Here's a chance to catch up with Leomi (aka Leon) Sadler and take a deep dive into what they've been up to lately, in this full colour collection just released by the UK's Breakdown Press, who have this to say about it:

“You never know what you’re gonna step in next.”

The stories inside Tummy Bugs are by turn absurd, surreal and funny. Short luridly coloured vignettes transport the reader into a deeply individual landscape, populated by strange creatures, where the line between fantasy, reality and science fiction is constantly shifting.

Leomi Sadler has been a cult figure in the alternative comics scene for over a decade, running the critically acclaimed publisher Famicon Express. Sadler’s commercial illustration work has seen them collaborate with Givenchy, Nike and Vice Magazine as their artistic tendrils continue to extend beyond comics and into the worlds of fashion and contemporary art.

Sadler’s comics work has previously only seen the light of day in glimpses. Small print runs of self-published zines and in prestigious anthologies like Kramer’s Ergot or Lagon Revue. With Tummy Bugs, Breakdown Press aims to bring Sadler’s unique vision to its widest audience yet.

190 x 260mm -- 96 pages -- offset printed on semi-gloss stock -- paperback -- ISBN 978-1-9110811-2-8

Tummy Bugs was printed by offset lithography at Printon Trükikoda AS in Estonia.

16 pages of riotous, full color comics, printed on magazine-size, white newsprint, from Leomi Sadler.

BACK IN STOCK!

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.

Here's a standard format comic book that is anything but a standard comic book.

TBC sez:

We are exceedingly pleased to offer a Toy Box edition of this title! Mr. Birthdaycake goes down as one of the most mind boggling comics to ever touch paper. IMMEDIATELY filed in the hall of the Heta-Uma pantheon of brain destroyed graphics alongside King Terry, Ebisu, and Gary Panter. This is one for the history books! Unholy logic, barnyard freakouts, horrible coffee, goblins, terror, stress, all rendered in a beautifully blunt line, collaged over when necessary. If you’re going to take a chance on a comic, make this the one!

32pages black & white, high gloss color cover, staple bound.