Summerland is a unique piece of comics work, one which turns the typical creative hierarchy on its head, with the coloring in the dominant position, followed by the inking, then pencilling, and with the scripting tacked on almost an afterthought. The boldly inked lines are minimal yet effective in delineating the scene, and to brace the colors and let them do their stuff, and what they do here is something new. In the pages ofSummerland, Ms. Dawkins has improvised an innovative approach to color, one in which she "plays" the color scheme using tone clusters and chords, rather than the normative approach of hitting single notes and then...

Pénélope Bagieu's Brazen is a collection of 29 comics biographies originally created for the Frenchnewspaper, Le Monde. Employing a clear concise line and limited but playfulcolor palette, for the most part within a well thought out nine-panel grid layout, Bagieu's work is eminently readable, and one finishes this 300 page volume ready for more.

Each of these pithy bios is informative and fun,pullingoff the coveted accomplishment of entertaining while educating. In other words, they're great comics! And, as an added bonus, each bio is topped off with a celebratory double-page splash illustration. All wrapped up in a great package for a...

The much anticipated first collection by up-and-coming-new-comics-champ, Kevin Huizenga is at last on our shelves. Its arrival may, however, signal the end of Huizenga's status as an up-and-comer, and initiate his ensconsement in the ranks of established contemporary masters of comics. This volume brings together a wide range of Huizenga's work from a wide variety of sources. It starts off with a little known (well, not to long time Copacetic customers) gem from the Orchid anthology published by Sparkplug Comics, titled, "Green Tea." It is adapted from a classic Victorian horror story of the same name by Sheridan Le Fanu, but is given the...

The Ganzfeld is a true one-of-a-kind publication and #3 is by far the best issue yet. It shouldn't really be under the comics listing, but as it is truly uncategorizable, this is as good a spot as any. The editors once again bring together a unique group of designers, illustrators, cartoonists, and artists in a coherent, strongly designed format. It features a unique collaboration between Rick Moody and Fred Tomaselli; a new picture story by designer Geoff McFetridge, and even an illustrated essay by Alfred Hitchcock. Lengthy comics and picture stories are contributed by an international group, Renée French, Ron Rege, Jr., Blexbolex, Brian...

2011 marked the culmination of a decades-spanning career arc as Frank Santoro found his art at the center of the 2011 Pittsburgh Biennial at The Carnegie Museum of Art, where he attended studio art classes as a youth. We are excited to at last be able to offer for sale copies of his 16-page tabloid newspaper comics work that was the highlight of that exhibit. In a signature Santoro move, Blast Furnace Funnies is a work of "High" (i.e., museum quality) art executed in the lowest of the "Low" art forms (a disposable newspaper); employing ephemerality to evoke eternity, he has here worked (in a form that often ends up) in the gutter to reach...

Through a hard won personal process developed over decades of his artistic practice, Mark Doox has merged the respective iconographies of Byzantine Christian art and racist American art, effecting a strange transformation whereby each becomes the other as they become one. A large selection of the mixed-media artworks that have emerged from this practice have been assembled together with artworks created specifically for this volume and then accompanied by a series of self-authored texts, which serve the dual purpose of providing exigetical commentary on the artworks themselves and advancing arguments which the artworks then serve to...

In the full color pages of Inappropriate, her latest hardcover collection from Uncivilized Books, Gabrielle Bell delves into the porous borderland between fact and fantasy, a land populated by daydreams,conjectures, anxieties, obsessions, recollections, ruminations, self-doubts,self-incriminations and much more, all clearly communicated in her ever more confidently created comics.And then there is the collection's standout piece, "The original, true, biographical versionof Little Red Riding Hood," which sets the tale in an ahistorical New York City. Inappropriate isBell's best collection to date. Here, she has broken through to a more...

Another impossibly good album from the one and only Joe Henry. Amazingly, you can listen to the entire LP online at his site, HERE (Just click on "Launch MP3 player to listen"). And while you're listening to it, you can take a moment to read the note he penned on the day of its release, HERE. And, please note that both the package and booklet covers feature photographs taken by Eugene Smith in Pittsburgh, PA during his epic Dream Street project of 1955-56.

Whether the point of this novel is to show us the adult that lies latent in the child or to reveal to us the child that the adult never manages to quite fully outgrow is a question that is difficult if not fruitless to answer. What is certain, however, is that the novel Edwin Mullhouse is brilliantly conceived. It is also shockingly well written, replete with uncannily accurate descriptions of childhood perceptions that can at times be overwhelmingly sympathetic. It is at turns funny, sad, insightful, and even profound; but above all else, it is deeply creepy: It reveals -- almost imperceptibly at first, but then slowly, incrementally, the...

Yes! The latest volume in the epic 30-volume Carl Barks Library has arrived. This one is perhaps the most riotous volume yet, filled with more fun-filled antics than any other yet published. This is due in no small part to Fantagraphics' decision to follow the stories that make up Donald Duck No. 26 -- one of the last wholly by Barks -- which includes the title track "Trick or Treat", with a whoppingfourteen consecutive classic 10-pagers! Originally published in a stretch that ran from late 1952 through 1953, these 10-pagers are filled with the comedic splapstick antics that Barks arguably did better than anyone else in comics, ever, and...