Wednesday is here yet again and we have a new digital release through comiXology just for you. A visionary work of comic art for all-ages: Portable Frank. Readers who haven't discovered Jim Woodring's Frank stories have a colossal treat waiting for them in this all-ages gem collecting the character's greatest adventures.

Frank is a unique, visionary comic, exquisitely drawn and so fully realized that adults and children alike find themselves drawn deeply into Woodring's hallucinatory mindscape. The stories, almost entirely wordless, unravel like a good puzzle, rewarding re-reading, providing an experience as immersive as that first love affair, that first samadhi, or that first breath. Simply put, the world of Frank must be experienced to be understood. For all its mystery, the world of Frank is a simple, delightful, mesmerizig example of world-building at its most fanciful, surely to delight parents and children alike, for only $14.99 at comiXology.

"The ancient myths and folk tales of all cultures which have been preserved for so many centuries have meaning for us today because the fantastic elements in them are rooted in immutable reality. The Frank stories belong to this class of literature." – Francis Ford Coppola

"Jim Woodring may be the most important cartoonist of his generation. The Frank stories are masterpieces, each and every one. Read them. Re-read them. Re-re-read them. Every cell in your body will remember this spellbinding, visionary work." – Scott McCloud

Since Fantagraphics and comiXology shook hands that fateful weekend last summer, the hits just keep a-galloping through the gate. Here are the books we have kickin' around in our digital stable ready to be rode hard, combed down and fed oats (in the form of your high-star ratings).

Here's a run-down of the digital comics we currently have available to read on your tablets, iPads, eReaders, myPads, ThinkTouches and more. Click on titles to be taken to their page at comiXology.

Life is Rough and Tales of Misspent Youth

Cruisin' with the Hound by Spain Rodriguez
7 Miles a Second by David Wojnarowicz, James Romberger, and Marguerite Van Cook

 
Night Fisher by R. Kikuo Johnson
Bottomless Belly Button by Dash Shaw

Tales to scare you, like rip your face off scary

Folly by Hans Rickheit
The Grave Robber's Daughter by Richard Sala

Dark tales on a journey

Blacklung by Chris Wright
Weathercraft by Jim Woodring

Michael Kupperman's comedy hour: Tales Designed to Thrizzle 

 
Tales Designed to Thrizzle Vol. One by Michael Kupperman
Tales Designed to Thrizzle Vol. Two by Michael Kupperman
Individual issues of Tales Designed to Thrizzle also available

Johnny Ryan's yukks, chuckles and face punches

Prison Pit: Book One by Johnny Ryan
Prison Pit: Book Two by Johnny Ryan

 
Prison Pit: Book Three by Johnny Ryan
Prison Pit: Book Four by Johnny Ryan

Angry Youth Comix Issues 1-14 by Johnny Ryan

Historical and Presidential comics

The Hypo: The Melancholic Young Lincoln by Noah Van Sciver
Barack Hussein Obama by Steven Weissman

No Straight Line: Four Decades of Queer Comics edited by Justin Hall
Oil and Water by Steve Duin and Shannon Wheeler

Love and Rockets' Palomar series by Gilbert Hernandez

 
Heartbreak Soup (Love and Rockets: Palomar Book 1) by Gilbert Hernandez
Human Diastrophism (Love and Rockets: Palomar Book 2) by Gilbert Hernandez

Beyond Palomar (Love and Rockets: Palomar Book 3) by Gilbert Hernandez
Amor Y Cohetes by Gilbert and Jaime Hernandez

Love and Rockets' Locas series by Jaime Hernandez

 
Maggie the Mechanic by Jaime Hernandez
The Girl from H.O.P.P.E.R.S. (Love and Rockets: Locas Book 2) by Jaime Hernandez

Perla La Loca (Love and Rockets: Locas Book 3) by Jaime Hernandez
Penny Century (Love and Rockets: Locas Book 4) by Jaime Hernandez

Esperanza (Love and Rockets: Locas Book 5) by Jaime Hernandez
Amor Y Cohetes by Jaime Hernandez

Love and Rockets New Stories

 
Love and Rockets New Stories: #1-5 by Jaime and Gilbert Hernandez

God and Science: Return of the Ti-Girls by Jaime Hernandez

A new take on Fairy Tales

 
Castle Waiting Vol. 1 by Linda Medley
Delphine by Richard Sala

The Hidden by Richard Sala

Jason. The Jason

Werewolves of Montpellier by Jason
I Killed Adolf Hitler by Jason

One Man Anthologies

 
Abandoned Cars by Tim Lane
Happy Hour in America by Tim Lane

Uptight by Jordan Crane

Kidppropriate!

The Adventures of Venus by Gilbert Hernandez

Note that most of these books are available at your local comic book store or our website in print form but we know you have to save that shelf space. Every Wednesday we have 1-2 new digital releases, sometimes same-day releases as the book. Buy a book for yourself or someone you love today.

Fantagraphics and comiXology continue to roll out the beautiful Jason classics with Werewolves of Montpellier. A faux werewolf-cum-burglar named Sven runs afoul of a real society of werewolves who don't take kindly to the pretender. So while Sven spends his days playing chess and poker with his friends, sketching his way through his picturesque chosen hometown, and coping with romantic dilemmas — both his and those of his best friend, the Breakfast-at-Tiffany’s-obsessed Audrey, who has girl troubles of her own — little does he realize that a genuine threat to his life, and for that matter his humanity, is closing in on him.

This lycanthropic thriller, a romantic comedy, and an existential drama – basically, your typical Jason book – can be yours digitally for only $9.99. Beware the full moon!

"What elevates Werewolves of Montpellier into the top rank of Jason’s work is the way he manages to dovetail the story’s genre elements with the emotional narrative. ... Overall, this is a pitch-perfect, expertly-crafted story by an artist who is clearly working in his comfort zone. It’s remarkable to see a creator go to the same well so many times and yet continue to produce nuanced and powerful variations on the same themes." – Rob Clough, The Comics Journal

"Werewolves [of Montpellier] has an artsy feel, but also plenty of humor, even in (or especially in) its more dramatic moments. [...] But it’s mostly the subtle characterizations that still bring the greatest amount of personality out of his creatures that look like animals, but act so much like humans. [...] Overall, it’s another great book from Fantagraphics in the Jason catalog. It doesn’t shake the foundation of his style, but it does try a few new ideas and tells another fun story." – William Jones, Graphic Novel Reporter

Fantagraphics with comiXology releases Oil and Water the gripping collaboration between Steve Duin and Shannon Wheeler. This devastating look at the worst environmental disaster in U.S. history follows ten Oregonians to the Gulf Coast to gather first-person accounts of the destructive impact of the Deepwater Horizon oil spill.

In this 144-page graphic novel — written by Steve Duin, a columnist for The Oregonian, and illustrated by Eisner-winning New Yorker cartoonist Shannon Wheeler — readers will tour the shark-pocked beach at Grand Isle with the local head of Homeland Security; step aboard the crabbing boat of a 20-year-old Mississippian who works 16-hour days and spends his nights dreaming of M.I.T.; enter the “Hot Zone” where volunteers work desperately to save brown pelicans drenched in British petroleum; and hear shrimpers, Vietnamese and good ol’ boys alike, describe what happens to their livelihood when 200 million gallons of oil flood the scene. The readers’ perspective on what hope and what mission remains along a ravaged coastline, and one awash in both seafood and oil, will be changed as irrevocably as that of these ten Oregonians.

For $17.99, read the true-life story of volunteers who worked (and are still working) in the wake of the Deepwater Horizon oil spill. And take the bus or walk to work! 

"A powerful eco-report, Oil and Water also manages to be a report on the gap between classes that isn’t about who has what, but rather about what 'having' means to different groups of Americans.... The large black-and-white images are realistic and create individual characteristics for the cast; its smudged texture is an excellent vehicle for the intrusion of oil on beaches, birds, livelihoods, and prospects for the future. Quick to read, but of lasting weight for readers from either side of the divide."
– Francisca Goldsmith, School Library Journal

"A lot of our goals had to do with keeping the environmental disaster on the radar nationally, saying 'This is something that what we did that's a travesty,' basically, and 'How do we keep paying attention to it so it gets cleaned up and never happens again?' It's a big deal." –Jason Sacks, Comics Bulletin

The wait is finally over! Fantagraphics and comiXology are bringing you JASON comics starting with his 2008 Eisner Award-winner I Killed Adolf Hitler. A hitman is hired to travel back in time to kill Hitler in 1939… but things go very wrong. Hitler escapes to the present, leaving the killer stranded in the past. This surprising thriller unfolds with Jason's wickedly dry humor.

 For 50 pages, this $9.99 new classic is rendered in Jason's crisp deadpan neo-clear-line style, one again augmented by lovely understated coloring.

"...I'm reading Jason's I Killed Adolf Hitler, and I'm doing this thing that I do whenever I read new stuff from Jason which is just freaking out because he's so good at what he does." – Comic Book Resources

 

Digital Release Wednesday brings you a hot title that is finally seeing the light of day with proper coloring. Fantagraphics and comiXology bring you 7 Miles a Second by David Wojnarowicz, James Romberger, and Marguerite Van Cook, now a NY Times Best Seller in hardcover.

7 Miles a Second is the story of legendary artist David Wojnarowicz, written during the last years before his AIDS-related death in 1992. Artists Romberger and Van Cook unsentimentally depict Wojnarowicz's childhood of hustling on the streets of Manhattan, through his adulthood living with AIDS, and his anger at the indifference of government and health agencies. A primal scream of a graphic novel, 7 Miles a Second blends the stark reality of Lower East Side street life with a psychedelic delirium that artfully conveys Wojnarowicz's sense of rage, urgency, mortality and a refusal to be silent.

"The author’s prose is poetic, arriving with a light touch while delivering a heavy, dark, and understandably angry message." – Publishers Weekly

  "Part of the power of Wojnarowicz’s work is that he dealt with such concepts accessibly; he didn’t have time to waste. It was the source of his restless imagination, his willingness to experiment with unexpected forms." – David L. Ulin, LA Times

"Romberger painfully captures the frailty of forms and tenderness of touch, but equally the delirium of David’s mad fucking visions and dreams. Marguerite Van Cook’s colours are virtually toxic…This is not a beautiful book; it’s an ugly book, a brilliant book, a Last Will & Testament which I hope you will hear." – Stephen L. Holland, Page 45

Fantagraphics and comiXology have heard your desperate pleas for more digital Love and Rockets, we know you have precious bookshelf space and move every year. In the fifth Love and Rockets book from Jaime Hernandez's Locas series, Esperanza features mores stories to thrill you. 

Picking up where Book 4 Penny Century collection left off: An older and wiser Maggie faces down her demons while Ray tussles with the volatile bombshell Vivian. Taking its title from Hopey Glass's birth name, Esperanza follows the somewhat settled-down ex-punkette in her new life as a schoolteacher's assistant — which doesn't mean that her romantic travails have gotten any simpler.

Plus, Jaime on baseball comics. Not sure there's much else to tell you here. $14.99. Go get it!

 "…if there’s one thing Jaime’s Locas stories in general, and this volume in particular, tell us, it’s that sometimes you have to be a grown-up for a long time before you grow up. It’s worth the work, and the wait." – Sean T. Collins, The Comics Journal

"This indie comics mainstay has been going for nearly 30 years, making Love and Rockets as intimidating to some new readers as even the densest superhero mythologies. Luckily, Fantagraphics has made the Los Bros Hernandez saga about a massive cast of startlingly lifelike characters digestible in the form of affordable reprint volumes published in chronological order." –Andy Khouri, Comics Alliance

Fantagraphics and comiXology continue the reign of terror created by Richard Sala's comics. The Hidden poses many questions to its reader: Is this the end of the world? How did it happen? Why did it happen? There is one man who knows...

Take a walk with the dazed survivors of a mysterious worldwide catastrophe. They are bound for a place, somewhere in the desert, where a terrible truth awaits them. This is the full-color, unadulterated horror graphic novel that Sala fans have been waiting for. This nightmarish story combines classic and modern horror themes and genres with a unique twist, and Sala's painted artwork has never looked better (or more gruesome). The bits and bytes will haunt you long after you've powered down your tablet, you may have to even cover it up with a blanket. $14.99 gets you 136 pages of beautiful and horrifying comics at comiXology.

"Sala’s work is like a fusion of Hergé and Charles Addams, yielding a simple, cartoon-like style that makes his moments of gothic horror all the more disturbing. ...[The Hidden] is a beautifully pulpy and incredibly imaginative book that gives a fresh spin on a well-used set-up." – Publishers Weekly

"Sala's unique brand of creepy quirk combines Edward Gorey, Chester Gould, and Charles Adams with his own unclassifiable magic. The Hidden, from Fantagraphics Books, is his most ambitious work -- an intimate apocalypse." – FEARnet 

The lovely Penny Century demanded to be available digitally along with Maggie, Hopie, Ray and Luba. Fantagraphics and comiXology present the fourth Locas volume in Jaime Hernandez's Love and Rockets series.   

First... wrestling! Penny Century starts off with a blast with “Whoa, Nellie!,” a unique graphic novelette in which Maggie, who has settled in with her pro-wrestler aunt for a while, experiences that wild and woolly world first-hand.

Then it’s back to chills and spills with the old cast of Hopey, Ray Dominguez, and Izzy Ortiz — including Maggie’s romantic dream fantasia “The Race” and the definitive Ray story, “Everybody Loves Me, Baby.” Many more stories hid behind this digital cover and 257 pages of comics are yours for $14.99.

"In reviewing Jaime Hernandez's Penny Century, I could point to the frenetic pace of many of the stories; the cute, odd, and endearing sort of strangeness spawned in this lightly magical universe; or even the beautiful art, which is truly the mark of this master cartoonist. But, no, I am going to hype the very first story, "Whoa Nellie," beyond anything else in this fantastic volume. ... Such a wonderful, and grounded, story is a nice start-off point for the still compelling, yet far stranger and sexier, tales that follow. Soup to nuts, this is a great book." – Jeremy Nisen, Under the Radar

Fantagraphics and comiXology presents the late great Spain Rodriguez and his graphic novel, Cruisin' with the Hound: The Life and Times of Fred Toote.

"They were all there, the pimps, the fags, the whores, the curious, the alcoholic, the weird of the late '50s... blues lovers, Canadian bikers, thrill seekers, junkies, insomniacs, hepcats..." So begins "Down at the Kitty Kat," one of the 20-plus never-before-collected memoirs and yarns by Spain, one of the original gang of Zap Comix provocateurs. Although he's best known for his two-fisted tales of the chopper-riding Trashman, Spain's blunt graphic style and uncompromising gift for caricature, rendered in eye-punishing slabs of black and white, work equally well for more subtle fare -- such as these memoirs of his misspent youth.

For $17.99, you can read this newly-inducted Eisner Hall of Fame cartoonists' work on life, hogs, and the fifties on your world of tomorrow devices.

"Rodriguez was a kind of incorrigible rebellious type. . . when abstract expressionism with its two-dimensionality principle was dogma—he was into three-dimensionality, in spades—and his blue-collar employment in Buffalo area manufactories, where the curriculum was the much more interesting subject to him of simmering socioeconomic class warfare." -Jack Foran, ArtVoice

"Spain Rodriguez is one of the legends of the original underground comics wave, and he tells his own origin story in Cruisin’ with the Hound: The Life and Times of Fred Tooté, a collection of short stories about coming of age in Buffalo in the ’50s and ’60s. ...Cruisin’ with the Hound... gives a real flavor both of Rodriguez’s work — which was so different in its point of view than the other underground comics of the late ’60s and early ’70s — and from whence it came." – Noel Murray, The A.V. Club