The Complete C Comics
By (Author) Joe Brainard
By (author) Bill Kartalopoulos
New York Review Books
New York Review Books
16th December 2025
United States
General
Fiction
Hardback
200
Width 216mm, Height 305mm
In the mid-1960s, legendary artist and writer Joe Brainard (I Remember) teamed with poets such as John Ashbery, Frank O'Hara, Barbara Guest, Ron Padgett, Kenneth Koch, Ted Berrigan, and many more for these pioneering collaborative comic strips-unavailable for decades and collected here for the first time. In the mid-1960s, legendary artist and writer Joe Brainard (I Remember) teamed with poets such as John Ashbery, Frank O'Hara, Barbara Guest, Ron Padgett, Kenneth Koch, Ted Berrigan, and many more for these pioneering collaborative comic strips-unavailable for decades and collected here for the first time. "PEOPLE OF THE WORLD... RELAX!" In the creative hotbed of 1960s New York, Joe Brainard was a whirlwind. He was a maker of paintings, assemblages, collages, book covers, poetry reading fliers, and more. But some of his most exciting work was done with his friends. In 1964, the twenty-two year old Brainard turned his talents to rewiring the lowly comic book form into something new and surprising. He invited his friends Frank O'Hara, Ted Berrigan, John Ashbery, Kenneth Koch, Peter Schjeldahl, Anne Waldman, Ron Padgett, and others-all of them New York School poets-to collaborate with him on comics that they would write and he would draw. The results were unlike any comics seen before. Previously available only on the rare-book market (at very high prices) but available here under one cover for the first time, the two issues of C Comics still feel as fresh as when the first page rolled off the mimeograph machine over sixty years ago. Brainard's energetic line and joyful humor charge across every page, illustrating Frank O'Hara's recasting of a cowboy as a mash note-writing lover, Ron Padgett's experiments with traditional cartoon sound effects (ROAR! GRRR! SKREE!), surprising cameos by Ernie Bushmiller's Nancy, and heaps of Dadaesque delights. This edition includes a foreword from Padgett and an essay by comics historian Bill Kartalopolous, who details the creation (and creators) of C Comics. A masterpiece of collaboration and spontaneity, C Comics is a testament to the vastness of Brainard's creativity and his ability to push any artistic form in a new and powerful direction.
Joe Brainard (1942-1994) was an artist and writer known for his groundbreaking assemblages, drawings, and paintings, and for his influential memoir I Remember. Bill Kartalopoulos is a New York-based comics critic, educator, curator, and editor. Ron Padgett, a prize-winning poet and translator, has translated the poetry of Pierre Reverdy, Valery Larbaud, Blaise Cendrars, and, for NYRB Poets, Apollinaire. Pink Dust, his most recent collection of poems, is available from NYRB Poets. He lives in Vermont and New York City.