Pulses raced throughout the shop as these meticulously designed and printed 11 5/8" x 12 1/4" hardcover books emerged from the box they were shipped in. This book is cover to cover fabulosity; not a square inch of wasted space is to be found. What we have on hand here are the more than 150 (!) full color – andwhatcolor! Katchor is revealed here to be a coloristpar excellence(think Pierre Bonnard) – full page strips Katchor has been producingsince 1988forMetropolis,the excellent and, crucially for our enjoyment of these Katchor strips, oversize magazine devoted to architecture, design and, as the name suggests, urban living. Rather than...

Stroppy is here: it's ALL NEW; it's a self-contained whole; it's by Canadian cartoonist extraordinaire, Marc Bell; it's...a giant-size, full-colour, underground comix classic presented to an unsuspecting [well, not for long] public in the guise of a hardcover graphic novella. Stroppy channels the vigorous populist cartooning energy that can trace its roots back to the classic comics strips – especially the depression-era Popeye by E.C. Segar and Harold Grey's Little Orphan Annie. This vital populism was an integral part of American life and lore, but with the advent of the war economy in the late-1930s, it was sublimated into the national...

Huzzah! Here it is: the third – and final (>sob<) – year of Herriman's inventive, insightful and very funny strip– which wrapped up pretty much exactly a century ago–that he drew concurrently with Krazy Kat!Starting off with another fine introduction by Jared Gardner, this volume takes us all the way to the end of the strip's run, which actually results in us getting a bit more that a year's worth this time around, as it ran through to January 18, 1919. Baron Bean is, for our money, Herriman's finest work outside of Krazy Kat, and IDW's Library of American Comics has done an outstanding job of presenting crisp, full size...

Clowes has delivered his long threatened science fiction graphic novel. Within the 178 pages of Patience readers will encounter the arduous travails of a time-traveling drug abuser coming to terms with mortality and the meaning of life as only a time-traveling drug abuser can. Clowes has, with Patience, taken an approach in crafting its narrativesomewhat akin to that of Michael Chabon's inThe Yiddish Policeman's Union-- although to entirely different ends -- by starting with the hook and basic plot structure of a whodunnit murder mystery, and then gradually incorporating layer upon layer of interlocking themes, spinning it out into...

FINALLY! Twenty years after Connie left Will at home to get takeout and a video (yes, that's right, she left to go to the video rental store – that's how long ago it was) – the dénouement!

Keeping Two collects the entirety of the extant series along with the highly anticipated conclusion. The book itself is a beautifully designed hardcover, with rounded edges, and the 300+ pages of classic Jordan Crane artwork is crsiply printed entirely in shades of green – from so dark as to be nearly black all the way through to shades so light as to be nearly translucent, all on heavy, flat, off-white stock. A real pleasure to hold and to read.

For...

Gillian Welch and her long time musical cohort, David Rawlings are back at last with their first new record since 2003's Soul Journey. We've only had the chance to give this one listen so far, but we look forward to a long summer of replays and feel safe in saying it's going to fit quite comfortably along with the rest of their catalogue of works and that we'll be enjoying it for years to come. In other words: it's been worth the wait.

We heard only hours before starting to write up the arrival of the softcover edition of this classic work by two of the all-time greats of bande dessinee, that Moebius, perhaps the greatest of them all, had passed away. While Madwoman does not contain the type of cosmic science fiction imagery most closely associated with Moebius, it is second only to The Incal as his most important collaboration withAlejandro Jodorowsky, and it is a work that clearly demonstrates his seemingly effortless mastery of the form and that is certainly one of his most mature and sophisticated works from a narrative standpoint. On the one hand Madwoman is a...

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...

With it’s 34th issue (why 34th? go figure…) McDonough has taken his long-running, anything-goes, one-man comics anthology to new heights (and new widths) in this, the first magazine-sized issue of Grixly. In recognition of the distinction this issue bears from the previous 33, it has been assigned its own sub-title. Here, in the 32 8 1/2" x 11” black & white, monochrome and full color pages of Click Clack, we are provided with a veritable catalogue of comics and cartooning styles, story forms, genres, tropes, color schemas and more; from single image caricatures and grotesqueries in the tradition of Basil Wolverton, to short, one to...

Marc Bell is back! It’s the long awaited return ofWorn Tuff Elbow! Actually, to be honest, given that the last issue (which was also the first) came out over 14 years ago, the truth of the matter is that we had given up waiting and had long ago been resigned to there being only the one issue. So, it was all, “Lo! and Behold!” here at Copacetic when we caught sight of this second issue. Seeing as 14 years is quite a stretch, we’re figuring that many, if not most, of the current readers of this space were heretofore entirely unaware of(what we can now correctly refer to as) this comic book series. We trust, however that most are aware of...