It's here: the first volume of Anders Nilsen's epic look at our collective 21st Century headspace: Tongues. Like a skilled neurosurgeon, he peels back the conscious, subconscious and unconscious layers of our civilization, taking each layer then staining them with his creative intelligence and putting them under the microscope revealing a spectacular vision of their intermingling forms of mythography, history, speculative fiction and more, all entwined within the double-helix of love and war, and lays them bare for the reader's edification and private analysis (which has put us in mind of a modern La Divina Commedia di Dante – particularly...

From the view here at Copacetic, it appears that Monica has received the highest profile debut of any book in Fantagraphics history – talk about buzz! When was the last time that a graphic novel made the cover / lead review of the New York Times Book Review? (those with access can read it here) Then there's the Washington Post (ditto, about access) Then there's the pieces in the LA Times, The New Yorker, Vanity Fair, and a pair of reviews in The Guardian (first | second), and that's just for starters.

In typical Clowesian fashion, Monica follows the titular character through one rabbit hole after another, as she searches for the meaning of...

Yes, here it is: the most talked about book in comics. Five years at the drawing board hath wrought Crumb's own pen & ink rendering of the West's origin myth. Crumb, as he warned and as we would naturally expect, hasn't pulled any punches and has illustrated this tale as written, warts and all. Crumb says it best himself in his introduction: "I, R. Crumb, the illustrator of this book, have, to the best of my ability, faithfully reproduced every word of the original text... Every other comic book version of The Bible that I've seen contains passages of completely made-up narrative and dialogue, in an attempt to streamline and...

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,...

THE FIVE-VinylLP
Produced by LouGiordanoatWhiteDog

REIDPALEY-Vocals

TOMMORAN-Guitar

DAVEDOREMUS-Bass

BRIANGILLESPIE-Drums

Believe it or not, westillhave some factorysealed copies of the original 1989 vinyl LP release ofTHE FIVE,
straight out of the original pressing plant boxes,in gleaming black vinyl, and arecurrently offeringthemfor the amazingly
copaceticpriceof $16.75

SIDE ONE

TheLongHaul
NoRegrets
AllTheWay
Invocation
AllRight
PrayForMe

SIDE TWO

SacredHeart
TheOnlyHonorableThing
SameToMe
CutMeLoose
TheFatLadySings
WhenYrDone

"Clearly the most pivotal and important of all Pittsburgh bands.THE FIVE, (who...

Action and adventure comics simply don't get any better than this epic graphic novel by Jiro Taniguchi. Conceived of as an homage to the "spaghetti westerns" of cinema and bandes dessinée – especially the Lt. Blueberry series by Jean "Moebius" Giraud, Taniguchi outdoes them all in this tale of cowboys and indians... and samurai!

Sky Hawk is an historically accurate account of the post-civil war American west. As the railroads spanned the continent, an alliance (some might call it a conspiracy) of the railroad companies, the US government and gold hungry settlers of European ancestry pushed the Native American Indians off of more and more...

This is a moment we've been waiting for for quite awhile. In our opinion, the least appreciated and most misunderstood science fiction writer of modern times, James Tiptree, Jr. (the nom de plume of Alice Sheldon) is a writer of breathtaking originality who is still ahead of her time, nearly twenty years after her death. That all of her work -- with the exception of a single "loose ends" collection that was published three years ago -- has been out of print for years is, in our opinion, a negligence that borders on the criminal. Thankfully ("Thank you, Tachyon Publications, thank you."), this situation has now come to an end with the...

by Anneli Furmark, Amanda Vähämäki, and T. Edward Bak We listed this last month, but in our haste neglected to write it up, a gross oversight on our part, as you will see... This volume has a special Scandinavian focus, with two of the three comics works originating in the somber lands of the midnight sun. A melancholy northern mood pervades the entire collection, including its centerpiece, the contribution of the lone North American, T. Edward Bak. The Partisan -- his first fully developed work since Service Industry, the work for which he is best known -- is a complex multi-layered work that (or, at least, so it seems to us) seeks to...

(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...

Bill Griffith, widlely heralded as a founding father of underground comics and late-20th century pop counter culture, primarily for his star creation, Zippy the Pinhead, but also for his pioneering editorial contributions to the important comix anthologiesYoung Lustand, with Art Spiegelman,Arcade,has here, in the pages of this200 page graphic memoir, told the story that he has been keeping to himself all these many decades. This one's got a title -- well, subtitle, anyway -- that pretty much doesn't hold back the punch line; what was the big surprise for the author isfait accomplifor all readers going in. The reason for this is that there...