A couple of sensational debuts and an out-of-print backlist selection are featured in this week’s digital releases.
First up is Not Funny Ha-Ha by Leah Hayes. This book is a bold graphic novel illustrating the lives of two young women from different cultural, family, and financial backgrounds who go through two different abortions. It does not address the events leading up to the pregnancy, or even the decision-making before choosing abortion as an option — it simply shows what happens when a woman goes through it, no questions asked. Non-judgmental, comforting, and even humorous, Not Funny Ha-Ha has garnered recent praise from places like MTV, Buzzfeed, and Cosmopolitan magazine. Now it can be yours through both comiXology and Sequential.
Also through Sequential, Leaf is Chinese artist Daishu Ma’s first foray onto American shelves and into your personal reading devices. In this wordless, all-ages graphic novel, our protagonist discovers a leaf that radiates a vibrant light. He returns to a detailed metropolis — depicted in somber grays and blues — and searches for answers, stumbling upon the city’s labyrinthine ducts, obsolete flora, and the truth about the ever-dwindling environment along his way. This exciting debut asks how much power does a single man, let alone a single leaf, have in the industrial world? You can explore the dream-like graphic novel on the Sequential app.
Let’s not forget another special delight through Sequential — the out-of-print collection The Sincerest Form of Parody! When Mad became a surprise hit as a comic book in 1953 other publishers were quick to jump onto the bandwagon, eventually bringing out dozens of imitations. The Sincerest Form of Parody collects the best and funniest material from these comics, including parodies of movies, TV shows, comic strips, novels, plays, ads, and history. All of these off-the-wall stories can now be yours through Sequential.