Here's an anthology to boost your start to 2025!  Alive Outside takes the baton from Kramers Ergot, Mould Map and Freak Buck and heads out into the unknown armed only with a  free-for-all editorial approach and an anything-goes æsthetic.

The first thing you notice about Alive Outside is its funkiness as an object, with it’s hand-folded outer wrap (by Lilli Carré?), the four 6” x 8” insert comics – two 8-pagers, two 16-pagers – and then the 20-page, full-size, bound in, underground-comic-book that is printed on a different, newsprinty paper stock, along with an amazing variety of art styles within.

The focus, if there is one, is on exploring through drawing, following the impulse, building on it, seeing where and how far it will go.  The results of these explorations range from work focused on the process(es) and their production of imagery to observational drawing to caricatured cartooning and through straight-up sequential comics all the way to mythographic world building.  It’s all here.

The editing, curation and sequencing have a DJ vibe, making for an experience that’s part reading, part gallery exhibit, part dance party/rave.  Taken as an organic whole, it feels like being led on a tour of the hive mind.  Moving through the book is like being led deeper and deeper into the swarm, until reaching the pulsing center in the sequence of Andy Cahill, Lukas Weidinger, Marc Bell & Christian Schumann and Trenton Doyle Hancock, and then being slowly led back out again.

And, a special highlight for us here at Copacetic is Theo Ellsworth's 10-page, full color meta-story, "Hyper Curious” which covers all the bases, providing an internalized avatar for the reader, and then proceeding to insert it into a story that could be taken as a narrative of the experience of reading the book being read; worlds within worlds.

Alive Outside is a work that pulls you in, and that you will find yourself returning to – dipping in, flipping through and/or poring over – to fathom its mysteries and find clues for existing today.

Neoglyphic has this to say about their creation:

"ALIVE OUTSIDE: An anthology to obliterate the impending monoculture! A convergence of new voices joining verifiable legends, all tearing at the walls of expectation. Cultural innovation as an impulse. Algorithmically-born tastemaking be damned! This is elemental vitality pressed into a wood pulp manifesto for the messy comedy of creation ~”

ALIVE OUTSIDE collects previously unpublished work from an international cast of artists, including:

Aapo Rapi, Aaron Rossner, Andy Cahill, Angela Fanche, Becchi Ayumi, Bridget Trout, Christian Schumann, Clayton Schiff, Dongery, Doug Allen, Dylan Jones, Eden Veaudry, J Bradley Johnson, Jordan Rae Herron, Joe Grillo, Joey Haley, Julie Doucet, Julien Ceccaldi, Kari Cholnoky, Keith Jones, Leomi Sadler, Lilli Carre, Lukas Weidinger, Marc Bell, Mark Connery, Matt Lock, Poncili Creation, Roman Muradov, Ron Rege Jr., Shoboshobo, Steven M. Johnson, Susan Te Kahurangi King, Theo Ellsworth, Trenton Doyle Hancock

Edited by Cullen Beckhorn and Marc Bell

248 pages, multiple inset booklets, mixed-process 6-color offset, and extraneous Risograph materials; produced in an edition of 900 copies (not many left as of year-end 2025  >> hint, hint << )

You can dig deeper into this book – and its lineage – by reading Tegan O'Neil's enthusiastic in-depth review up on TCJ.com, HERE.

>>> And, anyone so inclined can now get into the granular details of this anthology's creation (and reception) in an interview with Cullen and Marc conducted by Bill Boichel for TCJ, HERE.

Also:  a great gift item for the adventurous art comics reader.

 

Bridget Trout’s Sex Work / Working Dogs is boldly cartooned satire of the American workplace that posits work as sex as work on the A-side, with a dogs as bosses role reversal on the flipside.
 

Its double-sided, digest-sized, 69 format and color saturated artwork printed on newsprint is highly reminiscent – and a welcome revival – of the aesthetic of Ben Jones & Jessica Ciocci’s Cartoon Workshop / Pig Tales. 

Making a mockery of the corporate workplace and having fun while doing it!

 

Check out a few choice spreads from this book – along with some from its Neoglyphic co-release, Juliette Collet's Ms. Understood – HERE.

š! #58 '18+', January 2026

WARNING: Explicit contents

Yes, you've guessed it, the "18+" of the title refers to the "adults only" status of the material herein presented.  We'd say that, certainly for the most part, the material on hand here is "explicit" – in that in includes portrayals of adult sexual activities – but not pornographic. Of course the definition of pornography is, famously, determined by the eyes of the beholder.  So, you'll have to decide for yourself!

Cover: Bridget Trout (Canada) Contributors: Angela Fanche (USA), Bridget Trout (Canada), Elina Braslina (Latvia), Ernests Klavins (Latvia), Harukichi (Japan), Jouko Nuora (Finland), Konig Lu. Q. (Switzerland), Ksenija Tarasova (Latvia), Lorenzo Gagliardi (Italy), Majenye (Venezuela), Martina Sarritzu (Italy), Marija Luize Melke (Latvia), Martins Zutis (Latvia), Maybelline Skvortzoff (France), Morgane Somville (Belgium), Sarune Neciunaite (Lithuania), sleepyhouse2 (USA), Takayo Nishimura (Japan).

Format: A6, 164 pages, full-color, perfect bound, printed on FSC certified Munken paper in Latvia

We've posted a gallery of images from this volume, along with several other new Kuš Comics releases, on the copacetic Tumblr, HERE!