Kus! mono #11: This Year Is Next Year's Last Year by Christopher Sperandio

This Year Is Next Year's Last Year takes classic old school public domain comics – that look like they're largely from the 1950s, but maybe also some from the '40s and/or early 60s – and remixes them in all their newsprint saturated four-color glory in high quality scans repurposed via newly created (by Mr. Sperandio, we can only assume) text approriately rendered in a digital recreation of Leroy Lettering (or a close approximation therof) to create a caustic comics satire of the sad state of affairs that is the USA today. Everything is printed just right and really...

Long treasured here at The Copacetic Comics Company, the truly unique – and rarely seen – late-period romance comics of the one and only Ogden Whitney have at last been collected in book form. This volume has been many years in the making, and we are excited to see it at last gracing our new arrivals table. Whatisit about these comics that makes themso unforgettable? There is a pathos at work here as in few other comics. Whitney was a life long cartoonist and comics maker. He had dedicated his life to his craft, and here in these comics he is heading into the home stretch. This work carries with it the private sufferings and triumphs of a...

Anyone on the lookout for intellectually stimulating, æsthetically challenging work – regardless of the form it takes – should be sure to investigate the comics of Dash Shaw. Shaw is a sophisticated visual thinker and natural experimenter unconstrained by generic conventions or audience expectations. In Doctors, soap operatic melodrama mixes freely with science fiction concepts (Philip Jose Farmer / Philip K Dick) and both are together presented to the reader with a bold decisive formalism that simultaneously brings to mind painters such as Hans Hoffman and filmmakers like Jean Luc Godard. The final product is in intriguing investigation...

Fielder #3 is the comic book as meaning making machine. It is, literally, cover-to-cover comics –38 pages worth – and, not only that, there are two front covers; so, in one sense, it is actually two comics that meet in the middle.

There is so much COMICS here. It could also be said to be a comic book about what a comic book can be. Like, “look at all these different ways to approach the medium: you can do this, and that – and this, and that; and if you combine this you can do that –and if you add that you can do this. And you could draw it this way, or that way, or a combination of the two… and/or…"

There are six distinct sections plus an...

Principles derived in classical antiquity and then revived during the renaissance are given a new lease on life in comics (Renaissance II: Comics?) through the work of Frank Santoro.The Golden Section,Dynamic Symmetry, andplenty moreare all incorporated into the underlying structure of his work, and nowhere more so than here. The completePompeiigraphic novel premiered at the 2013 SPX, a year after its first chapter had appeared as a limited edition risograph at the 2012 SPX (and which went on to sell out in the blink of an eye).

The book's look and feel transmits an æsthetic charge even before it is opened to reveal a 144 page work,...

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...

It took us a minute to get this one in, due to screwball comedy hi-jinx. At long last, Saul Steinberg's first book, from way back in 1947 (?) is back in print in this luxe oversize hardcover edition fro NYRB, who have this to say about it:

"To escape fascist Europe, the artist Saul Steinberg drew his way to America. He made it to New York in 1942 already in contract with The New Yorker, but was soon called up to serve in the US Naval Reserve in World War II. This book, All In Line, is a memoir-via-drawing of this key time in Steinberg’s life, when he began to find his line and his way as an American.

In works for The New Yorker and...

Underground comix live! Gary Panter's Crashpad is a classic old school underground comic book that is a comic book about old school underground comic books: what they were, what they are, what they mean, where they come from, where they're going. Did we mention acid? Cover to cover comics; every line drawn by Panter; 36 pages. Black and white interior art on heavy newsprint. "Gain intuition to the endless play of becoming free."

ONE COPY

Wow! Dark Horse really did it right this time and has produced a book worthy of the great Jesse Marsh art it contains. Their first (and, sadly, only) Tarzan Omnibus is a joy to behold. Collecting just shy of 700 pages of spectacular full color comics by the great Jesse Marsh and employing pitch perfect production throughout, this book is an instant Certified Copacetic Classic.

These stories were all originally published in the Dell comic book series, Tarzan beginning in 1948 and running – for 206 issues (with the second half of the run published under the Gold Key imprint) – through to 1972, whereupon the license went to DC (and then,...

When we learned that New York Review Comics was planning a new edition of two of Vaughn-James's other major works from the 1970s (Elephant and The Projector), we felt it was high time to bring this work, which we've been selling the shop for quite awhile(whenever we can get our hands on some copies!),to the attention of our online customers. Originally published in 1975, asa hardcover edition of 1500 copies by Toronto'sCoach House Press, The Cage was reissued in 2013, againby Coach House, in a softcover edition. Vaughn-James had a unique approach to, as well asa clearly prescientvision of, long form visually-centered narrative. Among his...