NEW STUFF ARCHIVES
New for December 2022
Bungleton Green and the Mystic Commandos has landed here at Copacetic, nearly eighty years after it originally blasted off in the pages of The Chicago Defender, one of – if not the – most significant and widely read of the Black newsweeklies (along with the Pittsburgh Courier, just FYI) published in the the United States during the twentieth century. The two years of Bungleton Green and the Mystic Commandos collected here – for the first time anywhere – in this 9" x 9" square format softcover running 184 pages, is part Jack Kirby, part Carter G. Woodson. These classic, WW II-era strips ran from November 28, 1942 through January 27, 1945. The characters that make up the Mystic Commandos embody the high moral tone of self-sacrifice prevailing during these WW II years – along with a focus on battling Nazis – and worked to provide a dose of behavioral role modeling along with the suspenseful entertainment. Most importantly, and uniquely, woven throughout these weekly comic strips are the matter-of-fact, day-to-day dealings with the pervasive racism – implicit and explicit – of the society in which their adventures take place. These dealings move to center stage during the second half of the collection when time travel is introduced into the narrative; first when the characters are transported back into the slavery of the 18th century, and then, intriguingly, when they are beamed into the 21st century, where Whites find themselves discriminated against by the now dominant Greens, in ways that directly parallel those ways in which Blacks were discriminated against by Whites at the time of publication. Each of the approximately 100 strips that appear here was, when originally published, appended by a brief, text-heavy, one-panel biography of an important figure in Black History. These were created in the "uplift the race" mode, and are well selected with each managing to effectively convey the gist of the significance of each historical personage in the tiny space allotted; which, when you stop and think about it, is really quite a feat. Because the strip's format varied over time, in order to maintain an equal quality of reproduction across these important bio strips, the decision was made by the publisher, editor and designer of this volume to print them all together, in order, at the back of the volume. They also included the first handful in their original place at the conclusion of each week, so readers will experience them in situ, as they originally appeared. Even today, these strips offer an education, and everyone reading them will come away better informed. Taken all together, here, at long last, in the pages of Bungleton Green and the Mystic Commandos is the missing chapter in the history of Golden Age comics. Don't miss it! Now boarding...Bungleton Green and the Mystic Commandos
retail price - $24.99 copacetic price - $21.75
From the evidence on hand in the seventeen (!) stories that make up Jason's latest collection, Upside Dawn, he embraced the opportunity offered by the pandemic to "turn and face the strange". Get ready for a rollercoaster ride of weird, unexpected, and, yes, strange tales – most in the ten to twenty page range – in this one-of-a-kind hardcover volume. We can tell you that these stories will be a special treat for long-time Jason readers, as he goes out on a lot of limbs here, taking chances with inventive and experimental stories and approaches that leverage and expand his repertoire – and are a lot of fun to read!
Upside Dawn
retail price - $29.99 copacetic price - $26.75
Children of Palomar and Other TalesWhile we’re still in the thick of the Love and Rockets 40th anniversary celebrations, here’s a reminder of why we’re celebrating. It’s not just that Love Rockets started forty years ago, but that there has been forty years of continuous creation. Here are a big batch of comics by Gilbert Hernandez that were originally published during the first decade of the new millennium. This volume collects for the first time anywhere a collaboration between Mario and Gilbert, “Me for the Unknown”, which originally appeared in the second, standard comic book format, volume of Love and Rockets, roughly twenty years ago. Also here from that second volume, is “Julio’s Day”, a graphic novel length work which ran through most of the issues. And then, finally, the centerpiece of this collection, "The Children of Palomar" saga collects the complete three issue "Ignatz" series, New Tales of Old Palomar, originally published in 2006-08. These stories display Beto's talent for up close and personal stories set amidst deftly rendered landscapes that are by turn haunting and enchanting and also marked the long-awaited return to the the land of "Heartbreak Soup”…
retail price - $24.99 copacetic price - $19.99
Francis Rothbart! The Tale of a Fastidious FeralFrancis Rothbart! is a clearly ambitious, long-in-the-works "graphic opera" that takes the form of a massive, 300 page, 11" x 14" hardcover volume filled with page after page of esquisitely detailed artwork. We just got it in. The book is "full color," but just FYI, much of the artwork so reproduced is in monochrome pen & ink, along with some subtle tinting. | Here's Fanta's hype-up: "Written mostly in rhymed verse, Francis’s picaresque saga unfolds in an allegorical environment, much like the topographical constructions behind renaissance religious paintings. Referencing both the Venetian landscapes of Bellini, Pierro di Cosimo and Carpaccio, mixed with the unlikely animated backdrops of Jay Ward and Chuck Jones, Woodruff’s images recall the fictive gardens of a paradise lost that lingers somewhere deep in all our souls, moist and dark like the caves of the pious saints." | Here are a couple of head-turning plugs: "Thomas Woodruff's Francis Rothbart! is a baroque masterpiece in comic novel form and a voyage into a deep, rich, and patient imagination. Bernini would have been stunned." — Gary Panter | "Thomas Woodruff has created his own world. A world never seen before. An allegory of all our dreams. AMAZING." — Robert Wilson, theater director and visual artist (Einstein on the Beach, The Black Rider) | Need more convincing? Take a look at a few sample pages HERE, and see what you think!by Thomas Woodruff
retail price - $75.00 copacetic price - $59.75
Ginseng Roots #11The penultimate issue of Ginseng Roots has arrived. This issue finds Craig and his brother, Phil traveling to the far reaches of China – just across the border from North Korea – in search of the roots of ginseng cultivation, and get in touch with their own roots – their relationship with each other and their family – in the process; a process which also shows a number of parallels and connections between the people of rural China and the people of rural America, revealing perhaps unexpected similarities. Another great issue!
retail price - $6.00 copacetic price - $5.75
Void PackerThe latest self-published comics work from Lale Westvind has touched down at Copacetic. It's a 28 pages, 7" x 8 1/2", black & white on flat, cream colored paper with two-color outer covers (B& W inner) printed on cardstock. The contents? There are two stories – the 16-page, "Life & Limb", a freaky dreamlike story, and the 7-page science-fiction story / prophecy of things to come, "Tail of the Egg"– interspersed with three one-page "Void Packer" strips – each of which is a meditation, by turns philosophic and poetic – on the theme. Nice!
retail price - $10.00 copacetic price - $8.75
Boat Life 1The first volume of Tsuge Tadao's quasi-autobiographical account of his life living on a river outside of Tokyo, on a homemade houseboat, translated and edited by Ryan Holmberg, of course. Boat Life 1 brings readers 320 pages of manga plus a 27-page essay, "Garo Gone Fishin'", by Holmberg. Looks like a good read to slow down with after the holiday frenzy...
retail price - $24.99 copacetic price - $21.75
"Yesterday": Diary Comix"Yesterday" collects several dozen of Brother Malcolm's short, self-published, autobio mini-comics in one 348 page 6" x 8" softcover volume. Noah Van Sciver sums up its appeal, best: "Brother Malcolm's comics are loose, masterfully sparse and communicate like your best friend telling you all about his day. You'll fall right into his world." And, value priced!
retail price - $14.99 copacetic price - $13.75
DJ Cat Gosshie World TourA cat DJ from Japan, who has his headphones ever-ready, pulls his records in a handmade wooden crate on wheels and spins his discs (on his cat-size turntable) at various locales around the world. What could be cuter? Nothing! This is it! A5 (6" x 8"), 100 pages, full-color, perfect bound. Printed in Latvia on FSC certified paper.
retail price - $20.00 copacetic price - $20.00
Popeye: The E.C. Segar Popeye Sundays, Volume 2, "Wimpy & His Hamburgers" - March 1932 - November 1933Any Copacetic customer who has been considering taking a dip into the classic E.C. Segar Popeye pool but has yet to take the plunge is not going to get a better opportunity than this volume, as it contains a four page analysis and deconstruction of this comics masterpiece – in comics form, natch' – by longtime Popeye fan, and Copacetic fave, Kevin Huizenga! After reading Kevin's piece, you'll be primed and ready to swim through the 91 full color Sunday pages that follow in "Wimpy & His Hamburgers", the second volume in this uniquely designed series, with a horizontally formatted softcover book tucked into a vertical, 3/4 height, die-cut slipcase.
retail price - $24.99 copacetic price - $21.75
These items and more may also be found at our eCommerce site, HERE.
New for November 2022
Love and Rockets is the series that started it all, the ink and paper container for the comics without which The Copacetic Comics Company would not exist. Beginning with an ending – BEM, the definitive deconstruction of what was holding back the medium of comics, preventing it from realizing its full potential – and then... 40 years of demonstrating the tremendous capacity of comics as a form of personal expression, creating the most fully realized characters in the history of American comic books, being the primary driver of the establishing the strong, long term bonds between the alternative comics and alternative music scenes – and so much more – and in the process transforming the medium. Here, in this 40th anniversary box set of bound facsimiles of the first fifty issues – the complete first volume, originally published by Fantagraphics from 1982 to 1996 – is an opportunity both to (re)experience and preserve for posterity the original experience of the series that changed comics. This is a publication to take your time with, to savor. Considering that the original comics it collects and (re)presents took well over a decade to create, the longer you take, the more time you spend with it, the closer the reading experience will be to the original. Eight massive volumes in a heavy duty slipcase; almost thirty pounds total weight! Here are the deets & specs, courtesy Fanta: "Painstakingly recreated in issue-by-issue facsimile, this boxed set includes every cover, comics page, and letter column (even advertising!) in seven hardcover volumes. An eighth volume densely collates selected essays, reviews, and profiles that appeared in the popular (and unpopular) press between 1981 and 1996, along with over 100 pages of additional, rarely-seen comics from the period by all three Brothers, plus dozens of book and magazine covers – a virtual history of the growth of Love and Rockets and the simultaneous rise of the literary comics movement of which they were exemplars and trailblazers." Pages: 2200 | Format: Hardback. w/slipcase | Color: Black-and-white and full-color | Dimensions: 10.5" × 13" | Weight: 27.9 lbs.Love and Rockets: The First Fifty: The Classic 40th Anniversary Collection
retail price - $400.00 copacetic price - $350.00
This 3-pack collects Kevin Huizenga's F zines that, while published more recently, collect the material that he produced under the banner of "F" in the year 2020, and so intersects with the pandemic-induced upheavals along with what was, for Kevin H., also a year full of fraught personal upheavals. These are the print versions of his Patreon e-zines and consist of comics, drawings, doodles and writings, along with some evocative full-page, full color nature and landscape photographs. They are published mini-comic size – 4 1/4" x 5 1/2" – and printed in black and white and full color. The first issue runs 24 pages, and the second and third each run 32 pages. This is highly personal work focused to a large degree (but not wholly) on personal struggles with creativity, meaning and life at large, and the reading experience feels much more intimate in this hand-sized print form when compared to the e-zine (however, readers will, in some sections of his journaling, come across a few highlighted "links," which, of course, is an incongruous – and somewhat humorous – experience on the printed page).F2020 - 3-pack/bundle
retail price - $20.00 copacetic price - $15.75
Here's the complete set of all the issues of Kevin Huizenga's notes on the making of his masterpiece, The River at Night. All three issues are published mini-comic size – 4 1/4" x 5 1/2". The first issue is 24 pages, black & white on cream colored stock. The second and third issues are each 32 pages in black & white and color, on multiple paper stocks. The issues contain a combination of explanatory texts, diagrams, thumbnails, work-ups and images of some source materials. Part, behind-the-scenes, making-of documentary and part reflective deconstruction of the intellectual concepts and cartooning constructs that informed this epic project, that was more that a decade in the making.Riverside Companion - 3-Pack/Bundle
retail price - $20.00 copacetic price - $15.75
Below AmbitionHot off the press, it's the latest from Simon Hanselmann! It's time to kick out the jams as Megg and Werewolf Jones get the band – Horse Mania – back together and hit the road to defend their rep as "the worst band in town." Below Ambition is a full color flexicover edition that comes with an actual, playable "tipped in" flexidisc of "Stick It In for the Ambient" by the flesh and blood Horse Mania (composed of, we believe, Simon Hanselmann and Karl VonBamBerger). It appears to have both an A-side and a B-side, so maybe there's a bonus track? It looks like we'll have to play it and see....
retail price - $24.99 copacetic price - $21.75
The Demons are back! Demons: Bloodlust is Hyena Hell's biggest and baddest outing yet. 120 pages of bloody boredom, fearsome frolicking, sassy sexiness, trash talking, vituperative violence and more, as Bug and Grog & Co. bring their demonic humor to bear on living through hell on earth.
Demons: Bloodlust
retail price - $14.95 copacetic price - $13.75
CankorThis 216 page heavy duty hardcover volume collects the entirety of ten years worth of Matthew Allison's Cankor (over 100 pages more than the earlier softcover from AdHouse). Almost entirely in full color. A unique, personal – and weird – take on the super hero, Cankor contains page after page of finely detailed – and exquisitely rendered – artwork that draws from the well of some of the best in adventurous independent comics; think Mike Mignola meets Eric Haven meets Charles Burns and that will at least give you an idea. This volume began life in Crowdfundr; here it is for those who missed out!
retail price - $34.95 copacetic price - $31.75
This is a fairly new arrival, and we haven't yet had the opportunity to sit down and read it, but we can tell you that it looks great, and feel that there are sure to be some Copacetic customers who would like to get their hands on it. Published by NoBrow – whose excellent production values are very much in evidence here: it looks and feels great; French-flapped softcover; flat colors on high quality, flat, off white stock. Here's what one notable fan of the book has to say: "Reading Thieves is like going on a decidedly queer adventure - full of heart, tension, beauty, and so much love. Add in to that the gorgeous art, and you've got yourself a truly wonderful book." – Tillie Walden, creator of Are You Listening and Spinning
Thieves
retail price - $20.99 copacetic price - $18.75
A hefty hardcover collection of the cartoons of Charles Johnson, All Your Racial Problems Will Soon End pulls together a disparate selection of Johnson's work, primarily from the 1960s & '70s, that have been out of print and rarely seen (outside the ranks of the cognoscenti) for over fifty years. This is a great selection that helps make up for lost time. Here's what the publisher, New York Review Comics, has to say about it: "Before Charles Johnson found fame as a novelist and won the National Book Award for Middle Passage in 1991, he was a cartoonist, and a very good one. Taught via correspondence course by the comics editor Lawrence Lariar, mentored by the New Yorker cartoonist Charles Barsotti, and inspired by the call of the poet Amiri Baraka to celebrate and depict Black life in America, Johnson crafted some of the fiercest and funniest cartoons of the twentieth century. Reimagining the gag comic as a powerful and incendiary tool, Johnson tackled America’s mid-century afflictions—segregation, inner-city poverty, police brutality, and white supremacy—by craftily subverting stale gag tropes. He populated them with bullet-dodging Black Panthers, doubt-filled Klansmen, militant babies, self-serving politicians, and complacent suburban liberals. This collection, Johnson’s first in nearly fifty years, brings together work from across his career: college newspaper gags, selections from his books Black Humor and Half-Past Nation Time, his unpublished manuscript Lumps in the Melting Pot, and uncollected pieces. Taken together, this volume reveals Johnson as long overdue for appreciation as a cartoonist of the first order."All Your Racial Problems Will Soon End: The Cartoons of Charles Johnson
retail price - $34.95 copacetic price - $28.75
A new book by Bob Dylan! What is it? Well... our take on it is that, here in the era of the multiverse, one way to look at it is: this is the book penned by the Bob Dylan that, instead of becoming a legendary singer/songwriter, became a highly motivated, extremely knowledgeable (if, perhaps, somewhat eccentric) lifelong NYC record store employee, and it is this Bob Dylan who put together Modern Song, which is compiled of his most legendary sales pitches for his favorite records. Worth noting: this slightly oversize hardcover book is heavily illustrated. Enjoy! (And prepare to suddenly find yourself on the prowl for some records you hadn't previously known you needed to have...)
The Philosophy of Modern Song
retail price - $45.00 copacetic price - $38.75
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New for October 2022
Finally, a new collection from Megan Kelso! Who Will Make the Pancakes collects Kelso's major works of the last fifteen years (it's hard to believe it's been over a decade since her last book, right?). Here in this 200 page hardcover edition, we have five substantial stories – one each pen & ink with process color, water color and colored pencil, as well two in straight up pen & ink black & white – ranging in length from 24 to 60 pages. Starting off with "Watergate Sue", which was serialized in the New York Times in 2007, this collection showcases the wide range of Kelso's talents in stories ranging from "Cats in Service," a fantasy of a Downtown Abbey-era manor estate being managed by feline servants, to "Korin Voss", a story that went thorugh several permutations before arriving at its present form of a WWII-era historical romance / domestic drama. All of the stories here are set firmly within the world of men, but remain throughout unapologetically woman-centric, with a firm focus on the defining role played by the experience of motherhood. The central tale, "The Egg Room", from which the cover image is taken, is a densely layered masterwork that manages to successfully orchestrate its theme and deliver an entire graphic novel's worth of ideas and insights in a mere 24 pages of wistful watercolors. Get ready to dig in to a thick stack of great comics stories...Who Will Make the Pancakes
retail price - $29.99 copacetic price - $25.75
Washington WhiteWashington DC will never seem the same after Washington White. Right off the bat, readers are plunged into an extremely high stakes drama reminiscent of classical Greek tragedy – and a hint at Jack Kirby's New Gods – and then from there straight into a high concept intrigue that blends a sepia-toned-rainbow infused power politics with an underlying gay demimonde and then layers that with a crypto currency powered, psychedelic virtual reality – all set in our nation's capital. Griffiths has been at work on this project for over a decade and there is enough plot (and sex & violence) contained within these pages to power multiple seasons of a Netflix series (although the sex shown here would never make it onto the screen). All is rendered in a lush, funky art style that could be described as the love child of Vaughn Bode and Aaron McGruder, replete with a melodious, three-dimensional, color lettering along with significant strawberry signification. There is a degree of complexity in the artwork that is at one with the complexities contained within the plot and that asks the reader to slow down and absorb it all... Washington White is a one of a kind reading experience.
retail price - $24.99 copacetic price - $21.75
IshIsh is a magazine size, 56 page softcover collecting three longish stories in black and white and muted, flat color on nice off-white stock. We've had it in the shop for awhile, and realized we should share it with our online customers, as it is filled with graphically inventive, experimental comics of the kind that you don't see every day. De Souza has clearly spent some time studying early 20th century modernist painters – most notably, Picasso – and here he strives to adapt some of their then – and, for comics, still – novel approaches to visual representation of psychological states and philosophical perspectives into this work, making for a stimulating and challenging reading experience. One that also serves to reveal a small patch of the untapped potential inherent in the comics medium, where the possibilities for combining image and text in the service of personal expression remain practically endless...
retail price - $14.99 copacetic price - $13.75
Accidental Czar: The Life and Lies of Vladimir PutinHere's an inside-the-beltway account from Andrew S. Weiss – an actual insider – that takes a detailed, contexualized look at Putin's rise within the Russian state apparatus, as it struggled to reconstruct itself amidst the rubble left by the collapse of the Soviet Union. It has been expertly wrought into comics form by Brian "Box" Brown, whose crisp, clear cartooning works to efficiently convey large quantities of disparate, often unfamiliar information into intellectually digestible associative clusters. Readers will not only gain a greater understanding of Putin, they will also – and of necessity – be simultaneously brought up to speed on the realities of post-Soviet Russia along with getting a look at its roots in Russian history. This intertwined narrative approach works to demonstrate how quirks of fate led Putin to be ensconced in a seat of such power. Accidental Czar is another good example of the communicative power of the comics form, as readers will emerge from its reading empowered with a substantially increased understanding of Putin's Russia – as well as, critically, its relations with the United States – that will assist them in making better sense of our tumultuous times.
retail price - $28.99 copacetic price - $25.00
Shuna's Journey In 1980, after the not-so-great box office performance of his directorial debut, Lupin the 3rd: The Castle of Cagliostro, Miyazaki set his sites on manga and began work on Shuna's Journey in tandem with the orignal manga for Nausicaä. Nausicaä was published in serial form, in Animage magazine, beginning in 1982. Shuna's Journey, on the other hand, went straight to book publication, in a single volume, in 1983. While Nausicaä soon thereafter entered into production as an animated film – which, of course, as all Miyazaki fans know, went on to be a huge international success, ultimately leading to the founding of Studio Ghibli – which then led, in turn, to the manga to be among the first translated into English and published in North America, by Viz, beginning in 1988, it is only now – close to forty years after its original Japanese publication – that Shuna's Journey at last arrives on our shores in an English translation by Alex Dudok De Wit, in this full color, hardcover edition. Based on the Tibetan folk tale, The Prince Who Turned into a Dog, the visuals have much in common with Nausicaä – unsurprisingly, given that he worked on both simultaneously. But there's much that is intriguing and unique to Shuna's Journey, and, of course, there is the page after page of wonderful Miyazaki art and story.
retail price - $29.00 copacetic price - $24.75
Windy but NiceDash Shaw is at it again. Windy but Nice is, like the now out of print The Seasons, an eight-page, tabloid newspaper (11" x 17") zine. This time around, Dash has produced a series of fine line drawings to illuminate the work of deceased Slovenian poet Tomaz Salamun, whose work Dash clearly admires, as he's really put his heart into these drawings. This is a publication that you'll be hard pressed to find elsewhere – and that we're offering for a song, but not for long. Limited supply.... all gone!
copacetic price - $1.50
Assorted BaggageAssorted Baggage is a square formatted collection of 52 one (mostly) and two-page strips. Each square page is subdivided into four square panels. There are four sections, each of which involves a transformation of the (duck) protagonist. All are brightly colored in four colors: Purple, pink, blue and yellow. None include any text. The strong constraints make for a visually stimulating rebusoid narrative that's fun to puzzle out. The cover image is representative of the art inside.
retail price - $13.00 copacetic price - $12.50
Yes, it's another collection of Tom Gauld's horizontally formatted, single page cartoons featuring his dry – very dry – humor. Think Edward Gorey crossed with Gary Larson, and you'll get some – but only some – idea of what's in store here. While libraries and librarians do feature in some of these cartoons, for the most part they are about things literary in general, with a special focus on writers, writing and the writing life. Those already familiar with Gauld's previous collections will have a pretty good idea what to expect here. Those that are not (and, really, even those that already are) should consider sparing a moment to peruse this nice PDF preview courtesy D & Q. (And remember to scroll right, as well as down, where another cartoon is lurking, on the other side of the horizontal spread.)Revenge of the Librarians
retail price - $24.95 copacetic price - $21.75
Yes, it's ALL here: All eighteen* issues – in their entirety, covers, letters pages and all** – of the epochal, definitive single-creator anthology comic book series: Daniel Clowes's Eightball! Everything is as it originally appeared, in black & white and/or full color. Also included are the two short "Behind the Eightball" addendums that were prepared for the hardcover slipcased edition. One and done! (*Yes, of course, you are correct: Eightball did indeed run for 23 issues, but, as you also know, these first 18 issues constitute the entirety of its "single-creator anthology comics book series" run. #s 19-21 serialized David Boring, #22 was the original version of Ice Haven, and #23 contained Death Ray. **And, yes, even the Modern Cartoonist insert is included.)
The Complete Eightball
retail price - $49.99 copacetic price - $42.75
Some New Kind of KickHere's the memoir from an LA punk rocker who was there when in mattered. Here, in the pages of Some New Kind of Kick, you'll follow along as Mexican-American teenager, Brian Tristan is transformed into Kid Congo, and goes on to power seminal bands like The Gun Club, The Cramps and The Bad Seeds – and, later, The Pink Monkey Birds. Kid Congo Powers embodied – and continues to embody – what punk rock was – and is – all about. At least do yourself the favor of reading this article/interview from The Guardian. Kid Congo!
retail price - $29.00 copacetic price - $25.00
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