back in print, at last! Originally published in 1994, City of Glass was ahead of the comics history curve in many respects, with its "serious" literary concerns and dazzling formal inventiveness. It was the most requested out-of-print volume in the history of the Copacetic Comics Company before being brought back in print in this 2004 edition. This edition remains faithful to the original, but has been updated with a new cover as well as a new introduction by Art Spiegelman (see above) that lays out the genesis of this particular work, helping to place it in the proper historical context. Recommended!
Year of the Rabbit is an effective and affecting memoir of life in Cambodia under the Khmer Rouge during the years 1975 to 1980. While most North Americans who were alive during the Vietnam War are at least dimly aware that something bad happened in Cambodia after American forces largely left Southeast Asia at the conclusion of the Vietnam War, few are aware of the details, or have an understanding of what life was like for Cambodians themselves after the Communist Party of Cambodia – the Khmer Rouge – or, as readers of this book will learn, Angkar, which is how the Khmer Rouge referred to themselves during the early years of their rule –...
Anyone who ever wondered whatpornographic comics produced by Chris Ware would be like to read probably won’t ever get an answer closer to Italian cartoonist, Miguel Vila’s North American debut, Milky Way, seamlessly translated by Jaime Richards and delivered to readers in a solid, well-designed, 176 page, 7" x 10", full color hardcover. As would be expected in such a case, Milky Way is not, of course, a work of straight-up pornography, but rather it is – as it would be if penned by Ware – a complex work of meta-porn, a look at the context, function and effects of pornography at the same time as it is also pornography; it examines the...
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...
In this boldly printed, oversize (8 1/4" x 11 1/2") edition of Plaza, Yuichi Yokoyama has managed to translate the frenetic phantasmagoria of hyperconnected late capitalism into page after page after page of manic manga possessed of a relentless rhythmicity that will leave readers reeling in stupefaction. This edition includes a brief interview with and afterword by Yokoyama, conducted by Ryan Holmberg, who also edited and translated this edition.
Here's what a couple of fave Copacetic creators have to say about this work:
Art and literature historians of the future will be flabbergasted that Yokoyama Yuichi existed in our time. He is a...
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...
How did we forget to list this on the site (maybe it was accidentally deleted?).Sorry! Originally released in a softcover edition from Sasquatch Books,back in 2000,now, at last,The Greatest of Marlys has a permanent home befitting its status. This deluxe 248 page hardcover from the ever esteemed Drawn & Quarterly will last a lifetime and endure the many readings it will be sure to receive. Not only that, it includes additional strips not included in the original edition, and starts off with an all-new 2-page introductiorystrip created especially for this edition. Did we mention the endpapers? Nice! All for a bargain price. Don't miss...
Hardcover. 175 pages. Full color and Black & white. Lots of triangle-shaped panels. Michael DeForge!
Hot off the press.
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...
Having personally known and professionally worked with Ed Piskor for over twenty years, the news that he has, evidently, taken his own life, came as a deep shock here at Copacetic. We first encountered Ed while he was still a gawky, geeky teenager and had no inkling of the major force in comics that he would go on to become. As we followed his progress from working with Harvey Pekar to self-publishing – and very savvily marketing – Wizzywig, it became apparent that he was both very capable and highly ambitious, and, perhaps most notably, extremely focused on his goals. Once he launched his Hip Hop Family Tree series, he was truly in his element. He took off from there, and didn't look back.
As there is no longer any road ahead for Ed, we will take a moment to look back now and keep him in our thoughts.
We are death. This thing we think of as life is only the sleep of real life, the death of what we truly are. The dead are born, they do not die. These worlds have become reversed for us. When we think we are alive, we are dead ... Everything we consider important in our active lives participates in death, is all death. What are ideals but a confession that life is not enough? What is art but negation of life?
...
To consider our greatest anguish an incident of no importance, not just in terms of the life of the universe, but in terms of our own souls, is the beginning of knowledge. To reflect on this whilst in the midst of that anguish is the whole of knowledge. When we suffer, human pain seems infinite. But not even human pain is infinite, because nothing human is infinite, nor is our pain ever anything more than a pain that we have ... The pain of not understanding the mystery of life, the pain of being unloved, the pain of others' injustice to us, the pain of life crushing us, suffocating and imprisoning us ...
To some who speak and listen to me I must seem an insensitive person. However, I am, I think, more sensitive than the vast majority of men. I am, moreover, a sensitive man who knows himself and therefore knows what sensitivity is. It isn't true that life is painful, or that it's painful to think about life. What is true is that our pain is only as serious and important as we pretend it to be. If we live naturally, it would pass as quickly as it came, it would fade as quickly as it bloomed. Everything is nothing, and our pain is no exception.
...
Everyone and everything oppresses me, chokes me, and maddens me; I am troubled by a crushing physical sense of other people's lack of comprehension ... Seeing myself frees me from myself. I almost smile, not because I understand myself, but because, having become other, I'm no longer able to understand myself. High up in the sky, like a visible void, hangs one tiny cloud, a pale forgotten fragment of the whole universe.
– Fernando Pesoa, from The Book of Disquiet (translated from the Portuguese by Margaret Jull Costa)
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