FLOG! Entries tagged 'digital comics'

Guffaw out loud with Peter Bagge's Other Stuff on comiXology

TheJenVaughn

Fantagraphics and comiXology are happy to bring one of the pillars of alternative comics to the digital forefront. Peter Bagge's Other Stuff is perfect for a long-time reader of Hate or a new-comer.

Other Stuff includes a series of Bagge-written stories drawn by other cartoonists, including "Life in these United States" with Daniel Clowes, "Shamrock Squid" with Adrian Tomine, and the one-two parody punch of "Caffy" (with art by R. Crumb) and "Dildobert" (with art by Prison Pit’s Johnny Ryan)... plus a highlight of the book, the hilarious, literate and intricate exposé of "Kool-Aid Man" written by Alan Moore and drawn by Bagge. (Other collaborators include the Hernandez Brothers and Danny Hellman.) Enjoy 146 pages of fun for only $14.99 on comiXology.

"Other Stuff also brings together strips Bagge has written about rock icons, along with a few cartoon essays, and strips featuring his characters Lovey and The Leeways, who respectively represent hipster adventurism and dogged domesticity. It’s a full picture of who Bagge has been as an artist and humorist over the past 20 years, and as such is as valuable for newcomers as fans…" –Noel Murray, The A.V. Club

Newave! The Underground Mini Comix of the 1980s on comiXology

TheJenVaughn

Bringing you the absolute best in alternative comics, Fantagraphics and comiXology have released Newave! The Underground Mini Comix of the 1980s for your digital reading delight. Edited by Michael Dowers, Newave! is a gigantic collection of the best small press cartoonists to emerge after the first generation of underground cartoonists (such as R. Crumb, Gilbert Shelton, and Art Spiegelman) paved the way. These cartoonists, inspired by the freewheeling creative energy of the underground comix movement, began drawing and printing their own comix seen here.

This gigantor collection has 856 pages of comics by your favorite artists of today and yesterday for only $19.99. Get Newave! on comiXology and settle in for the night, hell, make it the whole weekend!

"...[A] fascinating treasure trove of an anthology... In addition to work by greats like Artie Romero, Rick Geary, and Mary Fleener, and 50 or so others, [Newave!] serves as the history of a movement." -- Publishers Weekly

"Back in the days of Factsheet Five, I used to order tons of minicomix. Most were mediocre, but a few were terrifically good and that made it worth the risk to send in the fifty cents or so that they cost. ... Fantagraphics just released a massively thick (900 pages!) anthology of minicomix called Newave! The Underground Mini Comix of the 1980s, and it's a treat." – Mark Frauenfelder, Boing Boing

3 New Stories available at comiXology, same day as print

TheJenVaughn

Dash Shaw's newest comic, 3 New Stories, is available today for the first time both in print and digitally via comiXology! In this 32 page comic, Shaw creates three full-color short stories exploring varied dystopian societies, from a Sherlock Holmes-style investigator who must complete his high school degree to filmed "voluntary" nudity to prison camps full of jaded children.

Enjoy this full meal of comic on its own or consider it an appetizer for New School out next month. It's only $2.99 for a fun read.

"Dash Shaw is a modern comics master. He experiments with everything from structure to narrative to color. If you're unfamiliar with his work, he's sort of like Gary Panter illustrating a Chris Ware story, or, in this case, 3 stories of dystopian societies." -Benn Ray, Atomic Books

comiXology releases Weird Horrors & Daring Adventures: The Joe Kubert Archives Vol. 1

TheJenVaughn

comiXology and Fantagraphics bring another classic cartoonist to the digital screen in Weird Horrors & Daring Adventures: The Joe Kurbert Archives Vol. 1. Joe Kubert sealed his reputation as one of the greatest American comicbook cartoonists of all time with the four-color adventures of Sgt. Rock of Easy Company, Enemy Ace, and Tarzan, all done for DC Comics during the 1960s and 1970s (themselves already the subject of archival editions)... but he had been working in comics since the 1940s. In fact, young Kubert produced an exciting, significant body of work as a freelance artist for a variety of comic book publishers in the postwar era, in a glorious variety of non-super hero genres: horror, crime, science fiction, western, romance, humor, and more. For the first time since the printe edition, 33 of the best of these stories have been collected in one full-color volume, with a special emphasis on horror and crime.

Drawn in the pre-Comics Code era, they are more thrilling, violent and sexy (by contemporary standards) than much of his later work. And just the titles of the comic books from which these stories are taken are wonderfully evocative of a bygone era of four-color fun: Cowpuncher, Abbott and Costello Comics, Three Stooges, Eerie, Planet Comics, Meet Miss Pepper, Strange Terrors, Green Hornet Comics, Whack, Jesse James, Out of This World, Crime Does Not Pay, Weird Thrillers, Police Lineup, and Hollywood Confessions. With an extensive set of historical notes and an essay by the book's editor Bill Schelly, author of the Art of Joe Kubert art book and Man of Rock Kubert biography. For $24.99, this thick volume of comics takes up no space on your shelf but will no doubt fill your brain with images, keeping you up until the wee hours.

"Schelly and the always sterling Fantagraphics production team do a nice job of preserving the look and feel of these comics…the master cartoonist was equally at home doing broad humor as intense action/adventure as well as lighter, Archie-style teen humor."–Jason Sacks, Comics Bulletin

"Best known for Sgt. Rock, Tarzan, and Hawkman in the 1960s and 70s, this anthology of Kubert's 1940s work reveals his versatility in a variety of genres, including horror, humor, and romance." -Mark Frauenfelder, Boing Boing

Four Color Fear strikes prismatic terror in the heart of comiXology

TheJenVaughn

The book that has been sold-out twice in a row comes to you, dear reader, in digital form. Four Color Fear: Forgotten Horror Comics of the 1950s. The finest non-EC horror covers and stories of the pre-code era by artist perennials Jack Cole, Reed Crandall, George Evans, Frank Frazetta, Jack Katz, Al Williamson, Basil Wolverton, and Wallace Wood, collected in a robust and affordable volume. And by volume, we mean four. This book is SO BIG, SO HUGE that we had to break it up into four parts: CMYK for the printing colors Cyan (blue), Magenta, Yellow and Black or parts one, two, three, four.

Editors John Benson and Greg Sadowski have sifted through hundreds of rare books to cherry-pick the most compelling scripts and art, and they provide extensive background notes on the artists, writers, and companies involved in their creation. Digital restoration has been performed with subtlety and restraint, mainly to correct registration and printing errors, with every effort made to retain the flavor of the original comics, and to provide the reader the experience of finding a most delightful read in their dusty, creaky attic. Each part is only 6.99 for 80-something pages bound to terrify and keep you up all night long, glowing from your tablets thanks to comiXology.

"[Its] a wonderfully creepy hurtle through the exuberant, cheerfully gross and icky horror comics that prevailed in the golden, pre-Comics-Code era. ...[T]he art is brilliant: indistinct piles of slimy viscera, purple-green zombies, skull-faced vampires and demons, Satan in a dozen guises, witches and occult symbols, creatures from the eleven hells of the darkest mythos of the human spirit." – Cory Doctorow, Boing Boing

Strange Suspense: The Steve Ditko Archives Vol. 1 on comiXology

TheJenVaughn

Finally, the sold-out first volme of the Ditko Archives is here in digital reading glory via comiXology, Strange Suspense. Before the Amazing Spider-Man and mysterious Dr. Strange, the legendary comic book artist Steve Ditko was conjuring all manners of horrors at his drawing table. In his first two years in the industry (1953 and1954), Ditko drew tales of macabre suspense that were not yet hobbled by the Comics Code Authority. These stories featured graphic bloodshed, dismemberment and blood-curdling acid baths as the ugly end to the lives of the dark and twisted inhabitants of Steve Ditko's imagination.

Strange Suspense: The Steve Ditko Archives Vol. 1 features, for the first time, spectacular full-color reprints of every story from those first two years of his career. Beginning with Ditko's very first story to Ditko's short stint in the Joe Simon/Jack Kirby studio, to Ditko's eventual encampment at the Charlton Comics operation in 1954, readers will see the initial works of an artist already at a level of craftsmanship that exceeded most of his peers. The book also features editor Blake Bell's insightful introduction, providing historical background and speaking to Ditko's influence and his unique craft.

Enjoy this 238 page masterpiece on your reading tablets, anywhere, anytime.

"Fantastic... Raw and grotesque and beautifully drawn and presented." –Dave Gibbons

Swing away with 21 on comiXology

TheJenVaughn

Wilfred Santiago's baseball biography comic is ready to read on the way to your next away game at comiXology. 21: The Story of Roberto Clemente follows Clemente's life from his early days growing up in rural Puerto Rico, the highlights of his career (including the 1960s World Series where he helped the Pirates win its first victory in 33 years, and his 3000th hit in 1972 during the last official at-bat of his life) as well as his private life and public mission off the field.

Named one of Library Journal's Best Books 2011: Graphic Novels, one of Booklist's Top 10 Graphic Novels: 2012 (for 2011 books), one of ALA/YALSA's Great Graphic Novels for Teens 2012, 21 is a great book for teens, adults and baseball fans all around. 179 pages of the struggle and success of a immigrant baseball player achieving the American dream can be yours. Batter up!

"...21: The Story of Roberto Clemente... is drawn with a jagged whimsy that gets at the sudden sharpness of a baseball game's action, the frenzy that comes from out of nowhere to temporarily replace the long, slow stretches of waiting, scratching, spitting and eyeballing opponents that are endemic to the sport…Comic books bring a different kind of narrative that's not possible in any other medium — not books, not movies.'" – Julia Keller, Chicago Tribune

"Santiago evokes the world Clemente lived in, from the dusty Puerto Rican streets where he played baseball with bottle caps and tree branches to his years as a perennial All-Star. The art is scratchy and abstract when it’s dealing with home and homesickness, and then hardens into the stuff of superhero comics whenever Clemente steps to the plate." – Noel Murray, The A.V. Club

Julio's Day at comiXology

TheJenVaughn

The Year of Gilbert Hernandez begins with a bang with Julio's Day, now available via comiXology. Or truth be told it begins in the year 1900, with the scream of a newborn. It ends, 100 pages later, in the year 2000, with the death rattle of a 100-year-old man. The infant and the old man are both Julio, and Julio's Day (originally serialized in Love and Rockets Vol. II but never completed until now) is Hernandez's latest graphic novel, a masterpiece of elliptical, emotional storytelling that traces one life - indeed, one century in a human life - through a series of carefully crafted, consistently surprising and enthralling vignettes.

This singular, standalone story released this week both digitally and in print will help cement Gilbert Hernandez's position as one of the strongest and most original cartoonists of this, or any other, century. And you can read it anyway via your tablets thanks to comiXology.

"A haunting performance and about as perfect a literary work as I've read in years. Hernandez accomplishes in 100 pages what most novelists only dream of — rendering the closeted phlegmatic Julio in all his confounding complexity and in the process creating an unflinching biography of a community, a country and a century. A masterpiece." – Junot Díaz

Spacehawk rocketships to comiXology

TheJenVaughn

Fantagraphics is proud to announce Spacehawk, the whole space shebang by Basil Wolverton is available for digital delight on comiXology. Spacehawk had but one mission in life: to protect the innocent throughout the Solar System, and to punish the guilty. Every story from Spacehawk’s intergalactic debut in 1940 to his final, Nazi-crushing adventure in 1942.

Basil Wolverton is one of the greatest, most idiosyncratic talents in comic book history. Though he is best known for his humorous grotesqueries in MAD magazine, it is his science-fiction character Spacehawk that Wolverton fans have most often demanded be collected. While Spacehawk is the closest thing to a colorfully-costumed, conventional action hero Wolverton ever created, the strip is infused with Wolverton’s quintessential weirdness: controlled, organic artwork of strangely repulsive aliens and monsters and bizarre planets, and stories of gruesome retribution that bring to mind Wolverton’s peer, Fletcher Hanks. Spacehawk had no secret identity, no fixed base of operations beyond his spaceship, and no sidekicks or love interests. Only his mission. Your mission is to read this book!

You'll need to strap your moon boots on and slide those yellow gloves on to read this book on your tablet or onboard computer.

"What you read [Spacehawk] for is the character design, that amazing Wolverton grotesque that is as unmistakable as it is unforgettable. I mean to say, this guy could really draw monsters [in this] weighty tome that almost strobes with awesome." -Cory Doctorow, BoingBoing

"Basil Wolverton rises to the occasion and gives the reader a detailed and hilarious look at megalomania while throwing in some fantastic aerial fight scenes…Fantagraphics Publishing brings Wolverton’s art to the reader in as detailed and perfect a form as possible. Each wave of space, every geometric shape and all the incredibly ugly aliens look better than they ever have in their entire lives." –Mark Squirek, New York Journal of Books

The Portable Frank becomes more portable on comiXology

TheJenVaughn

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

YEE-HAW! Digital Comics Corral

TheJenVaughn

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

Memoirs of the artist's misspent youth. Raunchy, hilarious, and often violent as hell, an unsentimentally nostalgic trip to half a century ago — the anti- Happy Days, set to a true rock ’n’ roll beat. - See more at: http://www.fantagraphics.com/index.php?keyword=cruisin%27+with+the+hound&search_type=titles&Search=Search&Itemid=62&option=com_virtuemart&page=shop.browse#sthash.zYJMZj3B.dpuf7 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.

Werewolves of Montpellier by JASON on comiXology

TheJenVaughn

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

Oil and Water available on comiXology

TheJenVaughn

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

I Killed Adolf Hitler on comiXology

TheJenVaughn

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.

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. - See more at: http://www.fantagraphics.com/index.php?keyword=adolf+hitler&search_type=titles&Search=Search&Itemid=62&option=com_virtuemart&page=shop.browse#sthash.SLYIesCf.dpufIn this full-color graphic novel, Jason posits a strange, violent world in which contract killers can be hired to rub out pests, be they dysfunctional relatives, abusive co-workers, loud neighbors, or just annoyances in general — and as you might imagine, their services are in heavy demand. One such killer is given the unique job of traveling back in time to kill Adolf Hitler in 1939... but things go spectacularly wrong. - See more at: http://www.fantagraphics.com/browse-shop/i-killed-adolf-hitler-2nd-printing.html#sthash.CufQsEPv.dpufA 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. - See more at: http://www.fantagraphics.com/index.php?keyword=adolf+hitler&search_type=titles&Search=Search&Itemid=62&option=com_virtuemart&page=shop.browse#sthash.HyMswmoR.dpufA 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. - See more at: http://www.fantagraphics.com/index.php?keyword=adolf+hitler&search_type=titles&Search=Search&Itemid=62&option=com_virtuemart&page=shop.browse#sthash.HyMswmoR.dpufAs always, I Killed Adolf Hitler is rendered in Jason's crisp deadpan neo-clear-line style, once again augmented by lovely, understated coloring. - See more at: http://www.comixology.com/I-Killed-Adolf-Hitler/digital-comic/MAY073456#sthash.gghYpwtF.dpuf

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.

In this full-color graphic novel, Jason posits a strange, violent world in which contract killers can be hired to rub out pests, be they dysfunctional relatives, abusive co-workers, loud neighbors, or just annoyances in general — and as you might imagine, their services are in heavy demand. One such killer is given the unique job of traveling back in time to kill Adolf Hitler in 1939... but things go spectacularly wrong. - See more at: http://www.fantagraphics.com/browse-shop/i-killed-adolf-hitler-2nd-printing.html#sthash.CufQsEPv.dpuf"Dryly riotous... Jason's minimal drawings, dominated by empty space, and his laconic pacing imply that nothing particularly significant is going on, although there is near-constant gunplay, Hitler is on the loose in present-day Berlin, and World War II is about to be eradicated from history. The effect is something like Grindhouse as rewritten by Harold Pinter." – Douglas Wolk, The New York Times

"...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

7 Miles a Second downloads at about the same speed on comiXology

TheJenVaughn

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

The fifth Jaime Hernandez Love and Rockets book on comiXology

TheJenVaughn

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

Penny Century hits the ring with comiXology

TheJenVaughn

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

Cruisin' with the Hound at comiXology

TheJenVaughn

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

Delphine digitally delights and horrifies on comiXology

TheJenVaughn

Fantagraphics and comiXology continues the line of exquisite Richard Sala comics with Delphine. A mysterious traveler gets off the train in a small village surrounded by a thick sinister forest. He is searching for Delphine, who vanished with only a scrawled-out address on a scrap of paper as a trace.

Richard Sala takes the tale of Snow White and stands it on its head, retelling it from Prince Charming's perspective (the unnamed traveler) in a contemporary setting. This twisted tale includes all the elements of terror from the original fairy tale, with none of the insipid saccharine coating of the Disney animated adaptation: Yes, there will be blood. At comiXology or a local comic book store today.

"I've long admired the gothy work of cartoonist Richard Sala. He delicately balances the line between horror and humor as few can. His latest graphic novel, Delphine, is his darkest effort to date." –Mark Frauenfelder, BoingBoing

"I adore Richard Sala's Delphine." - Junot Diaz

Tales Designed to Thrizzle Vol. 2: same day release at comiXology and your local comics store

TheJenVaughn

Wednesday just got weirder with a side of thrizzle with another hit from Fantagraphics available at comiXology. Michael Kupperman's second all-comics collection of surreal slapstick and crazy non-sequitur goofiness Tales Designed to Thrizzle Volume 2! Including an a full issue's worth of never-before-published, brand new Thrizzle material and a newly colored version of issue #5! Featuring: America's favorite mustachioed physicist/writer double team of Twain and Einstein (solving new crimes and barreling through exciting new adventures), the crime-fighting team of Snake and Bacon ("Sssssssssssss!") in Reservoir Dogs 2, the crusty Quincy M.E., and the true story of the first lunar landing, guest starring Woodward & Bernstein, Lt. Columbo and... Quincy again??... in "Moon 69."

For $19.99 get this and more PLUS a little office favorite called "Murder, She Goat." Download a copy from comiXology today or head over to your local comic store for more laughs and guffaws from Michael Kupperman.

"It has become cliche to say I laughed until I cried, but when I'm done reading one of these underground comics my shirt is literally soaking wet. This guy may have one of the best comedy brains on the planet right now."-- Conan O'Brien, Entertainment Weekly "Must List"