With the arrival of this, the second issueof the series, it becomes clear that the first was but a prologue. Here, in the 88 full color pages ofUnsmooth #2: BUM, E.S. Glenn opens up new portals and reveals previouslyunseen dimensions of what will henceforth be known as the Unsmooth Multiverse. Enmeshed within an encompassing framework of ligne claire bande dessinée, readers will encounter mechamanga (along with a snatch of horror hentai)– plus sub-titled anime videos – New Yorker cartoons (and anold school Penguin paperback), cartooned modern art (along with some graffiti),some classical, newspaper Sunday-pagestrips,photobooth strips,and...

Boundless is a 248 assemblage composed of ninetales: World Class City;Body Pods;The Clairfree System;1. Jenny;Half Life;Darla!;bedbug;Sexcoven;Boundless. Each is possessed of itsown individual artistic personality, chosen to best visually convey the character of the story:rough and ready;smooth and silky;precise;loose;colorful;stark. Here, the real story is the way in which the taleis told. Decision embodied in line and composition.

Each of the pieces, while being a unique organic whole in and of itself, is part of a greater whole as well; part ofa tapestric unity. These stories deal with individuals alone, together and in groups. They...

This is it, one of the most important comics works of all time, the complete ten-volume saga will now be presented in English for the first time, courtesy of Project Gen and Last Gasp. Barefoot Gen chronicles one family’s experience living in Hiroshima before, during and after WWII. This opening volume provides an emotionally moving chronicle of this family’s hardships during wartime -- hardships that were more severe than most due to the family's pacifism and anti-war stance. This book, however, will always be remembered most for its absolutely searing first-person account of experiencing the first atomic bombing. There is no other...

Beginning with the first impression – the juxtaposition of the book’s title, “Black Arms to Hold You Up” and its accompanying cover illustration of large, looming black arm(ament)s against a background of skeletons, between which the human actors are running in fear – it is clear right from the start that we are being presented with a multivalent and irony-rich agitprop work. It will be equally clear by the end that it is also a work capable of constructing new meaning through a masterful synthesis of image and text.

The phrase “to hold you up” in the title can have (at least) three possible meanings: 1) to physically hold you up, as in to...

Unreal City is D.J. Bryant's first solo book (that we are aware of). Some Copacetic customers willbe familiar with the secondstory in this collection, as it originally appeared in MOME #19. This 21 pagestory, "Evelyn Dalton-Hoyt", is his brutally brilliant re-envisionment of "Driven to Destruction" by Steve Ditko (which, for all you comics collectors and scholars out there, isin the February 1972 [V.2#4]issue ofHaunted, from Charlton),in which an explicit (very) sexual subtext for the characters is supplied by Bryant's vivid imagination and conveyed through hishigh octane pencilling and inking, the combination of which may generate a...

Sacha Mardou is a natural born comics storyteller. Her pen & ink characters live and breath on the page. The situations they find themselves in, their reactions to them, and the way it all plays out in the pages of her comics works have a verisimilitude that few other comics creators can match. The Sky in Stereois her first foray into long form comics (i.e., a graphic novel). She's been at work on it for a number of years (she and her husband, fellow comics maker, Ted May are also raising a child, who was an infant at the start of Sky in Stereo) and has released two of it's chapters as successful stand-alone comics. Here in this...

The day has finally dawned on the first new North American edition of Moebius work in a generation. The World of Edena is the first in a series of deluxe hardcover volumes that will reintroduce the great French master of comics (bande dessinée) to readerson this side of the Atlantic. Collecting all theEdenashort stories in a deluxe, 344 page, full color,hardcover edition,The World of Edenaincludes “Upon a Star,” “Gardens of Edena,” “The Goddess,” “Stel,” and “Sra.” Although several had been translated into English in the 1980s, this will be the first time “Sra” has been available to English-language audiences. Dark Horse has done a nice...

It's time for comics connoisseurs to crank up their cogitation once again, as a new issue of Ganges is in stock and on sale here at The Copacetic Comics Company. And the verdict? Kevin Huizenga once again delivers the goods! This time around we have the inner workings of an agitated mind – that of Glenn Ganges, to answer your question – at the edge of sleep, visually embodied as its own cartoon being, distinct and separate from – if in many respects identical to – the body housing this mind. All readers who have ever had a rough time falling asleep and have had their mind wander to and fro seemingly of its "own" accord will have plenty to...

"The definitive course in comics narrative" continues, as Mastering Comics ventures deeper into the wilderness of formal comics instruction, widening and extending the trail blazed by Drawing Words & Writing Pictures. This horizontally formatted volume follows the same textbookish format as its precursor; this time around divided into eleven lessons, rather than 15, and at 318 pages is a tad heftier. This works out to lessons that are on average 50% longer and more in depth. In other words, Mastering Comics is a 200 level class to DW&WP's 100 level (although the authors clearly state that DW&WP is not a prerequisite for MC)....

The long awaited follow up toAbandoned Carshas arrived.The Lonesome Gois a giant oversize volume packed with more carefully placed ink lines than any book this side ofBlack Hole.Taking a hint from theLegend of Duluoz, St. Louis resident and Washington University lecturer, Tim Lane takes a turn down aLost Highway on aSavage Night, whereA Good Man Is Hard to Findand a sprawling chaos of comics ensues, recorded employing a visual lexicon that is partCharles Biroand partCharles Burnsand shines a light onthose parts of the American psyche that are usually left festering in the dark, allin the service of creating an acutely observed and fully...