Unstable Molecules is one of the best graphic novels Marvel has produced... well, possibly, ever, but, to hedge our bets, let’s say, "in quite awhile." In any event, it is like nothing Marvel has ever produced in the past. It is a textual analysis of comics done in comics, and it is one of the finest ever produced -- certainly the finest ever produced by Marvel! It should be considered in the context of Understanding Comics and Hicksville as much as the Fantastic Four. Telling the "true" story of the "real people" that the Fantastic Four were based on, this book is a work of metacomics and a dream come true for students of narrative theory...

Now at last available in the USA, here is a look at where it all started – manga that is! This pint-sized box set is truly power-packed! While it’s pages measure a mere 4 1/4" x 5 3/4”, its three volumes contain well over 1000 pages total, over 900 of which are fully devoted to reproducing the most extensive selection of Hokusai’s ten-volume handbook of drawings – which he dubbed manga – that he originally published between 1814 and 1820 (although an additional five volumes were published long after his death, bringing the total to 15 – we think; read the notes accompanying these volumes for the full details) currently available in a...

FROM THE ARCHIVES | ONE solid second hand copy

When it comes to artfully integrating book design into the form of a graphic novel in such a way as to enhance the expression of its content, Mr. Hornschemeier has few peers. To our mind, only Clowes, Ware and Seth have been as successful in this department*, and it bears remarking that there seems to be a bit of trend in effect among these design-oriented comics craftsmen as the latest work by each of these three creators shares with Hornschemier's a strong biographical focus on the protagonist. Wilson, Lint and George Sprott each present their eponymous protagonist's life story**, and Life...

Jaime whips readers back and forth across four decades in this long awaited tale of Maggie and Hopey's reconnection at a punk rock reunion. And in the process asks – and answers – the question, "What are we today, but all our yesterdays?" While Macbeth was cursed by fate and living on borrowed time, and so understandably down in the mouth, Maggie and Hopey are ever in the present, ever linking the past to the future, and carrying us, their followers on the other side of the veil, along with them, and so are much more than the sum of what has gone before.

We are well aware that most Copacetic customers were reading this saga as it was...

PLEASE NOTE: new, but shelf worn copies, w/ minor cover dings

Now Let Me Fly is a 322 page hardcover that presents the story of Eugene Bullard, who started out life in the Jim Crow south here in the USA at the turn of the twentieth century, and then, through a combination of striving, daring and skill crossed the Atlantic, where, when the First World War broke out, he fought in the French army before going on to become the first African American fighter pilot in history. Ronald Wimberly's story is expertly crafted with a genius framing sequence that simultaneously drives multiple points across to any attentive reader. The story that...

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...

Sub-titled, "July 1, 1916: The First Day of the Battle of the Somme",The Great Warpresents in a single image a visual distillation of the events of that day. While this is not the first 20+ foot-long single image comics book that has come our way – that honor going to Helge Reumann and Xavier Robel's hyper kineticElvis Road, originally published in Switzerland in 2002 by Pipifax, and then in the USA by Buenaventurra Press in 2007. But whereas Elvis Road presented a frenzied instant of urban chaos that was unreadable – in the sense that there was simply no way to narratively digest the complexity of the image; all one could do was bask in...

MORE Gilbert H. comics – close to 300 pages! Thecomics collected here were originally publishedinthe early-to-mid aughts, appearing in thesecond volume of Love and Rockets as well as theconcurrently publishedLuba's Comics & Stories. Some of these comics have already been previously collected in Luba: Three Daughters and High Soft Lisp as well as thehardcover Lubaomnibus. Now, here, they at last find their permanent home as the fourteenth volume in the affordable and attractive Fantagraphics uniform edition of Love and Rockets. Luba, Fritz, Pipo, Doralis, Milaand the rest havemore than their fair shareof ups and downs in thisheartbreak...

How To Be Drawn has arrived! The latest volume of poetry by Pittsburgh's own MacArthur Fellow, Terrance Hayes, this 100 page collection is divided into three parts, each composed of ten pieces (decalogues?) --Troubled Bodies; Invisible Souls; A Circling Mind -- followed by an epiloguical closer. While firmly grounded in Hayes's own personal landscape, the thirty-one poems collected here roam the world, from "Russia's red-light districts" to New York's Chinatown, explore histories and cultures, and celebrate a cornucopia of creators and creative forms -- most abundantly, musicians and music; most succinctly, writers and writing; and, most...

It is rare indeed when our opinion completely agrees with that of publisher provided cover hype, but in this case it does. The material that Will Eisner produced over a period of 20 years (!!!) for P*S Magazine is indeed, "the missing link between The Spirit and A Contract with God" as the cover states. The work contained in this 272 page hardcover volume has the highest critical-importance to critical-awareness ratio of any work we can think of. It represents the single largest unified body of work of one of the most admired creators in the history of comics, yet very few have read much – if any – of it. Now, thanks to Denis Kitchen, Ann...