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Cartoon Dialectics 2: Apocalypse Is The Suburb Of Utopia

The new issue of Cartoon Dialectics is almost here! We were able to score a leftover batch of Pantone 804 fluorescent ink for the cover! It should be the perfect radioactive glow for the nihilistic content inside!

Table of contents:

  1. Cover
  2. Your Mind is a Vast Landscape by Adalbert Arcane. New spatial analysis of the mind and the comics medium. Co-presented by Omniversity. Illustrated Mind-Scape by Tom Kaczynski.
  3. Trans Terra Continues: The End of the World and the Typical Post Apocalyptic Scenario
  4. Eschatological Book Club with Ransom Strange
  5. Trans Terra Continues: The Ignoble End of Igloo City
  6. Extinction Level Events: We Are Elementals
  7. Trans Terra Continues: Continent Wrecked on a Mysterious Island
  8. Aesthetic Education: Man / God
  9. Indicia: Language as World
  10. Uncivilized Books Paid Advertising + Mechanics of Enjoyment
  11. Back Cover Motto: Apocalypse Is The Suburb of Utopia and A New Logos For The Anthropocene
Preorder Cartoon Dialectics 2

The first 200 orders get a signed print. The first 50 get print + sticker!

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Cartoon Dialectics #1

I bring my cartoon-theoretical focus on contemporary neuroses, obsessions, and contradictions. Did you know about the 36th CHAMBER OF COMMERCE? Get productivity tips from a master of Shaolin kung fu! Is there any possibility of Utopia after an orgy of modernity? What are komicxs? Irreverent, funny, and DINKy-award-winning Cartoon Dialectics becomes a regular series.

Buy Cartoon Dialectics #1 by Tom Kaczynski
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Cartoon Dialectics Vol. 3 | Best of 2018 | Preview

cartoon dialectics vol 3

It’s difficult to hype your own work. I should know, I started a whole publishing company just to avoid hyping my own work! But, it’s very gratifying to see your own work on any best of list. When the list written by a writer you admire, well that’s even better! Cartoon Dialectics Vol. 3 makes it on the Best of 2018 list at Your Chicken Enemy. Here’s what they have to say:

Cartoon Dialectics #3 looks like a humble, unobtrusive work– it’s packaged like a zine, printed in purple, black and white with an occasional splash of yellow on somewhat thick, matte paper. But what Tom Kaczynski and Clara Jetsmark provide between its covers is powerful, invigorating stuff, connecting the dots between our society’s retromania and the rise of neo-fascism, while also acknowledging how easy it is for anyone to fall prey to the dangerous allure of nostalgia.

[…]

Bold in its aesthetic and literal simplicity and paradoxically educational and surreal, Cartoon Dialectics #3 did a far better job investigating where we are now and why in its few pages than the entirety of the New York Times this year.

Nick Hanover

A big thank you goes to The Nib for commissioning the piece in the first place. Another big thank you goes to Clara Jetsmark who bravely agreed to draw it on a very tight deadline when I ended swamped with other work.

Here’s a short few page preview of this comic for those who haven’t seen it yet:

cartoon dialectics vol 3

You can order a copy here:

Order Cartoon Dialectics Vol. 3
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Cartoon Dialectics Vol. 1 Back In Print!

While digging through my originals (available for sale here: batch 1 and batch 2, more soon!) I found a bunch of original unused letterpress covers for Cartoon Dialectics Vol. 1! That means I can bring a small edition of these back into print! It’s been sold out for close to two years. I don’t know how many times people have asked me about it at shows. I’m happy to make more! I should be able to get about 40-50 copies made from these. Did I already mention they’re letterpress? It’s the fourth ever comic published on Uncivilized Books! Go get ’em!

Oh, and the original art from this issues’ key story, ‘Ransom Strange,’ is available here: page 1 & page 2.

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Football Madness

As we slide deeper into the quadrennial football madness I get seized with a major case of Nostalgia. I played football as kid in Poland, but pretty much stopped when I moved to the US. Now I rarely think about football… except during the World Cup every four years. Above is the only football related illustration I ever drew (I think?). It was for the beautifully designed Green Soccer Journal. It maybe the best looking sports publication ever! It was a pretty fun assignment. And now it can the perfect gift for a FIFA World Cup obsessed football fan! The only other time I referred to football in print was in this very old (1996) comic (reprinted in Cartoon Dialectics 2). Who are you rooting for?

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Recent Press

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I probably don’t do this sort of thing enough… but here are a few recent reviews of my work I was alerted to, or have stumbled upon:

“Still, though not quite successful on a philosophical level, it’s a lovely-looking strip, with judiciously chosen images representing the various ideas and idea-spouters and Kaczynski’s precise use of thicker blacks creating a memorable Easter Island sequence.”
— on Cartoon Dialectics by Sean T. Collins

“[…]another one of his psychoeconomic fables, one where his trademark mounting sense of disconnection and dread wind their way through several symbolically engrossing episodes[…]”
— on MOME 11 by Sean T. Collins

“[…] incredibly well-written but not-very-inspiringly illustrated […]”
— on MOME 11 by Chris Estey

“Like Eightball with footnotes! (or at least, in this case, an actual bibliography.)”
— on Cartoon Dialectics

“The artist-author, like his protagonist, manages, without premeditation or planning, to discover some profound truths encoded within a corporate brand finally produced as a 21st century cave painting of blood, sweat and semiotic design at the end of a trail of excrement and allergens.”
— on MOME 11
both quotes by Chris Nakashima-Brown

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Cartoon Dialectics Vol 1 – New Edition

cartoon_dialectics_cover_2.jpg

I’ve finally had a chance to put together a new edition of Cartoon Dialectics Vol 1. This new edition debuted at Stumptown a few weeks ago, but I didn’t manage to make enough copies to offer online… until now. The cover is brand new and was silkscreened by the talented Squad 19. This is a good time to mention a not-full-on review of the book that appeared quite some time ago on the excellent ComicsComics site. I don’t think I’ve linked it before, now I have. Get your copy here.