As Mitsuhiro Asakawa and Ryan Holmberg
state in the opening lines of their 28 page,
in-depth essay that accompanies this volume, "It is no
exaggeration to say that (this) volume...
contains some of the most important works in Japanese
comics history – nay, in Japanese cultural history.
It represents the beginnings of what we might
call 'literary manga'." Get ready to dig in!
(Can't wait? Read a nice high-resolution
excerpt, HERE.)
retail
price - $24.95 copacetic price - $21.75

Rust Belt Review #3
by Sean Knickerbocker, Audra Stang, Andrew White, et al
The third issue of Rust Belt Review has
arrived! Edited and published by Sean
Knickerbocker, each issue features a collection of
comics from and/or about life in the rust belt (or
thereabouts). Is this issue the best yet?
Maybe! It will be up to you to decide.
This time around we are treated to 94 big,
oversize pages of comics by Brian Canini,
Will Dinski, Ian Densford & the Bros. McGovern,
Andrew Greenstone, Sean Knickerbocker, Alex Nall,
Jordan Speicher-WIllis, Audra Stang – who also
contributed this issue's cover – Michael Sweater,
and Andrew White. Also included is a how-to
guide to getting started making – and printing –
your own comics at home that includes a nifty (and
goofy) tipped-in mini-comic by Caleb Orrecchio!
retail
price - $12.95 copacetic price - $11.75

The Nib #9: Secrets
edited by Matt Bors w/ Asia Bey, Kjerstin
Johnson, Alexandra
Beguez, Meg
O'Shea, Rosemary
Valero-O'Connell, Mattie
Lubchansky, E. S.
Glenn, et al
Secrets of all sorts are explored in this issue.
The center stage here is reserved for secrets of
the personal sort – many of which involve
painful struggles. Alongside of these are the
larger, social secrets including those
involving espionage, political intrigues, secret
societies and more. Sometimes different kinds of
secrets overlap, as with those involving international
adoptions and DNA testing. Worthy of special note
here: This issue contains "Slow Release" by
erstwhile Pittsburgher (and Copacetic customer) Asia
Bey, a feature story that shares the
experience of a gradual cathartic abreaction of
personal trauma in a finely crafted comics work
that fully embodies this issue's theme.
retail
price - $14.95 copacetic price - $12.75

TOO TOUGH TO DIE: An Aging Punx Anthology
by J.T.
Yost, Haleigh
Buck, Hyena Hell, Emily
Flake, Josh Bayer, Dan
McCloskey, Aaron
Renier, John
Porcellino, Janelle
Blarg, Carrie
McNinch, Jesse
Reklaw, Eva Muller, Ben
Snakepit, et al
The title pretty much says it all here! Edited by Haleigh
Buck and J.T. Yost, Too Tough to Die collects a
massive 328 pages of comics about old
punks still rocking out, one way or another,
by Steven Arnold, Josh Bayer, Gregory Benton, Janelle
Blarg, Kyle Bravo, Haleigh Buck, Sophie Crumb, Emily
Flake, CN “Pinky Frankenstein”, J. Gonzalez-Blitz, Sam
Grinberg, Hyena Hell, Danny Hellman, Joakima Hillyard,
Jordan Jeffries, Gideon Kendall, Victor Kerlow, Jim
Kettner, Ayti Krali, Karl Christian Krumpholz, Steve
Lafler, Will Laren, Brother Malcolm, Lynne Margeaux,
Daniel McCloskey, Carrie McNinch, Adam Meuse, Robb Mirsky,
Eva Müller, Fred Noland, Andrea Pearson, Josh PM, John
Porcellino, Haley Simone Potter, Liz Prince, Jesse Reklaw,
Aaron Renier, Chris Shary, Ben Snakepit, James Spooner,
Robert Henry Stevenson, Steve Thueson, Lance Ward, Adam
Yeater & J.T. Yost; Plus script-only
contributions from Mike Hunchback, Michael Kamison
& Chris L. Terry .
Whew!
retail
price - $19.99 copacetic price - $17.77

Comfort Creatures
by Robert Henry Stevenson
Each of the incredibly detailed, eyeball searing
drawings in this digest size, saddle-stapled, comic
compendium feel like a hybrid of Basil Wolverton and
Robert Williams. Some have further
been mutated so as to be able to incorporate
graphically bold text within their intricate design in
such a way as to enhance the visual appeal and formal
qualities. If only the effort that was
put into the creation of the texts incorporated into
the drawings was commensurate with that put into
the drawings themselves... A few are up to par –
including the "title track", which starts it all off,
and hits the nail on the head – but most of the
other texts required a bit more thought and
polish to bring them up to the level of the drawings
they are partnered with. We hope Stevenson
continues down this road a bit, so maybe next time!
retail
price -
$6.00 copacetic price - $5.75

Demons: To
Earth and Back
by
Hyena Hell
If you're
looking for a
satisfying,
fun, and
potentially
cathartic comic
book
read that
reveals the
contours of
horror and
romance
snuggling up
to each other
(brought
together by
humor), look
no further:
Hyena
Hell's follow
up to her well
received No
Romance in
Hell is a trick and
a treat.
Once
again featuring
Bug and Grog, Demons
to Earth and
Back provides
another new
twist on the
"life in hell"
theme.
Running
a whoppin' 56
pages – to its
precursor's 24
– on heavy
newsprint,
it's also a
lot of comic
book for your
hard earned
dime.
Bonus
romance advice
from Bug!
retail
price - $6.66 copacetic price - $6.00
These items and more may also
be found at our eCommerce
site, HERE.