An all-new, 32 page floppy comic book from Fantagraphics.  Underground and horror comics traditions merge in this creepy book full of suffering and angst.  Immerse your pain in the Insect Bath...

What goes around, comes around, and here we are back at square one with the "issue zero" of Slow Death, one of the longest running titles of the original wave of underground comix, premiering in 1970.  Here we have a 128 page softcover trade edition filled with all new comics work (and one Crumb reprint), in (mostly) full color and black and white.  Featuring a host of Slow Death alumni along with a few fresh faces from the newer generations of cartoonists, the stories here address climate change and impending doom in one way or another, and to varying degrees of ghastliness (although WIlliam Stout's opening contribution starts things off on a relatively optimistic note).  This anthology includes what must be one of the very last stories Richard Corben drew, which is fitting given his long association with the title. 

It's about time... for the new Now.  The twelfth issue is a mind bender with perhaps the widest ranging material yet.  From the rhythmic abstractions of Cynthia Alfonso's "untitled" to the old school satire, "The Cartoonist" by Matt Lawton and Peter Bagge, this issue spans the generations and the form itself.  The æsthetic center on which the issue pivots is Kayla E.'s "Precious Rubbish", a series of post-modern mash-ups that bring together a variety of texts ranging from personal reminiscences to the Old and New Testaments and combining them with her personal, signature-style comics, here largely derived from a selection of old school comic book pages, including several from Matt Baker's Canteen Kate (!).

Many readers will get their first look at the piercingly acute and dizzyingly strange artwork of Bhanu Pratap in his story, "Big Head Pointy Nose" which is the first work of his we've seen in color. 

Francois Vigneault's "The Bird Is Gone" is a moving tale of the passing of the Passenger Pigeon.  No matter how many times you hear, see or read the facts that are related in this story, it always boggles the mind.

For us here at Copacetic, #12's highlight is Tim Lane's "Li'l Stevie", a hybrid work that seems to synthesize Chris Ware’s Jimmy Corrigan and Peter Blegvad’s Leviathan  – with a dash of Al Columbia’s Pim & Francie – and then graft it all onto Ernie Bushmiller’s early period Fritzy Ritz and Nancy in order to create a dark, drunken and twisted, but pathos laden – and still very Tim Lane – Golden Age comics take on... Steve McQueen's childhood.  This work won't appeal to everyone, but those who think this sounds up their alley won't want to miss it.

Another great issue of Now!

Already out of print!  BUT, we have two copies remaining...

The spirit of alternative comics journalism has been championed by Leonard Rifas for close to half a century now, and he's still at it!  Here in the pages of Ground Zero Comics, he and a multi-generational team of alt comics creators have put together an informative – if terrifying – look at the reality of what nuclear war means to the rest of us (i.e., those not in the military).  It's important – if hugely depressing – to have at least a rudimentary grasp of the reality of nuclear weapons, as we all live with them every day.  Ground Zero Comics does the job – with a special focus on Seattle in both employing it as the theoretical "target city" for the purposes of showing the effects of a single nuclear bomb and also because the city is adjacent to the U.S. Navy's Bangor Trident Submarine Base, which, according to Rifas, contains the "world's largest arsenal of ready-to-use nuclear weapons."