Ish is a magazine size, 56 page softcover collecting three longish stories in black and white and muted, flat color on nice off-white stock.  We've had it in the shop for awhile, and realized we should share it with our online customers, as it is filled with graphically inventive, experimental comics of the kind that you don't see every day.  De Souza has clearly spent some time studying early modernist painters – most notably, Picasso – and here he strives to adapt some of their then – and, for comics, still – novel approaches to visual representation of psychological states and philosophical perspectives into this work, making for a stimulating and challenging reading experience.  One that also serves to reveal a small patch of the untapped potential inherent in the comics medium, where the possibilities for combining image and text in the service of personal expression remain practically endless...

Ex-Mag is back!  And this fifth volume is the biggest yet, running 300 pages.  Same high quality Latvian printing this time in scarlet and black as befits this issues theme:  Vampires!  And, the variety of approaches to the theme is as far ranging as ever, running the gamut from simplfied & cartoony to detailed and realistic with many varied approaches in between.

We've posted a bunch of cool spreads from this issue of Ex-Mag, along with come nice ones frrom World Heist and Jane MaI's Soft, HERE.

Check out PEOW's page on this issue to get an idea of what's in store, HERE.

We've been looking forward to for this one for a while!  When we first got wind of Conundrum's series of small squarebound-book-mini-comics of ± 100 pages each (@$10 per, in case you were wondering) – Conundrum 25 – we were hoping to be able to carry them in the shop... but it was not to be as they were only available direct from Conundrum.  We were frustrated as we watched form a distance the release of five volumes per year over the course of five years... so were then very pleased to learn of this volume.  30 x 30 is a collection of selections from each and every one of the 25 books in the series that was edited and curated by Andy Brown to mark the 30th anniversary of Conundrum Press.

To celebrate it's release – and availability here at Copacetic – we're offering this book at a special price that works out to only $1 per artist.  One way to look at it is that getting this book is (at least a little) like going to a Canadian Indie Comics Show and picking up 25 cool mini-comics all for only $1 each (and without incurring any lodging or travel costs).

So: DEAL! 

HERE'S a sample spread from each of the works in this collection up on the Copacetic Tumblr.  We managed to squeeze them all in one post! Check it out!
 

Here are the publisher details:

An anthology of graphic shorts from 25 Canadian artists. Featuring a preface by Brown on thirty years of publishing activity at Conundrum, 30×30 collects all the books in the CONUNDRUM 25 pocketbook series in celebration of the 30th anniversary of this highly acclaimed publishing company. Featuring veteran cartoonists, archival work, and fresh new talents this anthology expands what a graphic short can be.

Edited by Andy Brown
Front cover by Adam de Souza
Back cover by Seth
Introduction by Zsuzsi Gartner
Biographical portraits by Jonathan Dyck

Contributors:
Day Old by Joe Ollmann; The Water Lover by Patrick Allaby; Spells by Graeme Shorten Adams; The Man Who Walked Through Walls by OBOM; Petrozavodsk by Alison McCreesh; Next Time Around by Billy Mavreas; Maladies by Henriette Valium; Sasha Strong by Kim Edgar; We Were Younger Once by Kiona Callihoo Ligtvoet; CONDOLADY by Elisabeth Belliveau; Post-Modern Mini-Comics by Colin Upton; Partum Me by Natalie Pendergast; Only a Slender Internal Connection by Xiaoxiao Li; Between Gentlemen by Rupert Bottenberg; Bar Delicious by Blaise Moritz; Just Happy to See You by Shea Proulx; Cousin Bear Comes to Visit by Halie Finney; We see stars only at night by Cole Pauls; On the Border by Brandon Hicks; Wanderer of the Wastes by Tyler Landry; It Really Is by Cole Degenstein; Citymouse by Eleanor Hannon; Let the Good Times Roll by Veronica Post; Future Me is Fat by Mollie Cronin; Fever Dream by D. McFadzean

“Based in Nova Scotia, Andy Brown’s Conundrum Press has quietly become a major force in alt-comics publishing.” – The Comics Journal

“One of the most respected and acclaimed graphic novel publishers in the country.” – Quill & Quire

“One of the things I have come to admire so much about Canadian publisher Conundrum Press is that they have no easily categorised brand identity. If you sift through our recent Broken Frontier coverage of their output you will see a sequential art publishing list that doesn’t so much embrace eclecticism but redefines it.”  – Broken Frontier

Publication Details

ISBN 9781772621174
8 x 11.5 inches, 360 pages
2 colour, trade paper

And then, if, after reading it, you'd like to get the any of the original books from which the selections were taken, you can order direct from the Conundrum Book Store. <<<