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...

Creator of the critically acclaimed Sabrina, Nick Drnaso's highly anticipated new graphic novel,Acting Class, has arrived. In the 248 full color, flat, heavyweight, off-white pages of this hardcover volume, role playing and reality mix it up in the shared headspace of a group of adults who are drawn to the idea of inhabiting new characters as a reult of difficulties in their own lives. Almost immediately, the destabilizing effects of the acting lessons set the stage for the dissolution of borders between actor and role and an ever increasing sense of disorientation.

Set in a world in which all forms of remote communication are quite...

Finally, a new edition of the seminal novel,You Can't Winby Jack Black. Here's a book thatcan lay claim –if any can –to having launched the "outlaw" literary counterculture, way back in 1926. This edition sports an intense black and white cover drawn by Joe Coleman, taken from his set of illustrations of this novel originally published inBlab!(#3?); also included is a full color reproduction of the Coleman painting that graced the 1988 Amok Press republication of this classic. The foreword by William Burroughs written for that edition is also here (although we recommend that this be read as an afterword, as it gives away some plot...

What more can be said about the genius of Carl Barks? It towers over the landscape of comics history like the statue of Duckburg's founder, Cornelius Coot (erected by Uncle Scrooge in "Statuesque Spendthrifts" fromWalt Disney's Comics and Stories#138; collected inA Christmas for Shacktown),towers over that fair city. The title tale of this latest volume in the 15 year project to collect the entirety of Barks's Disney oeuvre, "The Old Castle's Secret" is a classic book-length tale of eerie mystery that was originally presented inFour Color#189, published in the summer of 1948, that provides the first fleshed out iteration of Uncle Scrooge...

FROM THE ARCHIVES

ONE, NICE FIRST PRINT (2011) copy, with back cover band still intact.

Currently in print at $45.00

Read the full Copacetic write up, HERE.

LIGHTNING OVER BRADDOCK AND COLLECTED SHORTS: THE FILMS OF TONY BUBA

AT LAST! Here, on two full-lengthdiscs, are the collected films of Tony Buba! For coming up on fifty years, Tony Buba has been documenting (and romanticizing) his hometown of Braddock, PA right here on the Monogahela River, just outside of Pittsburgh proper. Anyone who hasn't seen these is in for a real treat.And, all of those, like us here at Copacetic, who already havebut have been yearning for another chance to revisit them after all these years, are likely in for an even bigger treat. Finally!

Featuring Tony Buba,Sal Carollo,Stephen Pellegrino,Jimmy Roy,Richard...

>> Now also available in softcover. <<

FROM THE ARCHIVES – ONE NEW COPY OF THE ORIGINAL HARDCOVER EDITION

A story that required years of fermentation to arrive at its requisite form, Pittsburgh is a comics meditation on family and identity that unfolds within a complex matrix of time, place and self as it is inscribed within memory. On the surface, it is a memoir of the artist's parents' courtship, marriage and divorce – and its reverberations through his life. There are also the supporting tales of two sets of grandparents and the crucial involvement of a neighborhood friend, as well as the mute chorus of the family dog. This...

This is the fifth volume in the series of young adult graphic biographies published by Hyperion under the ægis of The Center for Cartoon Studies, which reaches an important milestone here in that this volume is the first to be created by a graduate of their program, and as such provides proof postive that CCS is fulfilling its mission. Annie Sullivan and the Trials of Helen Keller is the most substantial work yet in this series and represents its strongest artistic achievement. More than that, it is an inspired work that demonstrates the power of comics to communicate.

It runs for 86 full color pages, each of which works from a 16-panel...