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...

[cue Strauss's Also Sprach Zarathustra] Yes, after long journeying through the comicsphere, it has finally arrived in book form ... Longboxes! (Volume One) Close to four years in the making, this 288-page compendium – with page dimensions that are close to exactly halfway between an issue of Grixly and an issue of a standard modern comic book – includes all officially designated "Longboxes" comics from Grixly #50 - #68 (And, yes, you are correct, #67 & #68 have not yet been released), along with ten pages of earlier precursor comics, from earlier issues of Grixly, that foreshadowed the coming of Longboxes – plus an even dozen bonus...

We've only just cracked this open here at Copacetic, and even though we can't deliver our report on it just yet, we want to get it up on the site for all those who were wowed by Yearly 2018 and want to start digging in to this year's installment, especially given that there's quite a bit to dig in to this time around: 80 magazine-size (8 1/2" x 11") pages.

IMPORTANT NOTE: This issue originally included a 32 page, full color, 5" x 5" insert. The copoies we are currently selling DO NOT include this insert. But we ARE offering them for 1/3 off as a result, AND they come with original quickie mini-sketches by Andrew on the back cover :)

We've...

Craig Thompson's long awaited follow up to Blankets – one of the most widely and loudly lauded graphic novels in history – is now weighing heavily on the shelves here at Copacetic. A sprawling, multi-layered, multi-faceted, multi-pronged work, Habibi is part history lesson, part tutorial, part travelogue, part anthro/socio/psychological study, part sermon, and all love story. Thompson clearly had outsized ambitions for this work, likely necessitated by the high expectations surrounding any follow up to Blankets. It's always an additional challenge for creators to follow up a highly praised work. Should they try to compete with their big...

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,...

Mister Baker, perhaps the funniest cartoonist alive, steps out of his clown shoes and puts on his severest suit and tie to deliver this sermon of repression and defiance, violence and vengeance, and struggle and sacrifice, in this synecdochical story of slavery in these United States. Reading this book, in which the narrative is advanced almost entirely in images (pantomime style) interspersed with excerpts from The Confessions of Nat Turner, it is impossible not to marvel at the strength of Baker's storytelling. And, there is a method to the madness of attempting to relate so complex a tale entirely in images. It captures the forced...

For twenty years and counting, Scott McCloud's explication of the mechanics of comics remains essential.



Testamonials:

<>"If you've ever felt bad about wasting your life reading comics, then check out Scott McCloud's classic book immediately. You might still feel you've wasted your life, but you'll know why, and you'll be proud."
-Matt Groening, creator ofThe Simpsons

<>"In one lucid, well-designed chapter after another, [McCloud] guides us through the elements of comics style, and... how words combine with pictures to work their singular magic. When the 215-page journey is finally over, most readers will find it...

Before cracking open The Hard Tomorrow, it might be a good idea to mentally buckle up. Eleanor Davis's new graphic novellives up to its title. It is indeed ahard hitting look at how the here andnow could play out in what'scoming tomorrow – but certainly not one without hope, and that is, ultimately, the point. Beautifully drawn, dramatically paced, and overflowingwith empathy for its fully realized cast of characters, The Hard Tomorrow is vibrantly alive to being in the world in America in our time. Davis's choice to set the work a few years in the future (apparently2022 [which, of course, is now in the past - ed.]) givesher leeway to ramp...

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...

2022 has clearly been a watershed year for Ms. Julie Doucet. Firstshe won the 49th Angouleme Festival’s Grand Prix(only the third woman to do so). Then, a month later, her first (drawn) comics work in 15 years,Time Zone Jwas published to a flurry of press, including in theNY Times(along with stalwarts,TCJandThe Beat and others). A result of all this publicity is that it, apparently, generated a significant early demand for the book – as we initially struggled to get and keep it in stock. But, the pressure has abated, and we've managed to put in a good stock.