Cicadas is the brainchild of Riley Gale, who in addition to being a widely known, admired and loved musician, was very much a comics fan (and had visited Copacetic on occasion, when in town on tour with his band, Power Trip).  Begun before the pandemic put it on hold, the idea was to cross fertilize the worlds of thrash metal and alternative comics, and particularly to introduce Power Trip fans to the work of Riley's favorite comics artists via the mercha table.  After his death in the summer of 2020, this project might never have been completed if not for the commitment of his friends in both the music world and the comics world, who all came together to make it happen. 

A squarebound magazine-size softcover, featuring work in both black and white and full color, and printed on nice flat white stock (with a few stories employing a paper tone underlayer), Cicadas is a great collection, featuring new work by many Copacetic faves.  While a wide variety of stories are on hand here, with stories involving interplanetary travel, post-apocalypse mutant wars, cloud-computer-based robot life forms, and a variety of alien life forms, it is clear that science fiction / fantasy is the dominant mode.  Even within these tales the mood ranges widely, from bright to dark, from lusty to deadly.  Overall, the tone of the stories assembled in Cicadas ranges from political to philosophical while the focus ranges from action to reflection, from critical to exuberant from serious to zany, and it closes on a note of unmitigated terror.