Where to begin with such a book. It is clearly and definitely the best book ever done on Krazy Kat, which is, at least in our estimation, the greatest of the classic newspaper comics. Ergo, it is, Copacetically speaking, one of the single best volumes of comics ever produced. In other words, it wins the Desert Island Award: If there were one comics related book to take to a deserted island, this might very well be it. And as if that weren’t enough, it has now been reissued in an economy softcover edition that’ll only set you back a double sawbuck. Think of it-- a lifetime of pleasure and consolation for what it would cost you to spend a...

Prepare to have your socks knocked off. Originally published in France in 2014, Jean-Michel Dupont and Mezzo's Love in Vain is the comics biography of this blues founding father that you've been dreaming of. Clearly drawing on R. Crumb's comics bios of blues greats such asCharley Patton, and inspired by the inking ofCharles Burns, this senusally produced, horizontally formatted graphic novelis a work befitting thelegend of Robert Johnson, perhaps the most storied bluesman of them all.

Check out this Google image search for a peek at what's in store... Amazing, right?

Sometimes, dreams do come true! Here it is, at long last: the first of two volumes collecting the entirety of Steve Ditko's pre-superhero output for Marvel Comics, almost all of which was scripted by Stan Lee. This massive, full color, slightly oversize, hardcover volume – the first of two! – collects a wallopin' 134 (!!!) tales, plus 16 bonus pages, ten of which are high quality reproductions of original pages. It all starts off with a great Roger Stern introduction. Yes!

COLLECTING:JOURNEY INTO MYSTERY (1952) #33, 38, 50-73, STRANGE TALES (1951) #46, 50, 67-91, TALES TO ASTONISH (1959) #1-26, TALES OF SUSPENSE (1959) #1-15, 17-24,...

We were so focused on promoting M.S. Harkness's October 12 visit to Copacetic celebrating the release of this book... that we forgot to list it here on the site! Sorry about that.

So, Time Under Tension is: A) at 260 pages, by far the most substantial work yet from M.S. Harkness; B) her first solo work published by Fantagraphics; C) her most ambitious – and successful – work to date, wherein she manages to integrate the themes reflecting the far ranging aspects of her life that populated her earlier works – hook-up culture, weight lifting, sex work, comics making, family history including traumatizing childhood sexual abuse, art school,...

The Sky Is Blue with a Single Cloud,the first, and likely definitive, English language collection ofthe work of Kuniko Tsurita, the firstwoman contributor to Garo – debuting in 1965 at the age of eighteen(!) – is a revelation. The eighteen uniquely powerful stories collected in this softcover volume provide readers with340 pages of formally inventive and visually daring manga,alloriginally published between 1966 and 1980, during which period Tsurita was the only regularly contributing woman in the pages of Garo. In addition, there is an invaluable 40 page illustrated essay, "The Life and Art of Kuniko Tsurita," by Ryan Holmberg and...

(softcover edition) Well, it's hard to imagine that any Copacetic customers missed this one the first time around, but you never know. There may be a few of you out there lurking in the shadows who have been patiently waiting to pounce on the softcover once it arrives. Well, if so, then those of you who did will be happy to know that your wait is over. Now available in softcover is the most heralded comics memoir since... well, ever (yes, there's Maus, of course, but, properly defined, it isn't really a memoir). We've long been fans of Ms. Bechdel's Dykes to Watch Out For, and we gave Fun Home an enthusiastic review assoon as it was...

The sub-title does not lie: this book isindeed chock full of tales of mischief. In fact, there are21 full color 6 page comics featuring Akissi & Co. getting into all sorts of trouble, both in their home stomping grounds in theYopougon neighborhood of Abidjan in Côte d'Ivoire (Ivory Coast)and out in the country at Akissi's nan and granpap's rural digs, where the natural world plays a larger part in the shenanigans. These are kids comics par excellence; think Dennis the Menace without the hyperbole. In Akissi, the world of childhood comes alive on the page: the zany antics, the interactions of children withtheir parents and peers, the...

FROM THE ARCHIVES

Here's ONE, like newcopy of the FIRST PRINT of the original 2009 edition of this just-reissued classic. Here's our write-up from back then:

OK, this is the one you've been waiting for! Eleven years in the making, a whopping 840 pages in length, A Drifting Life is the graphic memoir of one of the all-time manga greats. Over the last several years, Drawn and Quarterly has been assiduously releasing Tatsumi's classic gekiga, in which he pioneered a street savvy, morally ambiguous form of comics that thrived on grittier material and was more ambivalent about the post-war boom in Japan. A Drifting Life chronicles the years...

This is a moment we've been waiting for for quite awhile. In our opinion, the least appreciated and most misunderstood science fiction writer of modern times, James Tiptree, Jr. (the nom de plume of Alice Sheldon) is a writer of breathtaking originality who is still ahead of her time, nearly twenty years after her death. That all of her work -- with the exception of a single "loose ends" collection that was published three years ago -- has been out of print for years is, in our opinion, a negligence that borders on the criminal. Thankfully ("Thank you, Tachyon Publications, thank you."), this situation has now come to an end with the...

The follow up to last year's It Never Happened, New Construction features two new comics novellas, "Backyard" and "Household."Each is tautly rendered in Alden's forceful pencil line. New Construction is aptly titled in that it is put together diferently. It is a bifurcated edition, with the first tale, "Backyard," being both tightly rendered and printed on a (relatively) bright cream colored stock, while the second, "Household" is far more loose and expressionistic in its rendering and is printed on a dull light gray newsprint. It is worth noting here that the reproduction quality in New Construction is significantly superior to that of It...