On the Coffee Table: Copper

Title: Copper

Writer and Artist: Kazu Kibuishi

via Goodreads

Copper is a web comic by Kazu Kibuishi, the creator of the Amulet series and other projects.  Each story is a Sunday newspaper-style comic strip.  Homages to the classics are clearly evident.  Copper's relationship with his dog Fred is highly reminiscent of that between Calvin and Hobbes, though Copper's older and mellower than Calvin and Fred's more pessimistic than Hobbes.  The jagged black strip against yellow of Charlie Brown's traditional garb is a frequent visual motif.  Fred is sort of the anti-Snoopy.  

Some of the strips are set in the "real world" but many inhabit trippy dreamscapes: a first-person shooter game (where Copper gets too caught up in admiring the scenery), a world of mushrooms, surreal abstraction.  In a couple of stories, they go surfing.  My two favorite strips are "Waterfall" and "Good Life," both CalvinHobbesesque tramps through the woods.  Kizuishi shares a love of funky flying contraptions with Hayao Miyazaki and I sense some artistic influence as well.

I would describe the driving philosophy as happy fatalism which I learned of years ago from John Irving's Hotel New Hampshire.  According to Irving: "The way the world worked was not cause for some sort of blanket cynicism or sophomoric despair... the way the world worked – which was badly – was just a strong incentive to live purposefully, and to be determined about living well."

Kibuishi closes with an artistic process section, material I always enjoy.  

Overall, Copper is a fun, quick, rewarding read.