It's here: the first volume of Anders Nilsen's epic look at our collective 21st Century headspace: Tongues. Like a skilled neurosurgeon, he peels back the conscious, subconscious and unconscious layers of our civilization, taking each layer then staining them with his creative intelligence and putting them under the microscope revealing a spectacular vision of their intermingling forms of mythography, history, speculative fiction and more, all entwined within the double-helix of love and war, and lays them bare for the reader's edification and private analysis (which has put us in mind of a modern La Divina Commedia di Dante – particularly...

Here's the one Copacetic customers have been ringing the phone off the hook about. And not without reason. Each issue of Ganges has managed to make something new with the comics form. Huizenga pretty much picks up here where #3 left off – it may very well be the very same evening, diegetically speaking – and continues exploring the twilight zone of consciousness that lies between waking and sleeping, where memory and fantasy mix with all kinds of thought: this time around, from list-making to self-analysis to pondering the nature and meaning of being and time and space and... well, you get the idea. Ever the innovator, Huizenga has here...

Twenty-five years ago, inRaw, Volume 2, Number 1, Richard McGuire published a six-page work, titled "Here"*, and comics have never been the same since. Now, McGuire has expanded his revelation into a full length work, that, while it may be considered to fulfill the definition of graphic novel, is clearly something more besides. Years in the making,Hereis a meditation on time and its passage through place that employs the power of comics to concisely and powerfully convey their inextricable relation. ReadingHere, one is quickly gripped by a feeling of the uncanny. The realization that the precise spatial coordinates occupied by the room...

This book presents the strongest of David Collier's work and is one of our perennial best-sellers here at Copacetic. It is filled with extremely engaging stories of the lives of minor, obscure and offbeat Canadian figures. Some of these are full fledged biographies, such as the fascinating account of Humphrey Osmond, the Canadian scientist who was an early researcher into psychotropic drugs and reputedly coined the term "psychedelic." Then there's the life story of Ethel Catherwood, the Olympic high jumper known as the Saskatchewan Lily, who ended up obscure and reclusive. A more tightly focused tale is that of "Grey Owl," an enigmatic...

Brecht Evens, creator of The Wrong Place, The Making Of and Panther (all of which except forPanther, which was, thankfully, just reprtinted arecurrently – and shockingly –out of print here in North America)has,in TheCity of Belgium,likely produced hismasterpiece.There might not be any other work that compares in the effectiveness ofits conveyance of the feeling of being immersed in the overflowing of city life, of the sense of being aware of everything, of being surrounded byso much – too much – that ishappening all aroundat every moment. Ariotous explosion of color and details communicate the overwhelming feelings that accompany this...

Finally, a new edition of the seminal novel,You Can't Winby Jack Black. Here's a book thatcan lay claim –if any can –to having launched the "outlaw" literary counterculture, way back in 1926. This edition sports an intense black and white cover drawn by Joe Coleman, taken from his set of illustrations of this novel originally published inBlab!(#3?); also included is a full color reproduction of the Coleman painting that graced the 1988 Amok Press republication of this classic. The foreword by William Burroughs written for that edition is also here (although we recommend that this be read as an afterword, as it gives away some plot...

Ronald Wimberly & Co. are back with another issue of the broadsheet newspaper art magazine, LAAB! A feast for the mind as well as the eyes, it features a host of fascinating pieces chock full of interesting insights designed to challenge our perceptions and conceptions of yesterday, today and tomorrow. This issue "concerns themes of death and environmental devastation, horror, hauntology, necropolitics, and the anthropocene. We ask what it means to die, and what it means to live -- and what might have to die for a future to be born." While this issue states that it is "#4", it is in fact the second issue, so, as long as you have the ...

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...

The Ganzfeld is a true one-of-a-kind publication and #3 is by far the best issue yet. It shouldn't really be under the comics listing, but as it is truly uncategorizable, this is as good a spot as any. The editors once again bring together a unique group of designers, illustrators, cartoonists, and artists in a coherent, strongly designed format. It features a unique collaboration between Rick Moody and Fred Tomaselli; a new picture story by designer Geoff McFetridge, and even an illustrated essay by Alfred Hitchcock. Lengthy comics and picture stories are contributed by an international group, Renée French, Ron Rege, Jr., Blexbolex, Brian...

We were excited enough by this book's publicationthat we ordered it – from France – in it's originalFrench language release (resulting in us charging more than twice as much as we are for this North American release!). While, of course, there have been comics about jazz in the past – some of the best of which, intriguingly, have also originated in Europe– in Total Jazz, Blutch, comics master that he is, has done more than most to bring the spirit of jazz to itsrepresentation in comics form;working towardstranslating the jazzethos of improvisation within formal compositions into the language of comics. While many of the short pieces...