The Copacetic Comics Company PictureBox

PictureBox

No publisher is doing more to publish and promote an artistically progressive body of contemporary comics work than PictureBox. Employing a curatorial approach, each new PictureBox release has the impact of an exciting new art show at your favorite gallery.

« Previous 1 2 3 Next »

Title	Creator	Publisher	Series	Price
Kramers Ergot #8	Dash Shaw, Takeshi Murata, Robert Beatty, Sammy Harkham and more ...	PictureBox	Kramers Ergot	$29.75 ($32.95 list)
Read more and comment...	<<•>> edited by Sammy Harkham <<•>> Starting out way back in 2000 as a plain ol' self-published, black and white comic book, Sammy Harkham's Kramers Ergot has been through some serious changes over the years. In 2003, when Sammy went for broke (literally) and switched to a massive full-color book format with the fourth issue, Kramers was transformed from a simple comic book to a synecdoche/catch phrase for the exploding art comics scene. The subsequent two issues followed suit and were published by art house publisher, Gingko Press. Then, with the seventh issue the stakes were raised again with the gigantic, full-blown, original-old-school Sunday page size – a whoppin'' 16" x 21" – full color, hardcover published by Buenaventura Press that knocked people's socks off the world over; not least folks here in Pittsburgh, where we hosted the Kramers Tour at The BrilloBox to much acclaim. Now, with the eighth issue, Kramers is being published by our pals at PictureBox and has entered yet another phase. This time out – perhaps in keeping with its maturation – Kramers takes the form of an unassuming standard size hardcover sporting a tan cloth cover of deceptively straightforward design by Robert Beatty; one which nonetheless provides both visual and tactile pleasure to the reader and hints at what is to come, which is another all-star anthology featuring some of today's top cartoonists working in an environment where they feel comfortable taking risks. An essay by Ian Svenonius, "Notes on Camp, Part 2" sets the tone with a hyperbolic sequel to Susan Sontag's famous essay, in which Svevonius traces a lineage for pop, camp and comics that centers on Warhol and goes back through to the Roman Empire. Then we are treated to a brand new Jimbo adventure by Gary Panter followed by new stories by C.F., Kevin Huizenga (who redraws the story "The Half Men" from the classic ACG series of the 1950s & '60s, Mysteries of Unexplained Worlds), Gabrielle Bell, Johnny Ryan, Time Hensley, Leon Sadler, Chris Cilla, Anya Davidson, Ben Jones and Sammy Harkham, himself. The clear standout of Kramers Ergot 8 is the collaboration between Dash Shaw and Frank Santoro, "Childhood Predators." This sixteen page story is a masterpiece of layout which was consciously composed as a series of eight two-page spreads by someone who really knows what they're doing. Santoro displays his mastery of the medium by employing a host of techniques and methods to deliver a highly textured, subtly nuanced, and deeply felt look at an emotionally complex and politically fraught scenario that will amply reward repeated readings. In addition to the comics, there are a pair of art portfolios featuring Robert Beatty's "retro-future" airbrush art, as well as a series of freakishly photorealistic digital artworks by Takeshi Murata, all of which are reproduced on bright glossy stock, in contrast to the flat off-white stock of the comics work. The 40-page dose of Oh, Wicked Wanda! comics that closes out this issue is also printed on glossy stock to mimic its original appearance in the pages of Penthouse Magazine back in the 1970s. Oh, Wicked Wanda was created by the British artist and writer duo of Ron Embleton and Frederic Mullalley as Penthouse's answer to Kurtzman and Elder's Little Annie Fannie, which ran in Playboy Magazine. As with everything Penthouse, it is the same as Playboy, only more so; and in this case, the humor is decidedly British (as was Penthouse) with its international settings and casual conflation of kinky sex with Nazis. We'd be curious to learn why the largest hunk of this issue of Kramers was devoted to these comics, so we hope Harkham will go on record as to his rationale and motivation here. Regardless of what they may be, Kramers remains in the vanguard of contemporary comics and is indispensable reading for anyone who likes their comics challenging.
1-800 Mice	Matthew Thurber	PictureBox		$19.75 ($22.95 list)
Read more and comment...	This swellegant hardcover volumes collects all five issues of the 1-800-Mice comic book series that has many longtime readers here at Copacetic; but that's not all! Those lollygaggers among you who have been putting off their partaking of this fine work are rewarded for delaying your gratification with an all-new, never-before-seen concluding chapter that appears here for the first time (the rest of us longtime devotees would have probably bought this book anyway, but now there's simply no getting around it). We'd say more, but anything we might have to say seems superfluous after reading these testimonials: "Mr. Thurber has invested everything in his demented opus, and the payoff is rich with big laughs and a palpable sense that his world of mice and man-tree love persists far beyond the borders of its panels." -- Daniel Clowes • " Matthew Thurber uses the lowly conventions of the comic-book to express the narrative freedom of the unconscious mind. He has singlehandedly revived the surrealist program of revolutionary politics through dreamwork. What more can you ask for in a comic-book?" – Ben Katchor • Bonus: comes complete with an illustrated dramatis personae, to help you keep track of the massive cast of characters!
Color Engineering	Yuichi Yokoyama	PictureBox		$29.75 ($35.00 list)
Read more and comment...	This one is a challenging excursion into the mental landscape, so you'll need some quality alone time, perhaps with some choice trance instrumentals blasting in your headphones blocking out any extraneous distractions, to take the trip that is Color Engineering. We strongly recommend that you make your first run through solely focused on the visuals: ignore the text and the translations – just take in the images as they build, one on the next; feel the rhythm. Only after you have completed this journey, and have absorbed it, should you pay any attention to the text and notes. Our quick formulaic take away is: ∫ f (Yuichi Yokoyama's Color Engineering) dx = F (Jennifer Bartlett's Rhapsody) - F (Jack Kirby's The Eternals). In other words: prepare yourself. When you have finished the journey, you will doubtless come back with your own ideas.
Chimera	Frank Santoro	PictureBox		$20.00 ($5.00 list)
Read more and comment...	Santoro returns to the newspaper format he used to shake up the comics world in 1995 with his vastly influential newspaper comic, Storeyville. Santoro has spent most of the 21st century painting, but has been lured back to comics by a conspiracy of circumstance to produce this unique tri-tone newspaper edition. Anyone interested in seeing comics put to new uses will want to take a look at this piece. With Chimera, we have a work that is striving to achieve a poetics of comics. Drawing on the insights into the symbolic quality of images that he has gained through his years spent concentrating on the practice and study of painting, Santoro has created an evocative convergence of classical and contemporary mythologies that expresses the eternal unchanging nature of the relationship between the heart's true desire and the reality of the world in which one must work to realize it. Don't miss it! ALMOST GONE - ONLY A FEW COPIES REMAINING!
Garden	Yuichi Yokoyama	PictureBox		$22.75 ($24.95 list)
Read more and comment...	Yokoyama's newest – and longest, weighing in at 319 pages – work to be translated into English is now on our shelves. Readers of Yokoyama's previous mind altering works, New Engineering and Travel, know what to expect: monomaniacal manga rife with lucid layouts, novel narratives, power-packed pen & ink, revelatory riffs and spectacular sound effects that taken together add up to a new way of seeing the world presented as only comics can. Garden presents a group of Yokoyama-oids as they work their way into a "garden" that has been metamorphozised and is more technology than nature. In doing so, Yokoyama holds up a transformational mirror that forces us to confront our preconceived notions of the natural world.; from PictureBox, of course.
City-Hunter Magazine #1	C.F.	PictureBox		$7.25 ($8.00 list)
Read more and comment...	Providence-based artist, C.F.'s latest zine is a fusion of comics, painting, photography, abstract imagery, prose and "advertisements." These disparate elements are loosely connected by the exploration of urban tropes from genre fiction. The protagonist of sorts, Main Dice, interacts with these environments and their inhabitants, but is only shown from a distance, adding further prominence and mystique to these settings. Coming in at 28 pages (8 in full color) plus covers, City-Hunter is the most complete encapsulation of C.F.'s aesthetic sensibility to date and an engaging treatment of the zine format.
My New New York Diary: A Film Book	Michel Gondry, Julie Doucet	PictureBox		$22.22 ($24.95 list)
Read more and comment...	And here's another new one from PictureBox. In 2008, Gondry contacted Doucet with a film proposal. Involving a unique hybrid of still, unanimated drawings, and live action filming, Gondry and Doucet worked together to try to make something new, and they have: this is an equally unique film-book (or, book-film?). An 80-page hardcover complete with DVD of the entire film that resulted from Doucet and Gondry's collaboration, which is small, personal film that is a unique hybrid of drawing, animation and live-action that runs about 20 minutes.
Powr Mastrs #3	C.F.	PictureBox	Powr Mastrs	$15.95 ($18.00 list)
Read more and comment...	A cult comic book series if ever there was one, the third installment of Powr Mastrs continues the mind-altering adventures of its paradigm-shifting cast of characters. As the title indicates, Powr Mastrs is a true comic book adventure series, but where other comics deal with mutants as characters, the Powr Mastrs series is itself a mutant; a super hero comic book infected by a virus from outer space.
If 'n' Oof	Brian Chippendale	PictureBox		$25.00 ($29.95 list)
Read more and comment...	At long last, PictureBox is in the house, having delivered on their long-promised double dose of comics thunder straight out of Providence, RI. First out of the box is If 'n' Oof: 800 pages of id-driven comics from the front lines of the underground comics forces. Here is a book so packed with full-on comics energy that it will reinvigorate even the most torpid and forlorn comics reader. Chippendale's line is alive on the page. In If 'n' Oof, the typical roles of comic book production are reversed: rather than the standard comic book practice, wherein the drawing exists simply to support the creation of cartooned characters, with If 'n' Oof, it is in the act of drawing where the action takes place; the characters that come into being as a result of this drawing simply serve to illuminate the power and the passion of the drawing itself.
Powr Mastrs #1	C.F.	PictureBox	Powr Mastrs	$15.95 ($18.00 list)
Read more and comment...	It all starts here!
h day	Renee French	PictureBox		$27.00 ($30.00 list)
Read more and comment...	The latest offering by mademoiselle French is this chunky square hardcover from PictureBox. It is a tale told in a bifurcated fashion that employs her two distinct representational approaches with a heightened degree of narrative interplay and thrust. The particular narrative being related here is one that can "be read both as an oblique autobiography and as a suspenseful fantasy story" and that references the artists struggles with migraine headaches and Argentine ant infestations. The finely shaded and delicately nuanced pencil drawings that are the artist's trademark have never been stronger.
Cold Heat Special #6	Chris Cornwell	PictureBox	Cold Heat	$10.00 ($12.00 list)
Read more and comment...	Yes, Cold Heat Special 8 and 9 have come (and gone) but without any sign of numbers 6 and 7... until now! Over a year in the making, Cold Heat Special number six is now in stock and it's a one-of-a-kind, hand-crafted work of art. Wrapped in fabulous front and back cover silkscreens – complete with inside front and back cover silk-screened "endpapers," which are overlaid with hand tipped full color "plates" (ink jet prints) – this magazine-size special is an aesthetic treat and feast for the eyes, yes, but most of all it is an experience for the mind. Extending and vastly expanding on the themes he introduced in his first Cold Heat Special (number two), Cornwell has here seamlessly merged his own artistic concerns with those of Cold Heat creators BJ and Santoro to forge a fantastic journey to the center of the mind that intimates at the nature of eternal recurrence and the simultaneity of historicity in a universe that has banished linear time and made way for cosmic consciousness. All while working firmly in the Cold Heat tradition of living off the grid and on the fringes – turned on to DIY culture and a new life of untested possibilities. Limited to 100 copies. Recommended!
Cold Heat #7/8	B. J., Frank Santoro	PictureBox	Cold Heat	$17.77 ($20.00 list) OUT OF STOCK!
Read more and comment...	Cold Heat closes in for the kill with another double issue. This one brings the series one double issue away from completion. After the massive action blow-out of #5/6, this time around we have more of a culture jam as the saga crosses international boundaries when Castle & Co. head to the southern hemisphere, accompanied by the BBC. The modern condition of living in the global village is given the Cold Heat treatment as well. Land lines and laptops, mobile phones and desktops, the internet and intensive care units, wifi and the web, credit cards and music festivals, airports and hotel rooms, Starbucks and taxi cabs, bright beaches and dark alleys – all seamlessly connect to form the all-encompassing phenomenological envelope that passes for reality in the 21st century. As always, series artist, Frank Santoro takes chances – starting, most obviously this time around, with the front cover, which invokes Ellsworth Kelly and Ad Reinhardt while highlighting the "thingness" of a comic book – as he pushes and pokes at the formal elements that make up the current corpus of comics in his ongoing challenge to the received wisdom that constitutes contemporary comics orthodoxy. The images we've selected to illustrate this listing focus on one of Santoro's greatest strengths: that of exploring the many avenues open to graphically rendering interior subjective states of mind beyond mere mastery of facial expression. The many faces of Castle on display in the pages of Cold Heat embody one aspect of The many faces of Castle on display in the pages of Cold Heat embody the struggle to forge new tools to place in the comics craft toolbox, making each issue of the series double as a workshop – and none moreso than this one. the struggle to forge new tools to place in the comics craft toolbox, making each issue of the series double as a workshop – and none moreso than this one. There's an aspect to the experience of reading Cold Heat that feels like being taken behind the scenes to see how it's done while the action never stops happening all around. It's like bringing you right there on the set while they're filming yet still managing to maintain the manufactured illusion of the movie. This issue has a terrifyingly low print run of 100 copies, so delay purchase at your own risk. PLEASE NOTE: THE LAST FEW REMAINING COPIES IN STOCK ALL HAVE "DINKED" (i.e.. DAMAGED) CORNERS.
Cold Heat Special #9	Lane Milburn, Frank Santoro	PictureBox	Cold Heat	$12.00 ($15.00 list) OUT OF STOCK!
Read more and comment...	The latest Cold Heat Special takes the standard practice of many hand-made self-published comics (including several of the previous numbers in this very series) – that of the silk-screened cover encasing photocopied interior pages – and stands it on its head. Yes, that's right, you guessed it: this one has a photocopied cover enclosing 16 hand-silk-screened interior pages of pantomime comics which pictographically record the spiritual regeneration of Castle as she merges with both the biological and historical forces that power her quest for truth, justice and personal growth. Also from PictureBox. LIMITED TO 100 COPIES!
Multiforce	Mat Brinkman	PictureBox		$13.75 ($15.00 list)
Read more and comment...	After last year's release of Brian Chippendale's Maggots, this work is the last major piece of the puzzle that is made up of the long awaited comics works from the halcyon days of Fort Thunder. Although those days are now fading into history, the work itself is only now finally getting the wider exposure it deserves; which, in turn, will allow the next generation to put together these pieces in their own original ways. No surprise that this, as well as the bulk of other Fort Thunder works, are all issuing forth from that art comics publishing powerhouse, PictureBox, Inc. Multiforce is a megasize (11" x 16.5") saddle-stitched pamphlet comics that brings together the entirety of this Fort Thunder era serial that originally ran in the pages of Paper Rodeo from 2000 through 2005. This is truly original work that has had a strong influence on many of the up and coming generation – but only on those who managed to get a hold of the hard to come by original copies of Paper Rodeo. Now it is here for all! BACK IN STOCK!!!
The Ganzfeld #4	C. F., Paper Rad, David Sandlin, Frank Santoro and more ...	PictureBox	The Ganzfeld	$25.00 ($29.95 list)
Read more and comment...	The Ganzfeld No. 4: Art History? Two years in the making, the latest issue of the Ganzfeld is finally on our shelves! It starts out with a wraparound cover and end papers by the high priestess of Canadian comics, Julie Doucet, and doesn't let up . After the lead off introductions by editor, Dan Nadel and artist extraordinaire, Peter Blegvad, the book is divided up into four sections of approximately equal length. In the first, Art History, you'll discover a lot that you hadn't know that you needed to know but will be glad to learn, including the secret history of the enigmatic cover art for Led Zeppelin's Presence that's always been a nagging question mark lurking in a back alley of your consciousness ever since you first saw it back in 1976. Next up is Drawings, by the recognized hepsters Gary Panter and Mark Newgarden, as well as others whose art you are far less likely to have previously come into contact with; but now will! Artists on Art is an intriguing, highly engaging and fairly unique feature which presents artists on art in art: David Sandlin's 18-page, lushly colored piece on H.C. Westermann is a tour de force of admiration, while Marc Bell's Ph.D.-thesis-in-comics-form provides a fresh, delightful and direct access to the work of Philip Guston that will be much appreciated by many. And then, finally, there's the Comics. This section starts off, semi-miraculously, with a six-page walking tour of Pittsburgh, both real and dreamed -- as a place on the map and as a state of mind -- by peripatetic former resident, Frank Santoro, and continues with fine work by Paper Rad, Leif Goldberg, Ted Stearn, Matthew Thurber, Jim Drain, Mark Newgarden, and a wild and wooly journey to the center of the mind by "C.F." The centerpiece is the amazing 22-page, "Ganmodoki," a piece from the late, surrealist period of Japanese manga legend, Shigeru Sugiura. And there you have it.
We Lost the War but Not the Battle	Michel Gondry	PictureBox		$5.00 ($5.99 list)
Read more and comment...	This straight-up 32-page full color comic book by the famed French Filmmaker, Michel Gondry, rounds out this month's PictureBox trifecta. Perhaps the zaniest war comic ever produced, Gondry pits four former draft evading slackers against a hoard of communist babes intent on taking over France in this over the top satire that conflates the battle between the sexes, the war on communism and modern America-centric militarism to create a comic book that has a surprisingly large amount in common with the old-school underground comics of yore.
The Goddess of War	Lauren Weinstein	PictureBox		$11.00 ($12.95 list)
Read more and comment...	Also from PictureBox, this gigantic (10" x 15") comic book is the first installment of an epic fantasy that incorporates South and North American Indian history and lore, twentieth century European conflicts and surrealistic science fiction with a contemporary, urban art comics aesthetic to forge a modern mythology of war, and has fun doing it.
Comics Comics #4	Dan Nadel, Frank Santoro	PictureBox		$2.50 ($2.95 list)
Read more and comment...	It'a about time! The latest issue of the magazine of the comics cogniscenti is now in stock. This issue's cover feature is the one and only Shaky Kane, whose amazing early 1990s work has been sadly neglected; until now! Frank Santoro provides a heartfelt appreciation of Shaky's place in the comics universe and follows it up with a revealing interview. And that's just for starters. This issue also features: "The Death of the Comic Book" by Sammy Harkham; An in-depth review of Steve Ditko's late works Avenging Mind and 160 Page Package by Tim Hodler who also reports on Dave Sim's recent dual release of Glamourpuss #1 and Judenhass as well as providing a close reading of Kentaro Miura's Berserk; Brian Chippendale writes on Brian Michael Bendis(!); the second major feature in this issue is on Woody Gelman, the hidden figure behind many of the Topps gum card series such as Mars Attacks, Funny Monsters and many, many others that have faded from memory (he also was instrumental in the creation of Bazooka Joe, threw some work R. Crumb's way when he was just starting out and served as a mentor to Art Spiegelman); and to cap it all off are full page comics by designer, Mike Reddy and Copacetic fave, Dan Zettwoch (and don't forget, that when we're talking about Comics Comics full page means a whopping old old school 17" x 23"!). Essential reading.
Cold Heat #5/6	Ben Jones, Frank Santoro	PictureBox	Cold Heat	$18.88 ($20.00 list) OUT OF STOCK!
Read more and comment...	It's been well over a year since the last issue of Cold Heat appeared, but we're here to tell you that this is one comic book that was worth the wait!! It's a 48 page double issue printed in the trademarked Cold Heat two-color process employing magenta and blue. It's comics at their most adventurous and risk-taking, produced by creators who have the experience, skill and training to get to the other side, and, crucially, to take the reader there along with them -- but you'll have to pay close attention and hold on tight as it's quite a trip! A key to understanding this work is that its true subject is the relationship between the perception of reality and the representation of reality, between the signifier and the signified; how the representation of reality creates a feedback loop which transforms reality in the process. And there is a special focus on the relationship between subjectivity and perception; particularly on how emotional and chemically altered states of mind alter the perception of events, which then, in turn, alters their representation, and, finally, is capable of altering their actual outcome as well. This is a task to which comics are ideally suited and which Frank Santoro has been in the vanguard of exploring. With this issue he has pushed the furthest yet into this unmapped and only dimly comprehended artistic territory. Yes, this is one pricey comic book, but the economics of today's comic book market have forced the publisher into a corner and so this edition is being produced in an extremely small quantity for the True Believers.

« Previous 1 2 3 Next »

Mon - Thu	11 - 5
Fri & Sat	11 - 7
Sun	12 - 4