Following up an exciting summer of digital releases by a variety of Fantagraphics authors, today Love and Rockets: New Stories #5 is on bookshelves and digital bookshelves worldwide. But it is not alone. For newcomers, long-time fans and people who need to move across the country with ease, Fantagraphics announces the new digital release of the first two volumes from the Love and Rockets Library. Maggie the Mechanic by Jaime Hernandez and Heartbreak Soup by Gilbert Hernandez are now also available for download. These volumes assemble the Hernandez Brothers work seperately in perfect chronological order and the intuitive Guided View by comiXology smoothly sends the reader from one beautiful panel to the next.

In Heartbreak Soup, we visit the small Central American town of Palomar and Gilbert's main cast of characters as children. High drama and strong emotions permeate this 288-page volume from "Sopa de Gran Pena" to the great love story "For the Love of Carmen." Maggie the Mechanic follows Maggie and her best friend and sometimes lover, Hopey, and their circle of friends with strong sci-fi stories by Jaime. Gan favorites wrestler Rena Titañon and Maggie's handsome love interest, Rand Race, appear all over this 272-page digital premiere.

For those of you caught up on the story, Love and Rockets: New Stories #5 collects the newest comics by the Hernandez Brothers! Jaime focuses on less-seen characters Frogmouth and her half-sister, Tonta, while Gilbert views the town of Palomar through the seemingly superficial lens of Hollywood all in 102 pages.

For the low and lovely price of $14.99 you can purchase the beginning of a series that is still going strong after thirty years. Head over to comiXology today and find out why readers, creators and retailers all over are mohawked-head over booted heels for Love and Rockets.

"The Love and Rockets Vol. 1 reprints may be my favorite publishing project of the last five years, and there are a lot of fine projects going on... the smaller, bargain-priced volumes [are] the perfect vehicle for that material, the best comics series of all time." – Tom Spurgeon, The Comics Reporter

"I've never seen anything else in comics — I guess there might be something in literature — but in comics there's never been anybody that's touched what the Hernandez brothers have." – Robert Crumb

"An addictive soap opera, replete with humor and heart." – The Washington Post

The newest hazelnuttiest spread of Online Commentaries & Diversions:

• Interview: Publishers Weekly and James Romberger stop Gary Panter during his busy drawing and teaching schedule to ask him questions about Dal Tokyo. Panter is quoted, "Being that this intends to be an experimental approach to comic making and drawing, like the Jimbo in Purgatory book, I don't expect the reader to get a normal story experience or the satisfaction that comes from skillful story traditional development. I hope the reader will get something else that they never got from a comic before: evidence of an investigation into the ways and means of cartooning and maybe a dizzy feeling."

• Review: Originally published in Danish in 2005, this review of Jimbo in Purgatory by Gary Panter was just translated into English on The Metabunker. Matthias Wivel says, "With humor and a spectacular visual imagination, Panter serves up a lavish and remarkably generous, but never chaotic book that reminds us of the way in which truth emerges socially –moved by the power of will, thought, and faith."

• Plug: Robot 6 weekly column 'Food or Comics?' mention picking up copies of  Mattotti's The Crackle of the Frost, Joost Swarte's Is that all there Is , the Hernandez Brothers' Love and Rockets New Stories #5 but mostly about the Fantagraphics-distributed book The Cavalier Mr. Thompson. "If I could splurge, I’d get go in with my fellow Food or Comic writers and get Cavalier Mr. Thompson by Rich Tommaso. . . . A 1920s crime story set on the dusty oil fields of West Texas? Sweet Jesus, this sounds great. And you can quote me on that, Fantagraphics," said Chris Arrant. Joe McCullough does something very similar over at The Comics Journal.

• Review: Publishers Weekly reviews Jorge Zentner and Lorenzo Mattotti's Crackle of the Frost. "Despite the depressing story line, Mattotti’s truly inspired lines, expressive forms, and wild visual imagination will captivate."

The humming un-tested electric fence of Online Commentaries & Diversions:

• Review: The Comics Journal reviews Dal Tokyo by Gary Panter. Joshua Glenn writes, "Panter’s draughtsmanship is fluid and permeable, it changes from week to week. . . Some installments are so crammed with detail and extraneous scribbles that the eye can’t possibly take it all in; others are stripped down, emptied out, haiku-like. In short, Dal Tokyo is absurd, unimaginable, and perfect."

• Interview: Jason Sacks from the Comics Bulletin caught up with Gary Panter at his Fantagraphics Bookstore signing this weekend and asked him some questions about Dal Tokyo: "I think that Dal Tokyo, because it's experimental, it's continually reminding you that it's being made. Whereas most comics they're trying to draw you into the illusion and keep you there. That's what comics are supposed to do and that's what popular comics do," Sacks points out.

• Review: North Adams Transcript looks and looks and looks again at Sexytime edited by Jacques Boyreau. John Seven laments, "The posters are the ephemera of an artifact called the porn theater that lurks in my ‘70s childhood. A place where sleaze was visible, but contained. . .If you can deal with it, "Sexytime" is a fun and often ridiculous reminder of a world that seemed so dangerous when many of us were kids, but is now gone."

• Review: Nick Gazin on Vice reviews Tales Designed to Thrizzle #8 by Michael Kupperman: "It really feels like something you would dream about, except it is loaded with guffaws. . . This whole comic is basically the best ideas you've never thought of. After reading it you'll be all, 'That is so clever, why didn't I think of it? AND THESE JOKES!' "

• Plug: Rob at Panel Patter goes over some of the books he's looking forward to at SPX this month. "The Hypo is the book I'm most looking forward to. The deep thinker Noah Van Sciver taking on deep thinker Abraham Lincoln at the lowest point in his life?  SOLD." And Tales Designed to Thrizzle #8 "finishes up the quirky comic from new Panel Patter favorite Michael Kupperman.  It's sure to be packed full of hysterical mashups and general insanity, based on pop culture and puns, both new and old."

• Review: Publishers Weekly reviews No Straight Lines again and is quite happy: ". . . who the volume is aimed at—the LGBT audience or a much wider one? Editor [Justin] Hall guns for the latter, but without softening the edges that define the genre, and he’s quite successful."

• Review: The SFCrowsNest reviews oldie-but-a-goodie The Hidden by Richard Sala. Aidan Fortune says, "The use of watercolours in the art gives it a children’s storybook feel that will stir up memories of reading horror stories underneath the covers by torchlight. Despite this warm look, ‘The Hidden’ is gripping, chilling and certainly not for children."

• Review: Dave's Strange World looks at Kevin Avery's Everything is an Afterthought, "Everything is an Afterthought is a loving tribute to a writer who deserved bigger and better success than his demons would allow. It’s clear from the testimonials and interviews given for this book how loved [Paul] Nelson was by his colleagues and friends."

 The cleanest sock you've never lost of Online Commentaries & Diversions:

• Review: The Comics Journal and Tucker Stone hit up two of our books this week. Stone lauds Jacques Tardi's New York Mon Amour, "The later three stories are all excellent installments in the various ways the city can grind you into oblivion. . . " And on the subject of The Furry Trap by Josh Simmons, "There’s been a solid amount of recommendations already for this volume, and there’s not going to be any contrarian tut-tutting to be found here: this is worth reading, owning, and possibly gifting . . . having this much nasty in one hardcover is a reading experience like no other, and one you’d do well to deny not one minute longer."

• Review: The Comics Reporter reviews Lorenzo Mattotti and Jorge Zentner's latest translated collaboration. "The Crackle Of The Frost finds an elegant balance between abstraction and more traditional cartoon rendering. . . it's fully realized, and satisfying, and occasionally beautiful."

• Review: The Library Journal sent us this review of The Hypo by Noah Van Sciver, M. C. says "Perhaps our most beloved president, Abraham Lincoln threatens merely to disappear into sainthood for most of us. Van Sciver has made him real by portraying one of the most difficult times in the future leader’s younger life. . .  It’s rather like an American version of Dickens infused into a Jane Austen love story, and Van Sciver’s moody cross-hatching works exceedingly well in showing these lesser-known facets of Lincoln’s nonpolitical life. . . An excellent choice for compelling leisure reading as well as for use in classrooms."

• Review: Comics Bulletin covers what goes on under the covers of Sexytime edited by Jacques Boyreau. Jason Sacks says, "Sexytime is a glorious representation of work that was forgotten shortly after it was created, but is full of joyful reminders of the recent past. . .Oh god! Oh god! Oh god! Yes! Yes! Yes! is this a great book." 

Need a reason to diddle around with our sexiest release this year SEXYTIME? Check out these photos from the official release party at The Horse Hospital in London at the end of August. These ladies love these over-the-top porn movie posters of the era! They are gathered around "Teenage Sex-Kitten" and "The Whisle Blower," which features one of the best uses of accidental-on-purpose testicles.

If brazen sexuality paired with old-school hand design is your thing then you must get your recently-washed hands on this book of pristinely re-mastered movie posters from the golden age of American porn. Launch party attendees flip through the books after seeing the posters.

Phone pics of "JUICE," which features the best use of the color white.

The quiet before the sex storm.

The exhibition ran through September 1st but guess what? You can buy the HOLE kit and kaBOOBle from us for a mere $29.99. See what I did there? I hope so because it really hurt to type - although you might be able to find a poster about a typing fetish in Sexytime. There's only one way to find out!

 The sing-song-i-est new Online Commentaries & Diversions:

• Review: Drawn Blog features a review of Steven Weissman's Barack Hussein Obama. Dustin Harbin says, "[the comics] seem less humorous and more like the slow aggregation of a large portrait, maybe not of the man, but of the time the man is living in." 

• Review: The Comics Reporter confirms that Dal Tokyo by Gary Panter is THE book to buy this week. Tom Spurgeon states, "This is really the only book you need this week . . . I've been wanting to read a collected version of Gary Panter's strip for a time longer than all about a dozen personal relationships I currently have."

• Review (audio): This week on Inkstuds, Robin McConnell interviews Eye of the Majestic Creature 's Leslie Stein. 

• Plug: Lots of book lust on the Collected Comics Library for the EC Library editions coming out soon featuring work from like Came the Dawn by  Wally Wood, Corpse on the Imjin! by Harvey Kurtzman and future reprints from Al Williamson and Jack Davis. Chris Marshall says, "EC Archives are Dead! Long Live the EC Library!"

• Plug: The sweet people over at Robot 6 on Comic Book Resources started flipping through Previews and flipped out over some of our new releases. John Parkin on Walt Disney's Donald Duck: A Christmas for Shacktown by Carl Barks: "Fantagraphics continues its series of high-end collections of the best of Carl Barks’ duck stories, with the Christmas-themed third volume arriving just in time to be stuffed in somebody’s stocking." Graeme McMillan on The Love and Rockets Reader: From Hoppers to Palomar by Marc Sobel: "As a latecomer to this classic series, I’m looking forward to Marc Sobel’s look back at the first three decades of the work of Los Bros Hernandez to help me get caught up on what I missed the first time around and really need to get in collected edition. I suspect this may end up being an expensive project."

Thanks to our special SPX friend Warren Bernard for sending photos of some of our book titles given to the Enoch Pratt Library of Baltimore, MD. Above, CEO of the library, Dr. Carla Hayden, holds 21: Roberto Clemente by Wilfred Santiago and a staff favorite. The total gift was "$5000 of books, 240 books, 40 titles, part of the SPX Graphic Novel Gift Program" targeted and dispersed to public and academic library systems in the DC area. Each book will have a beautiful bookplate as seen on the SPX site. Below the library staff oogles the books including Maggie the Mechanic by Jaime Hernandez. Check out the shelves at Enoch Pratt Library for some of your favorite Fantagraphics reads.

The 1-2-3-4 color process Online Commentaries & Diversions: 

• Interview: Italy's VICE interviewed Josh Simmons on his work like The Furry Trap. Here is a snippet translated by journalist Tim Small, "In comics, I think the good horror cartoonists are few.  But I like Renee French, Junji Ito, Al Columbia, Charles Burns and Suehiro Maruo. Horror directors have probably have the most influence on me of all.  The best movies from John Carpenter, David Cronenberg, George Romero and Tobe Hooper were huge from me as a kid."

• Review: Rob Clough has more coverage than a local news team. He writes a tribute to Gilbert Hernandez and his work collected in Heartbreak Soup, Human Diastrophism, and Beyond Palomar on the High-Low, "In Gilbert's Palomar stories, there's a rawness that dominates the proceedings: raw anger, raw sexuality, raw passion for life, death and art." To round out his Love and Rockets weekend, Clough writes another High-Low review of the most recent Love and Rockets: New Stories #5 with both Gilbert and Jaime Hernandez. "Both brothers, after thirty years, are looking forward and looking back at the same time, revisiting characters on the verge of adulthood like in the earliest days of their comics (characters who were the same age as they were, essentially) while still spending time with characters who are now pushing fifty."

• Interview (audio and transcript): A work long in the making, Ron Rege was interviewed by Maria Sputnik on Gazeta Comics a few years ago about Cartoon Utopia. Rege says, "And I love it that…with comics it’s a one-on-one communication. It’s not like a bunch of people in a movie theater sitting watching the movie all at the same time. It’s one person quietly and they’re looking at exactly what I drew…The marks I made with my hand are what they’re looking at. So it’s a one-to-one communication."

• Review: In case you needed another reason to read Ghost World, Kerry looks at Daniel Clowes' masterpiece at Hello Giggles. "Enid Coleslaw remains one of the best characters I’ve ever encountered because she seems like a real person. She’s not a hero or a role model; she’s flawed and confused. She’s not a bad person, but she does bad things. She makes mistakes, alienates people and cries a lot. But she’s also funny, smart and strong."

Continuing right along with Wednesday digital comic releases Fantagraphics and comiXology are very proud and quite frankly, a little frightened, to give you Richard Sala's dangerous and deliciously frightening The Grave Robber's Daughter. Sold out in print, you can now enjoy this 97-page SCREAM of graphic novel for only 4.99 at comiXology.

The mystery starts out a little like this. Judy Drood, the highly strung and short-tempered girl sleuthomething can tell that something very wrong in the town of Obadiah's Glen. The streets are empty. The phones don't work. The cars are all gone ? and so are the people, at least most of them. The ones who are left are hiding and shivering in fear. They know it's only a matter of time before the clowns come and get them. Because the town of Obadiah's Glen now belongs to the clowns. And these clowns have a special secret, one that lies buried in the old cemetery on the hill...The Grave Robber's Daughter is a deliciously scary thrill ride from the author of the critically acclaimed horror graphic novel The Chuckling Whatsit ("A masterpiece!" ? Rue Morgue Magazine). The Grave Robber's Daughter is filled with Sala's unique blend of horror and whimsy that will please his many fans and new readers alike.

"To read a Sala comic is to walk into a baroque world of pen and ink, an experience both jarring and fun." – Publishers Weekly

"...Sala's brilliantly atmospheric art, full of shadows and spikes, is marvelously spooky." – Booklist

 The cleanest picnic blanket of Online Commentaries & Diversions:

• Review: Heroes Online covers the twenty years of Peanuts covered so far in our Fantagraphics reprints. Andy Mansell states, "I strongly recommend the following volumes: 1963-1964, 1965-1966. [and 1981-1982]. The highest point of the highest level of any cartoonist output in the last 60 odd years. Every strip is brimming with creativity, laughter, pathos and painful emotional truth."

• Review: On the High-Low, Rob Clough writes a tribute to Jaime Hernandez's collected editions; Maggie the Mechanic,  The Girl from H.O.P.P.E.R.S., Perla La Loca.  "Ultimately, there's an idealistic streak in Jaime's comics that burns through the hipster cynicism that permeates characters like Hopey and many of her friends. . . The best news about this volume is that it's only the beginning of Jaime's mature style, and he's only continued to get better."

• Review: Grovel gives the what's what on God and Science by Jaime Hernandez."While keeping the women attractive, Hernandez manages to keep them grounded too – these aren’t male fantasies but real, appropriately-proportioned women. . .and Hernandez’s superhero world is dripping with background and authenticity."

• Review: The Comic Attack sank its teeth into Prince Valiant Vol. 5 1945-1946 by Hal Foster. Drew said, "For the strip itself, Foster develops Prince Valiant into more of a mature man who we grow along with as he learns about love, women, and more than just going on adventures. . .Foster’s artwork is every definition of fantastic, still unmatched in its splendor."

• Plug: Spacehawk by Basil Wolverton mentioned on Comics Should Be Good by Comic Book Resources. Greg Burgas says, "Fantagraphics continues to do a nice job reprinting olde-tyme comix. . .very cool!" You can pre-order a copy today!

• Review: The Comic Forge covers a sold-out book Alphabetical Ballad of Carnality by David Sandlin that receives 10 shivers and shakes out of 10. Sharayah Read says, "I have never encountered a book this original, thought provoking and eye-opening. It presents a beautifully tormented tale in an entertaining and gritty fashion that will have any fan of obscure culture and works hanging onto every last syllable."

• Interview (audio): Mome veteran Gabrielle Bell talks to Wrestling Team podcast about life, comics and making it all work together.