The latest Grixly double-header takes the ongoing Longboxes saga to the next level. The frame is, as usual, composed of Nate’s world of comic book back issue wheeling and dealing, yet the subject of the portrayals collected and sequenced in these pages is, more clearly than ever before, America itself, with the lid off. 

The anecdotes, vignettes and stories together provide a view that grants readers a glimpse of America from above, as it writhes through the current, waning stages of late-capitalism – which is revealed here as being less a benevolent, guiding, invisible hand than a malignant affliction manifesting ever more glaring symptoms throughout America's body politic (Nate's fullest expression of this may be found in his graphic novel, Just a Little Boy, a new edition of which has, conveniently, just arrived here at Copacetic).    Through the fable-like tales that play out in these two issues’ densely packed 48 pages (combined), it is amply demonstrated that paying attention to details and learning from experience can work to put things in perspective, providing insights that can be used to map the present and so find effective paths forward.  Sacha Mardou’s model “diorama” reference-home that makes an appearance towards the end, serves, in this context, as an in situ synecdoche of the approach embodied by the whole.  Grixly!