Finally!!! This has been in the works for – literally – over a quarter-century (the project goes at least as far back as 1988, as you can see [if you squint] by the copyright date of this poorly formatted scan of an early installment of the text posted HERE). After repeated cancellations and seemingly interminable delays, How to Read Nancy: The Elements of Comics in Three Easy Panels, Mark Newgarden & Paul Karasik's definitive deconstruction of Ernie Bushmiller's iconic Nancystrip - and, by extension, all of comics - has at long last been published and has touched down at Copacetic. Finally!!!

Learn more by reading Dan Nadel's...

Seventeen years in the making... it's Marc Sobel's mightily researched, heavily sourced, profusely illustrated, in-depth, from-soup-to-nuts study of the original run of the one-and-only Love and Rockets!

This 344 page, 8" x 11", French-flapped softcover is filled to the brim with not only the comics and art of Jaime, Gilbert and Mario Hernandez, but also illustrations of a wide variety of their inspirations – primarily comics of all sorts, but also movies, music and more – which serve to illuminate their pathway from culture consumers to culture producers, along with a healthy helping of photographs that show them at varioius points along...

One could say thatJoseph Smith and the Mormons, a 464-page, hardcover, full color, historical-epic/biography in comics form of the life of Joseph Smith and the founding of the Church of the Latter Day Saints – aka the Mormons – is the work of a lifetime. It is the fruition of years of self-reflection and research followed by even more years of writing and drawing (and then editing). Noah Van Sciver was brought up in the the Church of the Latter Day Saints, but then fell away from it – along with his mother, and some (but not all) of his siblings – after his parents divorced. His father stayed in the church. These biographical facts shed...

While he does, of course, have a number of major book projects under his belt, going all the way back to the immensely influential late-1990s work, Skibber Bee Bye, along with numerous contributions to a wide range of anthologies, for thirty years and counting Ron Regé, Jr. has been preaching the gospel of hand-made, self-published comics, and the personal salvation to be found in the practice. In the process, he has emerged as one of the truest disciples of William Blake, carrying forth the Blakean spirit into the comics realm. Since 2016 this practice has been flowing through his most sustained self-publishing project yet, The Shell of...

(softcover edition) Well, it's hard to imagine that any Copacetic customers missed this one the first time around, but you never know. There may be a few of you out there lurking in the shadows who have been patiently waiting to pounce on the softcover once it arrives. Well, if so, then those of you who did will be happy to know that your wait is over. Now available in softcover is the most heralded comics memoir since... well, ever (yes, there's Maus, of course, but, properly defined, it isn't really a memoir). We've long been fans of Ms. Bechdel's Dykes to Watch Out For, and we gave Fun Home an enthusiastic review assoon as it was...

The most formally ambitious issue yet in theRetrofit Comicsseries published by Box Brown, Andrew White'sWe Will Remaincontains five shorts works which together serve to showcase White's native abilities as well as demonstrating that he has absorbed some of the key lessons ofFrank Santoro's comics correspondence course. Recommended for those who appreciate the work of David Mazzucchelli and Dash Shaw, as well as Santoro,We WIll Remainstarts off with a dramatic shift from the micro to the macro as the small scale personal work "The Deep End" gives way to the cosmic conundrum of "Travel" before heading into a trio of formal experiments, "As...

Here at Copacetic Comics, we've long been fond of calling Hicksville "The Watchmen of small press comics." This is useful in that practically all comics readers are familiar with and have positive associations with The Watchmen, and we feel that Hicksville is a similarly ambitious, successful and important work, and so is one that we like to draw attention to, and comparing it to The Watchmen is a cheap and easy way to do so. Whether or not this is a good, right or fair thing to say in regards to to the themes and content of the respective works, we're not going to try to defend. The comparison's validity rests more on a historical point...

Originally published in 1960 and out of print for many years, The Labyrinth is Saul Steinberg's most significant single volume collection. It has now at long last been reissued in a this superb hardcover edition from New York Review of Books, whichfeaturesa new introduction by Nicholson Baker, along with anafterword by Harold Rosenbergandnew notes on the artwork from by Sheila Schwartz, the Research and Archives Director of The Saul Steinberg Foundation. Steinberg's oeuvre is unique, straddling the worlds of comics, illustration and gallery art whileproviding a window on the process ofcreative thought in line.

The concluding volume of Ellsworth's ambitious cartooned deconstruction of the psyche has arrived! This is the third in a matched series of full size, full color, hardcover graphic excursions. Prepare yourself for a trip like no other, as The Understanding Monster turns identity inside-out and then plays out a series of dramas with its component parts... it's pretty difficult to describe actually. Hereis our take on the initial volume in the series. See you on the other side!

The first thing that came to mind when lifting the first copy of Rusty Brownout ofthe shipping case upon its arrivalis that this volumehas the heft – and then some –and feel of the Frank King Walt & Skeezix collections, collecting the classic Gasoline Alley strips,that Mr. Ware has been long been assembling and designing for D & Q, grafted on to the design of the original Jimmy Corrigan hardcover. This 356 page, full color, horizontally formatted graphic omnibus by Chris Ware is set to provide a substantial reading experience to all who crack its covers. And, speaking of covers, Ware has once again designed a complex, diagrammatic,...