The wait is over. Jordan Crane's long sold-out Uptight issues #1 and 2 (plus 3 and 4) are now available via comiXology for your eyes' delight. Adult melancholia and delightful all-ages adventures go side-by-side in this versatile, masterful one-man anthology in stunning black and white detail. Each volume has its own jewels like the tragic ghost story "Take Me Home" in Issue #2. A fan of The Clouds Above? Be sure to check out Simon and Jack's continueing adventures in #4. For the low price of $2.99, you can enjoy solid storytelling and exquisitely drawn comics.

 "Luscious... elegant... I fairly swooned." – The Comics Reporter

"There's something very friendly and reassuring about his drawing style. Jordan Crane is without a doubt one of the best guys in the alt comix game right now and my only criticism of him is that I wish he turned out more work. Jordan's making the comics that everyone else is trying to make but unlike them, he's succeeding at it." - Nick Gazin, Vice 

"It speaks to Crane’s versatility that he can pull off a slice-of-life relationship story and a fable in the same comic book." – Rob Clough, The Comics Journal

Today marks the same-day release of Prison Pit Book 4 from Fantagraphics in bookstores and at comiXology, we're getting into the giving swing of things. In Johnny Ryan's latest 'raging flume of blood and cum' as Joe McCullough says, we find Cannibal Fuckface has just about had it with prisoners messing with him. He discovers the only way to escape the Caligulon is to brainfuck the Slorge and create a giant, brainless oafchild that only knows how to annihilate everything in its path. 

116 gristly pages of smackdowns, foaming villians and unsympathetic bowel movements can be yours in the $12.99 book thrillbent on making sure you never touch your genitals again in the same way. Without puking. 

"There's no point in trying to explain Prison Pit. You can only experience it to understand it. Start buy buying all of them at once if you haven't yet. . . It wears its intentional stupidness and violence on its sleeve while also showing off Johnny Ryan's sophisticated sense of composition and black and white ink prettiness." -Nick Gazin, VICE

"Hey are you doing any more scary guys made out of tar ripping each other's dicks off? You know why I like those? Because you don't have to read all them stupid words and stuff. Right? Haa ha, hey Johnny wanna come over and play? Ha Ha!" - Tony Millionaire

Fantagraphics and comiXology add to your digital Love and Rockets Library today with the release of Book 2 from Locas storyline by Jaime Hernandez, The Girl from H.O.P.P.E.R.S.

The 30th anniversary Love and Rockets celebration continues with this second of three volumes collecting the adventures of the spunky Maggie; her annoying, pixie-ish best friend and sometime lover Hopey; and their circle of friends, including their bombshell friend Penny Century, Maggie's weirdo mentor Izzy -- as well as the aging but still heroic wrestler Rena Titaon and Maggie's handsome love interest, Rand Race. After Maggie the Mechanic, the first volume in this series, Hernandez refined his approach, settling on the more naturalistic environment of the fictional Los Angeles barrio, Hoppers, and the lives of the young Mexican-Americans and punk rockers who live there. At $14.99, these 290 pages will keep you entertains and intrigued for hours on end. 

"Jaime's characters are so convincing and his stories so compelling that it is easy to overlook his greatest strength: the most economically handsome drawing style in comics." - Booklist

"No one in comics has ever used the comics longform, the number of pages and the years between books, to such beautiful effect. Jaime Hernandez is comics' poet laureate of memory and meaning." - Tom Spurgeon, The Comics Reporter

In November, we are thankful for many things like a re-elected President, food and family coming together, power and heat slowly returning to New York. Fantagraphics and comiXology present a timely story to make you feel thankful for what you do have with the incredible graphic novel by visionary Chris Wright (Inkweed, 2008 from Sparkplug) called Blacklung. One of the most impressive graphic novel debuts in recent years, a sweeping, magisterially conceived, visually startling tale of violence, amorality, fortitude, and redemption, one part Melville, one part Peckinpah, all in 130 pages.

In a night of piratical treachery when an arrogant school teacher is accidentally shanghaied aboard the frigate Hand, his fate becomes inextricably fettered to that of a sardonic gangster. Dependent on one another for survival in their strange and dangerous new home, the two form an unlikely alliance as they alternately elude or confront the thieves and cutthroats that bad luck has made their companions and captors. After an act of terrible violence, the teacher is brought before the ship's captain and instructed to use his literary skills to aid him in writing his memoirs. Drown yourself in Wright's gorgeous black and white panel and watch in dark story unfold as the cross-hatched characters fulfill their destinies, available now for your digital delight. 

"It’s a graphic novel, both in its vernacular term and in a more literal sense, violent and horrible and poetic at the same time – the sort of thing McCarthy might write if he were more interested in pirates than cowboys or Appalachians." -Chris Schweizer, SCAD professor, Robot6

 

"Depressing, existential AND romantic? I couldn’t sign up quickly enough for Chris Wright’s original graphic novel debut." -Graeme McMillan, Robot6

 

Fantagraphics and Jaime Hernandez release another Love and Rockets treasure via comiXology, this time the 2012 release of God and Science: Return of the Ti-Girls. Dressing up as a superhero for Halloween? Then you can't miss this read while waiting for kids to ring your doorbell.

Originally serialized in Love and Rockets: New Stories, “Ti-Girls Adventures ” managed to be both a rollickingly creative super-hero joyride (featuring three separate super-teams and over two dozen characters) that ranged from the other side of the universe to Maggie’s shabby apartment, and a genuinely dramatic fable about madness, grief, and motherhood as Penny Century’s decades-long quest to become a genuine super-heroine are finally, and tragically, fulfilled.

This 138 page "director's cut" includes 30 new pages of story available for only $17.99. The print edition of this book moved a fan to dress up as Boot Angel, the new protagonist in the this book. You'll love it too .

 

"For what's essentially an evocative throwback to the kid's superhero comics of yore, there's a lot going on here--youth versus seasoned oldsters, absolute power corrupting absolutely, mother/child dysfunction--and it's all wrapped up in a package of terrific dialogue, stellar artwork, and enough raw fun to drown in." -Publishers Weekly

"It's only when you try to unpack the story that you realize what a graceful and economical storyteller Jaime Hernandez has become no matter what genre he might choose to utilize." -Tom Spurgeon, Comics Reporter 

Celebrating its 30th anniversary in 2012, the complete Love and Rockets library is finally going digital with this series of compact, thick, affordable, mass-market volumes that present the whole story in perfect chronological order. Fantagraphics and comiXology release the next book in Gilbert Hernadez' Love and Rockets series Human Diastrophism (following Heartbreak Soup, already available to download). Keeping with the uncomfortable themes that only October can bring, a serial killer stalks the idyllic Central American town of Palomar through 256 pages. This group of stories is Gilbert's sweeping exploration of the importance of individual human actions in a social and political environment, of our need to make our presence felt in the world, to impact the whole of humanity for the better, or just to establish a livable existence.

"Human Diastrophism," named one of the greatest comic book stories of the 20th Century by The Comics Journal, and continuing on through more modern-day classics. At $14.99 you can save that shelfspace and travel in reading style and ease.

 Also included are all the post-"Diastrophism" stories, in which Luba's past (as seen in the epic Poison River) comes back to haunt her, and the seeds are sown for the "Palomar diaspora" that ends this dense, enthralling book.

"I don't think there's ever been a greater cartooning talent in terms of what he brings the serial comic book form." – The Comics Reporter

"There's no denying that Beto's comics reflect one of the highest peaks the comics medium has yet achieved." – The Onion A.V. Club

 

Election season getting you down? Think no more of it as you download the latest in Fantagraphics and comiXology's digital storm, The Hypo by Noah Van Sciver. We can all agree that President Abraham Lincoln was a great man and leader of the country but what were the seeds that sprouted this enormous forest of a man? 

The debut graphic novel from Noah Van Sciver follows the twentysomething Abraham Lincoln as he loses everything, long before becoming our most beloved president. Lincoln is a rising Whig in the state's legislature as he arrives in Springfield, IL to practice law. With all of his possessions under his arms in two saddlebags, he is quickly given a place to stay by a womanizing young bachelor who becomes his friend and close confidant. Lincoln builds a life and begins friendships with the town's top lawyers and politicians. He attends elegant dances and meets an independent-minded young woman from a high-society Kentucky family, and after a brisk courtship, becomes engaged. But, as time passes and uncertainty creeps in, young Lincoln is forced to battle a dark cloud of depression brought on by a chain of defeats and failures culminating into a nervous breakdown that threatens his life and sanity. This cloud of dark depression Lincoln calls "The Hypo."

Dense crosshatching and an attention to detail help bring together this completely original telling of a man driven by an irrepressible desire to pull himself up by his bootstraps, overcome all obstacles, and become the person he strives to be. All the while unknowingly laying the foundation of character he would use as one of America's greatest presidents. Available for purchase at comiXology today!

"Noah Van Sciver has brought new soul to this hard, weird time in Lincoln's life. The Hypo is a story of suffering & yearning, artfully told." -Joshua Wolf Shenk, author of Lincoln's Melancholy

"A thoroughly engaging graphic novel that seamlessly balances investigation and imagination." -Publishers Weekly

"[Van Sciver renders] an American icon as a lumpen everyman, fighting through the same fog that many people find themselves in—even if few of those ordinary folks wind up in the Oval Office." -Noel Murray, AV Club

 

Just in time for the presidential debates and November election season, Fantagraphics and comiXology are proud to release the brand new Barack Hussein Obama for digial download. Steven Weissman's surreal view on the time and the powerful man in the world is too funny to be true. This book represents a whole, fully-realized parallel America, a dada-esque, satirical vision that is no more cockeyed than the real thing, its weirdness no more weird, its vision of the world no more terrifying, where the zombie-esque simulacra of Joe Biden and Hillary and Newt and Obama wander, if not exactly through the corridors of power, through an America they made and have to live in, like it or not. The book twists and turns with regular beats and mini-adventures including a feathered-Obama.

Didn't Mitt Romney mention shutting down or killing a 'Big Bird' of some kind? Don't let Malia or Sasha Obama hear that. In Weissman's universe, they are unstoppable, punny forces of nature running around in a Nancy-Drew fashion.

Before you lose your will to vote, read Barack Hussein Obama, now available via comiXology.

"Barack Hussein Obama is brave, smart, humane, exciting and funny." - Bill Kartalopoulos 

 

This week it is time for terror in an uncomfortable way what only Hans Rickheit can create. All 161 pages of Folly: Consequences of Indiscretion is now available via comiXology to haunt you. This volume is a steam punk descendent of the counterculture comics of the '60s, and is as wildly imaginative and richly artistic as it is subversively sexual and violent.

 This digital edition includes an exclusive story, "Sigmund Freud," a tribute to Jack Kirby which does not appear in the print edition! Originally distributed into the world as Xeroxed pamphlets, these "underground comix" reflect the true nature of its nomenclature: Here are the archeological findings of the subterranean ruins of the psyche. Finally, these scattered elements have been compiled into a compact, lushly illustrated bedside reader. Give your cerebellum a tug and become a spelunker of the subconscious as we trespass among the scorched archaic wastelands of the offspring of apes and fools. Here we find the profane, beautiful progeny of prurient ideals. Immerse yourself in the nocturnal meanderings of unnamed protagonists. Ponder the uncomfortable sexuality of the twins, Cochlea & Eustachia. Recoil at the doings of a dwarfish malefactor in "Hail Jeffrey," or simply stare at the pretty pictures. Suffice to say that readers of The Squirrel Machine will not be disappointed especially for only $18.99.

When asked about his work, Rickheit instructs you not misuse this tome. Keep it as your own cherished object; a shameful, guarded secret. The filter for reality’s blinding glare. Detritus of the Under-Brain. The Unspeakable Thing You Always Knew.

"It's as if other masters of visual bodyhorror — Cronenberg, Burns, Dan Clowes, Tarsem Singh — are weird by choice. Rickheit, it seems, just can't help it. There's a conviction to his creepiness, a compulsive nature even in his early draftsmanship." -S.I. Rosenbaum, The Boston Phoenix

In the third series of comics to be released digitally after Love and Rockets going digital, Johnny Ryan's favorite thing to draw in a public restroom critically-acclaimed humor series Angry Youth Comix #8-10 are now available to download via comiXology joining the previous issues from last week. Ryan's work is too hot to handle for iTunes so use your comiXology apps on whatever retina-burning device you prefer. $1.99 can't even buy good laxatives to put in your friend's beer but it can purchase you some excellent comics. $2.99 gets you gut-and-butt-busting issue 10 with 52 pages!

Battling butlers and cover-to-cover, ass-to-ass gags are found in these volumes, issue 10 has been sold out for a few years. Fans of South Park, Beavis & Butt-head, and Jackass simply must discover the steaming ass-genius that is Johnny Ryan and Angry Youth Comix.

"Let me tell you something: In this increasingly cynical world of happily self-imposed isolation and sneering judgement, one graphicish novella, with pixie-like tickles, appears through the misty mist to take us all by the hand gently unto the night. You hold in your hand that very thing. Johnny Ryan's Angry Youth Comix. Now go away." – David Cross