Beginning with the first impression – the juxtaposition of the book’s title, “Black Arms to Hold You Up” and its accompanying cover illustration of large, looming black arm(ament)s against a background of skeletons, between which the human actors are running in fear – it is clear right from the start that we are being presented with a multivalent and irony-rich agitprop work. It will be equally clear by the end that it is also a work capable of constructing new meaning through a masterful synthesis of image and text.

The phrase “to hold you up” in the title can have (at least) three possible meanings: 1) to physically hold you up, as in to...

2022 has clearly been a watershed year for Ms. Julie Doucet. Firstshe won the 49th Angouleme Festival’s Grand Prix(only the third woman to do so). Then, a month later, her first (drawn) comics work in 15 years,Time Zone Jwas published to a flurry of press, including in theNY Times(along with stalwarts,TCJandThe Beat and others). A result of all this publicity is that it, apparently, generated a significant early demand for the book – as we initially struggled to get and keep it in stock. But, the pressure has abated, and we've managed to put in a good stock.

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...

Jimmy Corrigan, the Smartest Kid on Earth (JCTSKOE) is, first and foremost, the tale of the development of the American super-ego, it’s human cost, and its relationship to the comic book super-hero. Ware’s choice of the Chicago Exposition of 1893 to serve simultaneously as historical signifier and the origin of his narrative is key in this regard. It is with the exposition of 1893 -- most importantly, at least as far as JCTSKOE is concerned, in its design and architecture-- that the USA reveals its fantasy of, and implicit ambition towards, empire in the classical Greco/Roman mold. It was Walt Whitman’s fever dream made flesh-- or at least...

From the Archives: ONE new copy of the original hardcover edition (2nd print; September 2011) of the first volume of the superb – and definitive – archival study of the life and work of Alex Toth.

Here's the original Publisher write-up:

Compiled with complete access to the family archives and with the full cooperation of Toth's children, this lavishly illustrated biography features many rare comics pages, photographs, and drawings and reproduces twenty complete stories, including a previously unknown and unfinished story from the 1950's, most printed from the original artwork. Includes bibliographical references. Presents a biography of...

It's time to let the good times roll - with MORTON! Let's all join David Collier on a cross country (in this case, Canada) rail journey and experience old school reality before it slips into the history books. We will be conveyed along our journey by train, the most civilized form of travel. We will experience the journey via comics, the most suitable form through which to communicate such an undertaking. And our pen & ink guide will be David Collier, who intuits the precise perspective.

Accruing accolades and awards by the bushelful, McBride's novel employs a staccato, jump-cut prose style reminiscent of Samuel Beckett, and puts it to new and original uses in this harrowing coming of age tale

Here's Anne Enright's review in the UK Guardian: http://www.theguardian.com/books/2013/sep/20/girl-half-formed-thing-review

Here's James Woods in The New Yorker: http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2014/09/29/useless-prayers

Salt Green Death takes its title from a line in James Joyce's Ulysses, further excerpts from which are interwoven throughout and seem to provide something of a template for the meandering stream of consciousness form of the narrative structure of the work, while the expressive distortions of the British painter, Francis Bacon provide a point of reference for the stunning and haunting visuals created by Thorsen to bring you into the maelstrom. While the primary focus is on Joseph O'Dwyer, child number four in the O'Dwyer family – who was institutionalized for most of his adult life, during which period the treatment regimes he was subjected...

FROM THE ARCHIVES

You want funny? Look no further: This book will make you laugh. Like Peter Bagge's Hate, but smarter and more brutal in its judgments on this dysfunctional society of ours, and with a distinctive flavor all its own, this is a comic for people who see past the façade as a matter of course. Hey, Mister takes sarcasm to new heights. It makes us think of the Monty Python episode, the "Piranha Brothers," in which a fearful and trembling thug played by Michael Palin relates how Doug Piranha was the most terrifying gangster he had ever encountered because of the deft manner in which, "he used... sarcasm." And the bitterness, oh,...

Gilbert's long awaited return to the multi-generational saga form that he made his own in Palomar is here, and we are happy to report that it is a book that is as rewarding as it was long in coming. We are given a 20th century spanning tale of five generations of the Reyes clan that centers on the titular Julio and precisely matches the span of his life. Taking place in a nameless rural town that is presumably located somewhere in southern California,Julio's Daytakes its readers through five wars and generation defining events like the Great Depression and The Sixties as they are experienced at the fringes.Julio's Dayis most notable,...