Aptly referred to as "the B-SIde to Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet", Ronald Wimberly's Prince of Cats pulls off quite a feat: successfully reimagining the world of Romeo and Juliet in an hepper-than-hep 1980s NYC where hip-hop and punk exist side-by-side andduels are settled with Samurai swords. The story here centers and pivots on the figure of Tybalt, with Romeo and Juliet as supporting cast. The art is dynamic, colorful and perfectly captures the mood while doing an amazing job of visually transcribing the throbbing soundtrack of the streets, train tracks, nightclubs, tenements, alleyways, nightclubs, bedrooms, offices, backrooms and...
This volume reissues the seminal, long out-of-print, and highly sought after volume which collected Spiegelman's trailblazing (pre-Maus)1970s work. These are the thoroughly original, self-aware comics about comics through which he forged a comics of deconstruction. This, in turn, led him, along with his wife, François Mouly, to pioneer a new comics aesthetics that forefronted comics' formal properties, consciously focused on the mechanics of production and that changed the face of comics in the 1980s: RAW. And there's more: this fabulous, oversize harcover volume includes a 20-page introduction in comics form in which Spiegelman takes the...
Originally published in Japan in 1995, Jiro Taniguchi’sA Journal of My Father,a moving tale of a son’s memories of growing up in Tottori, a small city on the sea of Japan, has at last made it to American shores in English translation (by Kumar Sivasubramanian assisted by Chitoku Teshima). As the title suggests, the story centers on the relationship of the son – Yoichi – with his father, who, we learn at the outset, has just died. The story is divided into twelve chapters which, while there are several especially significant moments that recur, take the reader on a chronological journey from Yoichi's earliest memories up to the present....
This 200 page, full size hardcover volume is primarily what the title indicates. From thumbnail breakdowns toidea sketches and on through to profoundly beautiful fully realized illustrations of related to the themes and characters of the Edena Cycle, this book is filled with amazing art. But there's more: there are also comics that were not included in The World of Edena. Some are variations on sequences that you've seen before (presuming that you've already read the aforementioned World of Edna [if not, what are you waiting for?]), others are new, and only tangentially related – but from the same period – such as two pieces related to...
Dauntless Dames is the latest in the series of beautiful mega-sized (13" x 17") hardcover collections of classic newspaper comicstrips from Sunday Press. Edited by Trina Robbins and Sunday Press publisher, Peter Maresca, Dauntless Dames is a feast for the eyes. An amazing amalgamation of classic Sunday pages featuring women protagonists, many of which were also created by women, including Pittsburgh's own Jackie Ormes, including some super rare strips from The Pittsburgh Courier!
We'll provide a bit more info soon, but suffice it to say that this volume includes page after oversize page – 160 in all – of classic full color (and along with...
2019 has now provided us with an embarrassment of riches: two deluxe hardcover Jaime Hernandez collections in one year! Here, a mere four months after Is This How You See Me?, we have Tonta, in all her glory (along with, of course, Viv and the rest of the clan). Tonta is yet another character that beamed down into our world from the Perfect Sphere of True Comics via Hernandez Teleportation Services, Inc. Debuting circa2012 (see below*) in a walk-on role, she now has her name on the marquee of a hardcover graphic novel. Who'd a thunk it?
Tonta was originally serialized in the pages of Love and Rockets: New Stories. It is presented here in a...
The fabulous Fantagraphics project to collect the complete classic Carl Barks comics featuring the "Disney" Ducks – which could more accurately be described as the Barks Ducks – continues with this volume devoted to Barks's most famous creation, Uncle Scrooge. "Only a Poor Man" collects the entirety of the first six issues of Uncle Scrooge that were originally published between 1952 and 1954. Not only are the classic Scrooge epics that form the bulk of each of the six issues collected here (for the record: "Only a Poor Old Man", "Back to the Klondike", "The Horse Radish Treasure", "The Menehune Mystery", "The Secret of Atlantis" and...
This is a nifty guide to zinemaking and zinestering that is a great primer for anyone who is getting started -- or even thinking of getting started -- down the road of making a zine, whether it be comics or otherwise. It's purposefully designed to be exactly the kind of guide that the authors wished they had when they started out. In covers the practical ins and outs such as formats and print-marriage set ups, the pros and cons of various drawing tools and printing methods, and a wide array of binding methods that one might never think of on one's own. But there's much more as the authors bring in a bevy of talented cartoonists, zinesters...
(Book Five in the New Edition of the collected Love and Rockets) Wow! Fantagraphics isn't wasting any time in getting out the newly formatted editions collecting that classic among classics, the original first volume of Love and Rockets by Los Bros Hernandez. The unrelenting greatness continues with Perla la Loca presenting "Wig Wam Bam" and "Chester Square" along with a handful of minor gems, all by the one and only Xaime. Beyond Palomar contains all the twists and turns of "Poison River," perhaps the most complex of Gilbert's epics, along with his L.A.-centered "Love and Rockets X." There's not much more that can be said about these...
In the Swarm presents a cogent response to the rising tide of internet inf(l)ected consciousness that is deeply rooted in the European – primarily German – philosophical tradition, but don't let that scare you off. This slim tome, judiciously translated from the original German by Erik Butler, is straightforward and gets right to the point in sixteen concise chapters, each focused on a facet of the problem currently confronting us: thegradual yet seemingly ineluctable erosion of human agency resulting from our ever greater immersion in the sea of information. Written in 2013, this book was clearly ahead of the curve and will impress any...
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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