New
for March 2022

Crickets #7
by Sammy Harkham
Talk about a long time coming! Here at last is the
seventh issue of Sammy Harkhams's Crickets
(arriving a full five years after the sixth). This issue
is not only a double-size, 64-page behemoth of an issue,
it is also entirely devoted to what we now know to be the
penultimate chapter in the long running "Blood of the
Virgin" saga. And what a chapter it is! We
don't want to give away too much of what's in store, but
suffice it to say the storyline takes a substantial detour
here, one that really stands apart from what has come
before and that covers a lot of ground both in time and
space and that it's a real treat that both long time
readers and newcomers as this can be read as a stand
alone story are sure to both enjoy and appreciate.
Starting out with a tour de force of comics
formalism and moving on through an emotional roller
coaster, this is an issue worth savoring one page at a
time. Don't miss it! Please Note: We
sold out of this in the blink of an eye, before we
even had the chance to list it here (SORRY!) BUT,
as of this writing USA customers can still get it at
Quimby's, HERE; Canadian
customers can still get it at Lucky's, HERE; and UK
customers can still get it at Gosh Comics, HERE but don't
delay!
retail
price - $12.00 copacetic price - $12.00

Mr.
Colostomy
by Matthew
Thurber
The new Matthew Thurber has
arrived! In addition to, of course, appealing to
pre-existent Thurber fans, the absurd humor on display in
the pages of Mr. Colostomy which collects over
200, 4-panel, one-page strips, that were originally
published daily on Instagram in 2017 mostly in black and
white, but with a smattering of full color all involving
varying degrees of continuity also stands to appeal to
long-bereft fans of Michael Kupperman and Mark Alan
Stamaty, along with the somewhat less bereft fans of Lisa
Hanawalt and Eric Haven, to name a few fellow absurdian
cartoonists (a new genre?). Regardless, this is a
book that can be picked up and read at random, or straight
through, in order. Either way, we recommend readers
take their time and savor these rare delicacies... and so
HERE's a cool
preview to get started. Check it out!
retail
price - $24.99 copacetic price - $21.75

Now #11
edited by Eric
Reynolds, w/ Daria Tessler, Theo Ellsworth, Baptiste
Virot, Tim Lane, Jesse Simpson, Justin Grandin, Natalia
Novia, Ariel Lopez V., Kayla E., Chris Wright, Steven
Weissman, Josh Simmons, Nick Thorburn, Stacy Gougoulis
It took a full nine months for this
issue to gestate, but Now 11 has at last been delivered,
and it's a little bit of everything! While including
some familiar names from across the USA and Canada, #11 is
quite the international issue, with amazing contributions
from Argentina, Australia, Belgium and Mexico making up
over half the page count. The centerpiece of this
issue is Australian artist, Stacy Gougoulis's
"Mandorla". It's 32 pages offer up a philosophically
wise and artistically insightful exploration of the
ultimately subjective experience of human temporality in a
highly informed way that showcases the expressive
capacities of comics in a manner that intersects with the
work of Chris Ware, Jon McNaught, Eleanor Davis and Kevin
Huizenga, among others, but maintains a powerfully
cohesive unity of form and content throughout: a
masterwork of melancholy. This story alone is reason
enough to pick up this issue, but there are plenty more
great comics on hand here from all over the creative map
as well as the geographic one!
retail
price - $12.99 copacetic price - $11.75

Good Boy
Magazine #2
edited by
Michael Sweater & Benji Nate, w/ Ashley Robin
Franklin, Bonnie Guerra, Sean Mac, Dalton Stark, Rebecca
Kirby, Alex Krokus
And here's
another and new regularly published comics
anthology. Good Boy Magazine, published
by Silver Sprocket, continues to live up to its promise
with its second issue. Here again are 136 pages of
comics in full color (mostly) and duotone along
with one black & white. All are printed with
nice color absorption on off-white newsprint. By
turns cuddly, violent, fantastic, stoned, relaxed, with
the spirit reigning.
retail
price - $9.99 copacetic price - $9.50

Hell
Phone, Book One
by Benji Nate
Sissy and Lola stumble upon a
possessed phone... from hell! Also from Silver
Sprocket, the first book of Hell Phone is
filled with 160 lushly colored, manga-inflected (and
formatted) comics featuring an old flip phone, a box of
aging VHS tapes, a mystery and a murder. By turns
cute and creepy, cuddly and freaky! Nice work, nice
printing; nice package.
retail
price - $14.99 copacetic price - $13.75
Orochi: The Perfect Edition, Volume 1
by Kazuo Umezz
Here is the first of three deluxe
hardcover volumes collecting this classic of manga
horror by Kazuo Umezz. Composed of nine
interconnected stories, each a planet of its own, but
all caught in the orbit of one mysterious woman.
This volume includes "Sisters", in which
Orochi "affects the lives of two wealthy siblings who
couldn't be more alike...or more different,
and "Bones," in which Orochi helps a man come back
to life after a terrible accident, but resurrection can
be a deadly business...", according to the publisher's
hype-up.
retail
price - $26.99 copacetic price - $23.75

Tops: The Complete Collection of Charles Biro's
Visionary 1949 Comic Book Series
edited by
Michael T. Gilbert and featuring Charles Biro, Reed
Crandall, George Tuska, Dan Barry
Hold onto your hats! Here we are
treated with an enormous (11" x 15") hardcover volume
collecting the entirety of the rare and largely
forgotten comic book series, Tops!
Conceived by Charles Biro (of Crime Does Not Pay
fame) and published by Lev Gleason in 1949 in an
oversized magazine format, Tops, was a
decidedly experimental project that aimed to bring
comics to a wider and older audience. In fact,
Biro and Gleason worked to escape the pejorative
associations of the label "comics" by billing Tops
as, "The Adult Magazine of Dramatic Picture Stories,"
and labeling the cover-feature of the first issue as a
"novel-length illustory". And they backed up these
claims by creating some relatively challenging,
adventurous and adult(with a decided slant towards the
male)-oriented comics with titles like "I'll Buy That
Girl," "You're on the Parole Board," "The Closet,"
"Marriage Swap Shop," "Summer Waitress," and "How You
Would Live Under a World Government"(!) scripted by
Biro and a cohort of writers and drawn by first rate
talents like Reed Crandall, Dan Barry, George Tuska, Bob
Fujitani and Fred Kida, among others; these were
interspersed with short stories and text pieces penned
by non-comics writers (including one by Dashiell
Hammett!). Tops was destined to be a
short-lived experiment, as it lasted only two 68-page
issues. Likely due primarily to its
uncategorizable nature, the fact that it was priced
at a quarter at a time when practically all other comics
were a dime, and the simple physical fact that it was
too large to be racked with standard comics (or had to
always be placed in the back row so as not to obscure
all those behind it) and so was likely placed with the
larger weeklies like Life, Look and Time,
etc. This was probably part of the idea behind
Biro and Gleason's brainstorm: to attract the (large and
untapped by comics) readership of these mainstream
magazines to comics. The failure of Tops
to do so seems to confirm that comics readers are a
breed apart. Copies of these two issues of Tops
have been notoriously difficult to get a hold of, due,
again, in large part to their physcial size as they
can't easily be stored and/or displayed with other
comics, and so tended to be stashed with Look and
Life in where comics fans wouldn't think to
look. Thus, their relative inaccesability led them
to have been largely ignored by comics collectors and
scholars... until now! This compilation is edited
by historian and cartoonist Michael T. Gilbert and
includes the entirety of both issues along with an
introduction by Gilbert, as well as several other essays
providing background on the creation of the series and
the publisher, editors, and cartoonists who realized
it. As an added bonus, it also includes a
chronicle in essay form of experimental, adult comics
endeavors throughout the first half of the 20th
century. Get ready to dig into a missing chapter
in comics history.
retail
price - $49.99 copacetic price - $42.75
New for
February 2022
Halcyon
by Ron
Rege
With Halcyon: Hermeneutics, or "The New Cartoon
Utopia, Ron Rege, Jr. continues to build his unique
brand of visionary comics. This foray into the
fantastic takes the physical form of a 112 page,
giant-size (10+" x 12+"), full (flat) color, laminated
hardcover volume. Angels, devils and other celestial
beings of the spirit realm dash and dart about the cosmos,
both inner and outer and while doing so, simultaneously
draw parallels and equivalancies between the two (inner
mind <=> outer space?). Dreams mix with visions,
utopian realities are explored, and more, all in Regι's
clear concise cartoon language that he has consciously
evolved over his three decade comics-making career.
Here are comics like none other.
retail
price - $24.99 copacetic price - $21.75

Crashpad
by Gary Panter
Underground comix live! Gary Panter's Crashpad is a
classic old school underground comic book that is a
comic book about old school underground comic books:
what they were, what they are, what they mean, where
they come from, where they're going. Did we
mention acid? Cover to cover comics; every line
drawn by Panter; 36 pages. Black and white
interior art on heavy newsprint. "Gain intuition to the
endless play of becoming free."
retail
price - $5.99 copacetic price - $6.00

Heaven's Door: Extra Works
by Keiichi Koike
Heaven's Door, this 200-page collection of
Keiichi Koike's eye-popping, psychedelic, science
fiction manga will have readers reaching for
superlatives to describe the artwork on display.
We're going to start the ball rolling in that
direction with, "It's Moebius meets
Otomo!" To the best of our knowledge, only one
of the eleven stories collected here almost all of
which were originally published in the 1980s &
'90s has been published before in North America
and/or in English (and that was over thirty years
ago). In other words, most American readers will
be experiencing Koike's work for the first time here
in the pages of Heaven's Door, just
released by Last Gasp. To help give you a better
idea of what we're talking about we've posted some
spreads from the book on Instagram, HERE.
retail
price - $19.99 copacetic price - $17.75
El Viaje Mαs Caro /
The Most Costly Journey
by Mark Bennett, Andy Kolovos, Teresa Mares, Julia Grand Doucet, Tillie Walden, Glynnis Fawkes, Rick Veitch, et al
Here is a collection of nineteen tales of coming to
(North) America; each unique, yet all connected by
the hardships that everyone of these immigrants
underwent. All of the stories are part of a
collaborative project joining each Central American
tale teller with a New England cartoonist who
transformed the oral story to a visual one.
The stories are quite affecting. In addition,
there are multiple essays that serve to introduce,
explicate and contextualize the stories, as well as
presenting the concept of ethnographic cartooning,
and so bring the reader closer to the
material. In the process it also provides a
look at Vermont Dairy Farming and it's central role
in the state. In short: there's a lot going on
here in the 240 pages of El Viaje Mαs Caro / The
Most Costly Journey. And here's
Vermont's most notable cartoonist on El Viaje Mas Caro: Its hard to
imagine other peoples lives. Its harder
still when those lives are hidden from public
view. But in this book, the
unimaginably difficult experiences of migrant
and immigrant farmworkers are made vividly
accessible. Through
their own words, and the simple, direct
drawings of their cartoonist collaborators, we see
how they got here, what theyve left behind,
and what their long, long days are like. The
original goal of this project was to give
their subjects a voice, but every North American
should read this book in order to
understand the disturbing degree to which
we all depend on the self-sacrifice of
these workers. El Viaje Mas Caro is a
profound act of witness. Alison
Bechdel
retail
price - $19.95 copacetic price - $16.75

Kris
Kool
by Caza
At long last, here's a chance for North
American readers to finally get their hands on an English
language translation of this classic of psychedelic
comics, originally published in France in 1970. Kris Kool is the
work that launched Caza's cartooning career in
Europe. It was not until the late 1970s that he
burst into American comics consciousness, courtesy Heavy Metal Magazine, at
which point in time psychedelia was no longer thought to
be marketable, too bad for us! This new, revised
edition, coming fifty years after its initial release
courtesy Italy's Passenger Press (and is being distributed
in North America by Portland's Floating World), is a clear
case of "better late than never". It includes 16
pages of cool (or should we say "kool") bonus
material. We'll have more to say, but wanted to put
it up here now that it's in stock... To get an idea of
what's in store in this 96 page, full color, magazine size
softcover, check out the publisher's brief preview
page, HERE.
retail
price - $40.00 copacetic price - $36.75

Metax
by Antoine
Cossι
Antoine Cossι's latest work is a deeply felt and
deeply cryptic meditation on the relationship between
natural resources, family dynamics and polical power that
takes place in a fantastic realm that is like and unlike
our own. The work intersects at multiple points and
in various ways with works as disparate as De Chirico,
Chester Gould, Frank Santoro, Anders Nilsen, Joe Kesslar,
Manuele Fior and Kevin Hooyman among others. Metax
is a natural resource at the center of an empire. Metax is a full
size 292 page hardcover graphic novel, printed on flat
white paper, that tells the story of the "castle intrigue"
surrounding the control of this substance. Cossι
throughout employs his trademarked strong and clear line
work and lush washes employing deep brown tones along
with a color section that stands out by virtue of its
contrast to bring us this story of a violent contest
between corruption and freedom.
retail
price - $34.99 copacetic price - $28.75
These
items and more
may also be
found at our
eCommerce
site, HERE.
New for January 2022
Megillah #1
by Chad
Bilyeu, E. S.
Glenn, Eryc Why, Maia
Matches, Bernie
Mirault, Laurie
Cook, James the
Stanton, Iva
Spasojevic
Megillah is
an all new, full color comics anthology from
Amsterdam. Created, curated and edited by Chad
Bilyeu (of Chad in Amsterdam fame), it
features six eight-page stories, each by a different
creator, all in full color. Page size is 6 3/8' x 8
1/4" (roughly A5). Eryc Why leads off with a
dazzling visual tour de force, "Bizy Beez
& Night Xpress," that's hard to describe, but does
involve racing against the clock, parenting, and a hefty
sprinkling of dutch phrases amidst the English language
that predominates here (and in all the stories in this
issue, in case you were wondering). Next up is James the
Stanton's "False Raffler" which involves reptilian standup
comedians and plenty of wordplay. This is followed
by E.S. Glenn's "The Nix" where Glenn continues to do what
he does best, presenting another chapter in his ongoing ligne claire saga of
artist gangsters. "How I Became a Comic Artist" by Maia
Matches is an engaging thumbnail account of her
self-invention as a comicker that simultaneously provides
a bit of a sense of the Amsterdam comics scene. Old
timers may remember Bernie Mireault, who was active in the
'80s and '90s. Here in "Isaac vs. Eli, he provides a
tale of sibling rivalry via videogaming and
imagination. Laurie Cook brings this issue to a
close with a zany tale of eating gone wrong (or at least
weird), "El Gordo & Zombie Chicken." Cover by
Iva Spasojevic. And there you have it. Already
looking forward to the second issue!
retail
price - $12.00 copacetic price - $11.75

Blubber
by Gilbert Hernandez
OK, here it is: the complete Blubber! This
hardcover edition collects the entirety of Gilbert
Hernandez's completely over-the-top six-issue comic book
series that was originally published between 2015 and
2020. We imagine most frequenters of this space
have an inkling of what's between these covers, but for
the uninitiated, let us just say that this series
employs an extreme close-up look at sexual activities
and an even more extreme sense of the absurd.
Starting out with a series of alternative, (literally)
alien sexualities, featuring ways of sex previously
unseen and, perhaps, previously unimagined, as
well. These alien activities gradually, over the
course of the six issue series, blend, transition and
morph into a panoply of human sexual activities.
This approach serves to push readers (most, anyway)
away from of any sort of pornographic comfort zone they
may have previously entertained and engenders a sort of
alienation from received notions concerning sex.
It can be a liberating experience. It can be
fun. It's definitely comics! Not for the
faint of heart (also NOT for anyone under 21 years of
age).
retail
price - $19.99 copacetic price - $16.75
F
by Arata
Imai, Ryan
Holmberg
F, originally self-published in Japan in 2015
in a limited edition of a mere 200 copies by its
creator Imai Arata (in cahoots with Chaos*Lounge, an arts
collective), is about as Underground as it gets, as this
volume's translator and co-editor (with publisher emuh
ruh), Ryan Holmberg explains in his in-depth, 29 page
essay accompanying this edition from Glacier Bay Books.
Written in the wake of the Fukushima nuclear reactor
meltdown that was triggered by the massive tsunami
of March 2011, Imai wove a speculative tale that used
as its starting point the dissatisfaction with the central
government in Tokyo that was expressed in the region
surrounding the reactor disaster. He goes on to
imagine that dissatisfaction metastasizing into an
outright rebellion in which the Tohoku region secedes from
and goes to war with Japan. Imai further
speculatively extrapolates on then-current
events, when this group is infiltrated and then
warred upon in turn by a group of terrorist guerillas
(modelled on IS) and chaos reigns. It is into
this milleau that the character of international reporter,
John Cantlie thrusts himself and his "story" becomes
one with that of the manga. Imai's art is somewhat
amateurish certainly by Japanese standards, at least
but the storytelling is solid. Originally titled I Am John Cantlie when
published in Japan, Ryan Holmberg believes that it
would likely have been a highly controversial work in its
home country, due to the nature of its content. But
because of its extremely limited release, it managed
to slip through unnoticed by the wider public. This
extremely limited original Japanese release also
provides F with
the rare distinction of being a manga of Japanese origin
receiving a wider circulation in North America than in
Japan! To learn more about F and
preview several spreads from the work, check out
Helen Chazen's review on The Comics Journal, HERE.
retail
price - $22.00 copacetic price - $19.75

No.
5, Vol. 3
by Taiyo
Matsumoto
It's here, the third of the series of four
two-in-one volumes collecting the entirety of Taiyo
Matsumoto's adventurous both in form and content
science fiction series from the begininning of this
century. This volume collects Books 5 & 6 of the
original 8-book series; and represents both their North
American premier and the first time these comics have been
published in English.
retail
price - $22.99 copacetic price - $20.00

For Art's Sake
by Noah Van Sciver
Noah bares his soul once again and tells it like it was,
back in 2004, in this portrait of the artist as a young
man waking up to the world. Angst, embarrassment
and tedium along with good times, adventures and fun
fill fifty-two pages of witty, well-paced comics that
are simultaneously poignant and humorous and that add up
to another thoroughly enjoyable and highly memorable
saddle-stapled comic book from Mr. Van Sciver.
retail
price - $10.00 copacetic price - $9.75
These
items and more
may also be
found at our
eCommerce
site, HERE.