LAAB Magazine #0
by Ronald Wimberly, et al
Ronald Wimberly & Co.’s LAAB Magazine is here! This GIGANTIC broadsheet – spreads measure a whopping 23″ x 32″! – and it’s is divided into three sections, just like a newspaper – unlocks social strictures and unpacks social structures employing Black/ness and (its) representation as key and signifier. This issue presents readers with the LAAB manifesto and includes interviews with Alexandra Bell, Trenton Doyle Hancock and Saul Williams. Then there are some excellent illuminated essays – primarily by Wimberly – that are both eye-opening and consciousness-expanding (don’t allow yourself to be intimidated by the giant expanses of type; these essays are well worth your time and all efforts expended in their absorption will be amply rewarded). And, last but far from least, a big pile of amazing GIANT-SIZE comics by Ron Wimberly! RECOMMENDED!
retail price – $17.00 copacetic price $15.25
Sabrina
by Nick Drnaso
The most critically lauded graphic novel of the year has arrived! It’s garnered so much praise from so much top talent, anything we might have to add would seem superfluous. Chris Ware: “Some middle-aged colleagues and I believe literary comics fiction is possible without resorting to fantastical heroics, however, and the youngest and finest exemplar, 28-year-old Nick Drnaso, offers a new book to possibly top us all: Sabrina, about a missing woman, a video and the unspeakable possibilities of our contemporary mitigated reality.” Zadie Smith: “Nick Drnaso’s Sabrina is the best book – in any medium – I have read about our current moment. It is a masterpiece, beautifully written and drawn, possessing all the political power of polemic and yet simultaneously all the delicacy of truly great art. It scared me, I loved it.” Adrian Tomine: “Nick Drnaso is one the most ambitious singular cartoonists to emerge in recent years, and his dedication to novelistic fiction is an inspiration. Incisive, chilling, and completely unpredictable, Sabr
retail price – $27.95 copacetic price $25.00
A Western Worldby Michael DeForge
A Western World is the latest collection from the unstoppable, indefatigable Michael DeForge that collects fifteen short comics, some of which previously appeared in recent issues of his one-man anthology, Lose and in
XTC69by Jessica Campbell
The creator of the witty (and popular! and fun!) Hot or Not returns with an equally witty (and fun!) 120 page saga of self discovery disguised as space exploration that we hope will turn out to be every bit as popular.
Soft X-Ray Mindhuntersby A. Degen
Finally, the massive oversize full color science fiction adventure by A. Degen that we’ve all been waiting for! Soft X-Ray Mindhunters will knock your socks off with it’s page after page (392 in all!) of open, free-flowing, vibrantly colored comics that will take readers on a journey to the center of the mind. And this is only part one! Here’s the lowdown from the publisher, Koyama Press: “The Mindhunters release prisoners from the shackles of others’ dreams. The servants confined to the virtual mind palaces of despotic dreamers have found their furies in the form of the Mindhunters: masked vigilantes who burgle brainpower. Pop and ancient culture collide in searing colour in this melange of Astro Boy and Attic tragedy.”
Somnambulanceby Fiona Smyth
Somnabulance is a massive 368 page tome collecting over thirty year’s worth of Fiona Smyth’s unique, sexy, and hallucinatory comics ouevre. Going all the way back to her days at the Ontario College of Art, through her ’80s and ’90s work published by Vortex and Drawn and Quarterly, in anthologies like D& Q’s flagship title, jam-books like Diva with Ellen Forney and Dame Darcy, and Fabulous Babes with Maurice Vellekoop and Roxana Bikadoroff, and, of course, her solo title, Nocturnal Emissions. But it doesn’t stop there! Somnabulance continues on through to the present, collecting plenty of new work, including some that even the Copacetic cognoscenti had never seen before! Make sure to give this one the once over next time you’re in the shop.
Winter’s Cosmosby Michael Comeau
Winter’s Cosmos is a 300 page experimental hybrid work of photo-collage/comics. It integrates a dizzying series of collages composed of posed, original photographs, found photos, historical/public domain book illustrations and newspaper and magazine clippings of all sorts into a hand drawn comics narrative complete with word balloons and narration employing a wide variety of mechanical fonts along with hand lettering. In sort, this isn’t your father’s comic book. As for the narrative it presents, Koyama states: “In the tradition of 2001: A Space Odyssey and Silent Running, this genre-bending photo and comics hybrid presents the final years of a mission to seed a planet in a distant constellation and the failings of both human and artificial psyches in the face of the vastness of space.”
The Ideal Copy
by Ben Sears
Another Double+ Adventure from Ben Sears! The Ideal Copy is an 88 page, full color, budget priced, all-ages romp in the tradition of TinTin: “The fix is in as the Double+ gang try to counter crooked counterfeiters from the inside! Plus Man and Hank have been blacklisted and have replaced treasure hunting with job-hunting, before landing a catering job at a swank hotel. But trouble doesn’t wait for hors d’oeuvres as the boys find themselves with a main course of counterfeiting crooks to crack!”
retail price – $12.00 copacetic price $10.75
Akissi: Tales of Mischiefby Marguerite Abouet & Mathieu Sapin
The sub-title does not lie: this book is indeed chock full of tales of mischief. In fact, there are 21 full color 6 page comics featuring Akissi & Co. getting into all sorts of trouble, both in their home stomping grounds in the Yopougon neighborhood of Abidjan in Côte d’Ivoire (Ivory Coast) and out in the country at Akissi’s nan and granpap’s rural digs, where the natural world plays a larger part in the shenanigans. These are kids comics par excellence; think Dennis the Menace without the hyperbole. In Akissi, the world of childhood comes alive on the page: the zany antics, the interactions of children with their parents and peers, the leaps of both faith and logic. The childhood experiences
Mean Girls Club: Pink Dawnby Ryan Heshka
Get out your nail polish, the Mean Girls Club graphic novel has arrived! Pink Dawn is a 100 page hardcover (debossed, no less) printed (in Poland) in black and white and shocking pink (naturellement!), on flat off-white stock. Hold onto your hats – it’s going to be a wild ride.
Alack Sinner: The Age of Disenchantment
by Jose Munoz & Carlos Sampayo
It doesn’t get any better than this, folks. Over 300 pages of black and white comics intensity courtesy of the one-of-a-kind-pair of Argentines-in-exile, José Muñoz and Carolos Sampayo. To the best of our knowledge, the stories that populate this volume had not been translated into English before appearing here; almost certainly not the two 21st century stories, the existence of which we were not even aware. Alack Sinner: The Age of Disenchantment offers valuable perspectives on the United States, social, political and psychological, that you’ll be hard pressed to find elsewhere in comics. And we don’t even know where to begin on singing the praises of the art of José Muñoz, but we will say that the 300+ pages you’ll find here include some of the very best work of his career. Basically: buy this book!
retail price – $29.99 copacetic price $25.00
The New World: Comics from Mauretania
by Chris Reynolds
The comics that the Welsh-born, England-based cartoonist, Chris Reynolds has been publishing, beginning in the mid-80s, as/in Mauretania Comics are a primary source of the rich but obscure tributary of self-consciously enigmatic work. Stateside readers of the early issues of Eric Haven’s Tales to Demolish and well as Michael Kupperberg’s Tales to Thrizzle will immediately sense a kindred spirit when they encounter Reynolds’s work in these pages, which predates most if not all of Haven and Kupperberg’s comics work. Now, at long last North American readers have an easily accessible – and sumptuously produced and designed (by Seth, no less) – hardcover collection of the key texts of the Reynolds oevure. Ed Park (co-founder of Believer Magazine) gets readers up to speed with his perspicacious introductory essay. Another fine volume from New York Review Comics!
retail price – $34.95 copacetic price $29.75
And, here are a couple of potential summer reads…
Smoketownby Mark Whitaker
Inspired by his discovery of the Teenie Harris Archives at the Carnegie Museum of Art, renowned journalist and media executive, Mark Whitaker – whose grandparents were Pittsburghers during the Teenie Harris era – delved deep into the history of Black Pittsburgh, and Smoketown is the result. Get an idea of what to expect from the preface, available online here, courtesy of The Paris Review.
Theory of Bastardsby Audrey Schulman
The Kirkus Reviews quote was enough to pique our interest: “Theory of Bastards is a deeply unusual, psychologically astute novel about technology and survival, sex and love, If Philip K. Dick and Ann Patchett wrote a collaborative novel it might look like this. Beguiling, irreverent, and full of heart.” Need more? Here‘s Michael Dirda’s review from The Washington Post.