NEW STUFF ARCHIVES
New for June 2023
BLAB is back, and in a new format that represents a hybrid of its previous incarnations. Part comics, part art showcase, part archival, this new Blab has something for everyone (but only some will find everything to be of interest). The highlights for us here at Copacetic are two – count 'em – new full color comics by Noah Van Sciver, both of which are portraits of the artist in comics form. The first tells the tale of Louis Wain, an early – and, surprise!, eccentric – 20th century British artist who is largely forgotten – and certainly was not ever widely know in the American comics world – but best remembered as the creator of a series of prints and postcards featuring anthropomorphic cats; the second provides an up close, personal, and pretty seedy comics accounting of the better known (but, certainly, not by everyone) tale of crime comics artist exemplar, Bob Woods, co-creator of the original crime comic book that started it all, Crime Does Not Pay – and his downward spiral along with its highly ironic, crime fueled conclusion. Monte Beauchamp's in-depth and profusely illustrated essay on the history of the great apes in popular culture – and, to a lesser extent, in history and science – has a lot to offer, and will certainly be of intense interest to some, perhaps many, readers. In addition Ryan Heshka's comics bio of Siegel and Shuster from Masterful Marks is given another chance to connect with readers, along with a Fletcher Hanks classic Fantomah story. Plus plenty more! BLAB!
Comics and Stories That Will Make You BLAB! #1
retail price - $19.95 copacetic price - $17.75
Stamped From the Beginning – Graphic AdaptationYears in the works, Joel Christian Gilll's graphic adaptation of Ibram X. Kendi's masterful, ground-breaking history of race in America, Stamped From the Beginning, has at last been completed and published. While we certainly continue to encourage people to read the original, and so gain the full weight of its profound insights, Gill's graphic adaptation clearly presents the key elements and forcefully conveys the text's central arguments in a work that will only take a fraction of the time to absorb, and so in the process provides an ample demonstration of the communicative strengths of the comics form.
retail price - $29.95 copacetic price - $25.75
Listen, Beautiul MarciaMarcello Quintanilha is a Brazilian cartoonist/comics-maker/graphic-novelist working in Europe. With a career now entering its foruth decade, Quintanilha has developed an assured, original style that is employed to full effect here in the pages of Listen, Beautiful Marcia. Saturated tropical colors combine with clear concise delineations to convey the dramatic details as well as the emotional register of this complex, multi-layered saga that centers on a mother and her adult child in Rio. This 128 page, full color graphic novel was originally published by Ca et La in France, and went on to win the 2022 Angouleme Prize for best original album. It is has now been very ably translated – with nuance intact – into English by Andrea Rosenberg, and published here in the States by Fantagraphics, in a nice, sturdy, embossed, oversize hardcover edition. Take a moment to scope out this preview.
retail price - $29.99 copacetic price - $26.75
Six Mini ComicsSix Mini Comics by M.S. Harkness collects, yes, you guessed it, six-mini comics by M.S. Harkness. The two most substantial stories in this collection, "A Savage Journey to the Heart of an Anime Convention," and "Rotten" were both actually self-published as stand-alone mini-comics – and both confessional tales revealing the chaos lurking just below the surface – the other stories in this collection appeared in Bubbles #11, 666, Rust Belt Review #1, and Now #10. So, here's an opportunity to get all these stories in one place, and for a fraction of the price of purchasing them elsewhere. 128 pages | 5.5" x 8.5" | perfectbound
retail price - $19.95 copacetic price - $17.75
Trigore Labarinthby Matt Furie & Will Sweeney, Skinner
More or less an homage to Charles Burns and Gary Panter's Facetasm, published roughly 30 years back, Trigore Labarinth is also a kind of a hybrid twist on the "exquisite corpse", combining it with the "mix 'n' match" genre of kids' books. A compilation of 50 drawings, all divided into three horizontal strips and spiral bound inside of an attractive hardcover binding. These segmented drawings can then be mixed and matched in an inexhaustedly large number of possible combinations – the cube of 50 is 125,000. So, great for a rainy day... The drawings themselves are detailed black and white renderings of creatures that are to varying degrees monstrous, alien, psychotic, robotic and/or just plain weird. Fun!
retail price - $34.99 copacetic price - $29.75
The Museum of MistakesMuseum of Mistakes, Julia Wertz's massive new softcover collection from Uncivilized Books lives up to its sub-title, as it is surely, "the definitive Fart Party collection." Not only does it collect the entirety of the two long-out-of-print volumes of The Fart Party published by Atomic Books in the 'aughts, but it also includes "(What Would Have Been) The Fart Party Volume 3", which consists of "all the unpublished random comics I mad during that time that were not put into a book." Also included are: "Sketches by Laura Park and Myself"; "Sketchbook"; "Sugarpill Comix"; "The Legend of Rebob Mountain"; and an addendum; 528 pages in all! "What is 'The Fart Party'?" you may ask. It is a series of – mostly – one-page strips that work to capture the experience of early adulthood on the fly in a simple, cartooned style informed by an innate sense of comic timing. Operating in modes that wildly vary between self-revelation, self-reflection, self-analysis, self-doubt, self-hate and self-promotion, Wertz details a teeming multitude of quotidian events, thoughts, feelings, fantasies and problems. It's the kind of book that can be read straight through, in order, but that lends itself to being picked up and opened at random whenever you're feeling like a quick "comics hit."SPECIAL "get acquainted" PRICE
retail price - $29.95 copacetic price - $22.75
The Nib #15Say it isn't so! We've been told that The Nib is shutting down and that this is the last issue :(... The Nib has been an important fixture in the comics cosmos, and we're worry to see it go. That said, it looks like they may very well have saved the best for last, as this is a great issue, as you'll see by the publisher's listing for it HERE. Covers and illustrations for the sections, masthead and contributors by Ben Passmore!
retail price - $14.95 copacetic price - $12.75
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New for May 2023
The Man in the McIntosh Suit The Man in the McIntosh Suit is a heartfelt history disguised as a mystery. With the lure of a puzzle at its core and the hook of solving it to pull the readers along, a rich portrait of first generation Filipino-American life in late 1920s California emerges as the story progresses, gradually taking shape in its freely rendered and lushly toned pages. Details there are aplenty: long days of low paid farm work with the rare night out on the town; achingly longing memories of the home country and then, eventually discovering its evocation in the splendors of the “Manilatown” neighborhood of San Francisco. Along the way there are snippets of colloquial Filipino language and sayings, along with a look at familial – and other – bonds, personal habits, traditional foods and cooking, varieties of clothing and the importance of a good suit! And, sprinkled throughout, there is the “soundtrack” of classic tin-pan alley, jazz, Broadway and torch songs like "I'm Always Chasing Rainbows", "Blue Skies", "It Had To Be You", "Ain't Misbehavin'" and more. And, as for the mystery plot itself: it is filled with plenty of twists and turns, blind alleys and dead ends (none of which you’ll learn about here) before leading finally to the revelations at the book's conclusion; but – not all is revealed as mysteries remain… to perhaps be tackled in a sequel? To get a feel for what’s in store in these pages, check out this generous preview from D&Q.
retail price - $24.95 copacetic price - $21.75
Just a Little Boy provides a rigorously rendered satiric portrait of growing up amidst the psychic ravages of our decaying capitalist order here in early-21st century America that is simultaneously terrifyingly horrific and hysterically funny. An upside-down and inside-out Christian doctrine holds up a mirror to the inversion of democratic values embodied in the current state of our capitalist ethos, revealing its inherent moral bankruptcy. Nate produced this work at a fever pitch of intensity, yet managed to sustain a high level of artistry throughout the work’s nearly 100 magazine-size ( 8.5” x 11”) pages. Just a Little Boy incorporates many tropes and caricatures that will be familiar to Grixly readers, while also managing at times to read like an extended – and harshly caustic – contemporary comics riff on Hieronymus Bosch’s Garden of Earthly Delights – with a special focus on the darker final panel of the triptych (although he tips his hand by quoting one of the key paintings of the Romantic Era, Caspar David Friedrich’s Wanderer Above the Sea of Fog in a nice homage). The tag line of the George Miller film, Babe is employed as a leitmotif and simultaneously serves as a sort of ironic Greek chorus, providing a paean to the unnamed protagonist, asserting – against all odds – that he retains his innocence throughout his epic travails amidst the all-pervasive corruption of his environment. Just a Little Boy is a strong contender for being Nate McDonough’s most fully realized work to date. Includes an afterword by Luke Geddes and eight bonus pin-ups by Friends of Nate!Just a Little Boy
retail price - $14.99 copacetic price - $13.75
2am Eternal2AM Eternal is a record of the preceding decade (2012 - 2022) of the Toronto queer scene, that is part autobio comics, part history lesson and – most spectacularly – part print exhibition catalogue of Eric Kostiuk Williams's promotional and poster art. Printed magazine size, in (mostly) full color and black and white, this mix of materials really works to create a "you-are-there" feeling and makes for an immersive reading experience.
retail price - $21.95 copacetic price - $19.75
Rust Belt Review #5It took a minute, but the fifth issue of Rust Belt Review has arrived. It looks like Sean & Co. were keeping busy, and this issue was worth the wait. It's the the biggest issue yet by a large margin, featuring 110 oversize (9.25" x 12") pages of all new black & white comics from Sienna Cittadino, Andrew Greenstone, Sam Grinberg, Sean Knickerbocker, Matt MacFarland, Alex Nall, John Sammis, Jordan Speicher-Willis, Audra Stang, and Andy Wieland – PLUS a super cool, 12 page, full color, pull-out comic by Pat Rooks!
retail price - $19.99 copacetic price - $17.75
Girl JuiceWhat's this, the new Benji Nate comes not from her long time publisher, Silver Sprocket, but instead from Drawn & Quarterly?! (Regardless of the hows and whys of this move, it appears to have paid some dividends already, as the D & Q juice scored Rachel Hampton's review in The Washington Post.) Girl Juice mines the zeitgeist and strikes gold, delivering a fresh, sparkling comics satire of contemporary young women, in Nate's trademarked, brightly colored, manga-inflected style. It flows along in episodic fashion, and is ideal for bite-size reads on the go. Fun!
retail price - $24.95 copacetic price - $21.75
Work-Life BalanceIn Work-Life Balance, Aisha Franz has mixed a potent cocktail of societal dysfunction with a blend of, yes, work and life – but it is her personalized ratios and specific ingredients that lend it its special kick: art, therapy, employment contracts, health care plans and friendships, poured over the ice of an apparent lack of sexual relations, all blended together by the internet and its connected and attendant devices before being decocted into 252 pages of full color comics. Created (and translated, by Nicholas Houde) in Berlin.
retail price - $24.95 copacetic price - $21.75
After a long hiatus... independent, avant garde comics publisher, 2dCloud is back! There's no better place to celebrate their return than in the pages of this first issue of their new anthology title, Compact Magazine. Edited by 2dCloud publisher, Raighne Hogan, readers are presented with 76 pages of all new material – comics, drawings, photography, poetry, fiction and hybrids – that ranges far and wide, including: comics by Morgan Vogel and Yvan Alagbé; an illustrated interview with Brian Bamps; poetry by Liza Kotlar; drawings by Katherine Dee; photos by Sarah Cuje; a new short story by Samuel Delaney(!); and more. PLUS, there are an additional 54 pages of previews (making for 130 pages of material in all) featuring work that will appear in upcoming 2dCloud publications, including Maggie Umber, Jason Overby, Tara Booth, Ash H.G., Paul Peng and – most exciting for us here at Copacetic – Lale Westvind, whose long promised solo collection, Grand Electric Thought Power Mother (a strong contender for the best title of all time) is now on the schedule for December 2023 release.
Compact Magazine #1
retail price - $24.99 copacetic price - $21.75
The Necrophilic LandscapeThe Necrophilic Landscape is an assemblage of rescued online work by the late artist Morgan Vogel (née Caroline Bren) that has been reformatted for print. It presents a weird, cryptic, obscure, and absurd vision of late capitalism that is part William Burroughs's Wild Boys, and part Henry Darger's "Story of the Vivian Girls" (with soundtrack provided by Funkadelic's America Eats Its Young). The panels alternate between text-heavy and text-free, with each accompanied by densely drawn art that is engaged in a heroic struggle to articulate that which the text cannot, leaving it up to the reader to forge the necessary synthesis of meaning. Includes several photographs, a brief text by the author, and an "afterwards" by editor, Raighne Hogan.
retail price - $19.99 copacetic price - $17.75
New Realities: The Comics of Dash ShawThe most substantial volume yet in the Critical Cartoons series published by Uncivilized Books, New Realities presents over 200 full, comic book size pages filled with an in-depth critical overview of Dash Shaw's comics making career along with a significant sampling of the artist's work that mixes excerpts of graphic novels with full short stories. This combination makes for a hybrid, critical collection, offering readers an opportunity to engage in dialectics by absorbing and processing Greg Hunter's perspectives and insights and then to applying them to Dash Shaw's work in situ, and so to forge their own unique synthesis.
retail price - $24.99 copacetic price - $21.75
20KM/HHere in this handy-sized, 376 page, flexi-bound collection we are presented with dozens of the clearly delineated, short, witty, wordless comics created by the Shanghai-based videogame-designer-turned-cartoonist, Woshibai. Read one at a time – or binge! Either way, they all can stand up to multiple readings, and are fascinating in how – and what – they communicate so efficiently in a a brief series of drawings. Fun!
retail price - $29.99 copacetic price - $26.75
Black Phoenix #1Old school comics done right! 136 pages of clear line crime comics, crisply printed on newsprint in duo-tone, black & white, and full color. Included in this premiere issue are two longer pieces, "The Mysterious Case" and "Killer in My Sleep," along with a slew of shorter pieces, ranging from a couple of Sam Hill one-pagers on up to the eight-page "Galoot!" and the nine-page "X-Ray Spectre" – with plenty more in between. Plus, a nice sampling of mock period advertisements that help seal the feel. While the æsthetic clearly evokes comics from the "Atomic Age" (1946 - 1955), the perspective informing the concepts and stories is clearly that of the present. The contrast between what is externalized and what is internalized, providing readers with a parallax view along the temporal axis.
retail price - $14.99 copacetic price - $13.75
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New for April 2023
Running Numbers is a serial publication of an illuminated typescript that presents to readers a diaristic account of Frank Santoro’s day-to-day life, internal as well as external. As always with Santoro’s work, the unit is the spread. Here, the left side contains the typescript – the text – and the right side a set of three horizontal panels each containing a drawing in markers – the image – usually in blazing colors, but also, on occasion, in black and white. These drawings are sometimes sequential, sometimes standalone and sometimes overlapping and/or merging into one; all interact with and illuminate the facing typescript. As Marvel Proust would have it, the crux of life is lived in and through memories. The essence of experience, of living, takes place in recollection, as memories are brought back to life in the mind, where they exist in their most pure and rarefied state, stripped of distraction. The life of a Vietnam veteran, such as Frank’s father (also Frank) – as well as others who experienced direct personal trauma – can therefore be expected to be one of intermittent and recurrent pain. This is one of the themes brought to the surface here. But it is only one among many. There is a distinctly blue collar tint to the lives lived and remembered in Running Numbers. Its recollections give voice to the world of the workers, wanderers and walking wounded, the overlooked, and too often forgotten lives of those whose labors made possible the fortunes of the families whose names adorn the buildings and institutions for which Pittsburgh is known. As it provides a window on Frank’s world, Running Numbers simultaneously reveals – and records – the otherwise invisible vestiges of an emotionally subterranean, Italian-inflected, pre-modern European village inscribed into the lives portrayed on these post-industrial streets and sidewalks physically located the Borough of Swissvale, which borders the City of Pittsburgh and the Boroughs of Edgewood and Wilkinsburg. The spirits of the past occupy the present, and are very much alive – in memory. But those memories are now fading away, as the corporeal forms of those who hold them disappear… Then there are the moments of being caught up in and carried away by a flood of memories. These moments are here. Helpless, overwhelmed, sinking and struggling, searching for something to hold onto and, finally, discovering that it is through telling stories that one can rise to the surface, and not just to stay afloat, but to move. And so there are voyages and destinations. These too are here. And, finally, there is the arrival, the moment of clambering up to the dry land of a clear and stable present day, upon which to stake a claim and build for the future. All these remembrances and stories are, naturally and narratively, connected, but they are also thematically linked and tied together through the theme – and reality – of chance and luck. Life is shown to be, literally as well as figuratively, running numbers. The hours of the day, the days of the month: the solar and lunar cycles go back to the beginning of life itself, and are so hardwired into each and every one of us. Then there are the seasons of the year, the solstices and equinoxes, and the planetary alignments; all is cyclical, all can be calculated; everything in the universe is running numbers. Whether playing the number is frowned upon or smiled upon, whether it’s small time or big business, whether it’s selfish or selfless, conscious or unconscious, like it or not, everyone is playing a number everyday. Those looking for an entry point from which to be able to gain access to Santoro’s underlying stratagems could get the coordinates for a framing perspective by triangulating Ben Katchor’s Julius Knipl, Real Estate Photographer and Jerry Moriarty’s Jack Survives, with Jack Kerouac’s Memory Babe. The current edition of Pittsburgh 2: Running Numbers has been produced in a unique hardcover format that brings together the four extant individual issues of the series published during 2022. Hand bound with crafted care by Vince Curtis (who longtime Pittsburghers may remember as a guitarist in the seminal Hardcore band, Half Life), each volume is hand signed and numbered by the author. The copies we have for sale are from the second printing, which is limited to sixty copies. These four issues are also available for purchase as a set or individually.Pittsburgh 2: Running Numbers - Hardcover Collection
retail price - $75.00 copacetic price - $67.50
This 296 page hardcover collects – at last! – the entirety of the "Blood of the Virgin" saga that Harkham serialized over the course of a dozen years in the pages of his long running series, Crickets. It was worth the wait. The production of this edition gets as close to perfection as is possible. Beautifully designed (by Sammy himself and Norman Hathaway), its heavy, sturdy cloth covers tightly bind the pages of heavy off-white, flat stock upon which the work has been sharply and clearly printed, with crisp, solid black lines, rich colors and delicate tones; simply beholding this book is an æsthetic delight in and of itself. And then there's the work it contains and presents. An intergenerational epic that primarily takes place during the 1970s, set largely in Los Angeles – with narrative forays to Europe and Oceania – and centered on the collision of demands brought about by simultaneously maintaining a family life, raising a child and making a low-budget genre film (the title of which is the source of the title for book), Blood of the Virgin is a work that is thoughtfully conceived, deeply felt and rigorously produced. Each chapter has its own particular focus and the stylistic approach clearly evolves over the course of the book as a whole. This evolution representing a synthesis of the materials of Harkham’s own life experiences and the comics he has read and studied, a synthesis that is by turns consciously applied and organically evolved. This work is at once a great achievement by Harkham and a testament to the communicative capacity of the comics form.Blood of the Virgin
retail price - $30.00 copacetic price - $21.75
Joe Kessler is a longtime, London-based comics maker closely associated with Breakdown Press (of which he is both a cofounder and art director). The Gull Yettin is Kessler's follow-up to his Angoulême Prize winning Windowpane. Most of those who are already familiar with Kessler's work have been waiting for this and don't need to know anything beyond the fact that it is finally available here in the States (having been published in France over a year ago). To those of you reading this who are not yet familiar with Kessler's work, we will let you know that Kessler's work is centered on visual rhythms and is noted for its bold – think Fauvist, perhaps even hyper-Fauvist – color schemes. The Gull Yettin is an entirely wordless (pantomime) work, yet has no problem conveying its story and attendant emotional content. A lush portrayal of childhood that works largely in the mythic register, it weaves a fable that employs an animal/human hybrid to embody the conflicting forces flowing through childhood, while also making room to focus on he child's perceptions of their own coming of age; the intensity of the colors serving both to portray the surreal, dreamlike elements of childhood experiences and to convey the intensity of the emotions. Get up to speed in this lengthy interview with Kessler conducted by no less than Dash Shaw, that focuses on The Gull Yettin and also provides a healthy helping of vibrant preview pages that will hep you as to where Joe is coming from. You will then be able to have a hand in determining where he's going.The Gull Yettin
retail price - $19.99 copacetic price - $16.75
One of the foremost questions that arose in the wake of the closure of Koyama Press, was where would Patrick Kyle's next work be published? Now we have the answer: Breakdown Press. Baby collects the issues of Kyle's very limited, self-published series that he produced between 2019 and 2021 in a beautifully produced volume. Each issue/chapter in this deluxe, 16 x 20cm, 144 page, softcover edition is printed in a subtly different hue, all very crisply printed to bring out the unique combination of line quality and spatial delineation that draws readers into the Patrick Kyle Universe. Baby offers readers an epic journey to the center of the mind that encompasses the generation of identity and the the cycle of death and rebirth while delving into the inescapable emotional and intellectual contingencies that accompany any such journey. Hold onto your hats!
Baby
retail price - $28.99 copacetic price - $25.00
Love and Rockets, Volume IV #13The wait is over, the new Love and Rockets is here! Jaime moves the Tonta lifeline forward into new territory, while Gilbert reveals a few select details – via flashbacks – that connect some dots in the ongoing Fritz, Petra & Co. saga. And then there's plenty of action (and amazing artwork) with Animus. Another great issue (as if you didn't already know)!
retail price - $4.99 copacetic price - $4.44
Blammo #10 1/2Yes, you are correct, we have been waiting quite awhile for the next issue of Blammo. But it appears that not only has Noah been waiting himself, but that the pain of such a lengthy separation of Blammo from the world of comics had built to the point that Noah couldn't wait for a fully-fledged issue to take flight, and so has brought forth... Blammo 10 1/2! Here, a full 46 pages of black & white comics that Noah has scattered through the pages of various publications over the last five years have been gathered together under full color covers by The Blammo Gatherer™. It is likely that followers of Noah's work will have encountered some of these comics before, but there are also a few newly created pages here, so even the most fiendish NVS collector could not have read them all. These are comics that are themselves immersed in the medium of comics and the life lived therein and thereby. Starting with The Crypt Keeper homage of The Blammo Gatherer, and including a heart warming tribute to Basil Wolverton's Spacehawk, the bulk of the strips collected in the pages of Blammo 10 1/2 are peppered with comics references of one sort or another, leading to the crescendo of the concluding 12-page epic, "Hot Lovin' Everynight!" featuring the start of the then young and naive Noah's relationship with small press comics icon, John Porcellino and the hi-jinx escapades along the way as he accompanied John P. on a book tour through the midwest. Great stuff!
retail price - $10.00 copacetic price - $9.25
It's Grixly Time once again here at Copacetic as we offer up another double dose. Both issues sport full color front and back covers on heavy duty cardstock. #59 is 20 pages largely arrayed in nine-panel grids and packed with non-stop Longboxes™action – 162 panels worth – plus guest pinups saluting Longboxes by Ryan Alves and Trevor Adams. #60 is 16 pages chock-a-block with Nate McDonough's personal anecdotes, observations, speculations and pop-culture mash-up analogues for indefinable feelings about our moment in history. Grixly!
Grixly Double-Header #59 & 60
retail price - $6.00 copacetic price - $5.00
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