Heartbreak's a bitch.
No one knows this better than Eulalie "Lee" Griffin.
After three years of what seemed like the perfect relationship, she found herself watching Ant leave after the discovery of his long-term affair.
A demon summoning later, Lee's down one ex-boyfriend after a brief reconciliation that only uncovered the depth of Ant's deceit.
It's only a matter of time before Rosier collects. There's still questions about the circumstances around Ant's death, not to mention damage control for any unforseen consequences of Lee's actions.
When Chris joins the staff at her local record store, she’s surprised to find out that her co-workers share a secret: they’re all members of a secret fight club that take on the patriarchy and fight crime!
Starry-eyed Chris has just started the dream job every outcast kid in town wants: working at Vinyl Mayhem. It's as rad as she imagined; her boss is BOSS, her co-workers spend their time arguing over music, pushing against the patriarchy, and endlessly trying to form a band. When Rosie Riot, the staff's favorite singer, mysteriously vanishes the night before her band’s show, Chris discovers her co-workers are doing more than just sorting vinyl . . . Her local indie record store is also a front for a teen girl vigilante fight club!
Follow writer Carly Usdin (director of Suicide Kale) and artist Nina Vakueva (Lilith’s World) into Heavy Vinyl, where they deliver a rock and roll tale of intrigue and boundless friendship.
After a long journey, the young witch Victoria finally arrived in Port Arbores, the city on the edge of the abyss. Can the city’s secret protector, the Strayer, help her find her missing mother?
Since being bitten by a strange wolf as a child, Malaya Walters has attempted to live a quiet life…hopefully a life free of attempting to eat her family or the customers at her family’s coffee shop. Being the only werewolf she’s ever known, Malaya has managed her condition by keeping tight control on herself and the world around her, with lackluster results. That is, until a strange guy wanders into her shop one day and introduces her to a whole world she never knew existed…How to be a Werewolf is a long form, ongoing story, started in February 2015. It features a diverse cast, as well as a cast of mostly LGBTQ characters.
No full review (YET! it's in the queue) but we wanted to note that the comic starts out in B&W and is now in full color. Both are lovely.
Nokia is a young adult, living on a space station New Rauma. Nokia has just gotten their immortality and the best use they can come up with it is to browse the old internet all day long without eating or sleeping and not having to worry about dying of hunger. After three weeks of old internet Nokia's parents decide they've had enough.
ADULTS ONLY Ed Fiedler is a common man. 61 years old and employed as a scribe in a royal palace, his most regular client is Lucardo von Gishaupt, a forever-young aristocrat . . . and member of the mysterious and revered Night Court. When the eternally 33-year-old Lucardo and the aging Ed develop feelings for one another, both are forced to contend with the culture shock of a mortal man's presence among the deathless, the perilous disapproval of the sitting Lord of the Night Court, and Ed's own ever-present mortality, threatening to bring an end to their romance in the blink of an everlasting eye. This is the first book in a planned four-volume series.
LETTERS FOR LUCARDO is that rare piece of graphic erotica that surprises me. I've grown accustomed to everything from tentacles to ghosts to aliens, but an actual human over the age of 40? Whoa.
Lucardo is a vampire, forever 33. His love interest, Edmund, is a 61 year old human, serving as scrivener (scribe, notary, etc) for the vampire Night Court. Their age difference is complicated by the fact that Lucardo is well over 400 years old, but physically much younger than Ed. Ed, however, feels unworthy and old at times. This could have turned into a story of "well, yeah, but I don't mind." Instead, Noora Heikkilä has written Lucardo as a tender person (and lover) who shows Ed his affection and attraction, rather than serving up empty platitudes. Readers are given an older man who is still a complete sexual and emotional being, with a lover who is deserving and appreciative of him.
The art? It's lovely. While reading, I was compelled to send a photo (above in the blog post) to a friend. I love the play of emotions over Ed's face and how Noora consistently shows us rather than tells us. It also doesn't hurt that Lucardo looks like a certain gentleman who played Jefferson in a popular musical...
As for the plot, it's more complex than I had anticipated. I was wondering how this story could be drawn out over 4 graphic novels, and now I know. I'm still not sure yet whether Lucardo's family is a) bigoted, b) evil, c) pranksters, 4) all of the above?
Two points of criticism:
1) Since readers are dropped into the story after months of flirting and conversation between Lucardo and Ed, we don't see much of what has drawn them together. (They pretty much get down to business, which is standard for erotica.) I would welcome development of their relationship via flashbacks or something.
2) WHAT THE HELL THAT ENDING. Maybe I shouldn't have started the series with only 1/4 books out.
If you'd like something sexy and sweet with a paranormal twist, this may just be the book for you. If you don't want one hell of a cliffhanger at the end? Wait a while. I'm basically sitting here stalking Iron Circus's feed waiting for the announcement of Book 2. (Yes, I'll let you know when it goes up!)
LOVE NOT FOUND is a story about a young woman living in a time where touching has become outdated. She has recently moved to a new planet and finds that touching might not be such a bad idea. Now she is on a quest to find someone who wants to do things the old fashioned way!
Note from Love in Panels: Love Not Found is currently updated 3x/week with one print/PDF volume available. Patreon supporters get access to bonus content, as well.
LOVE NOT FOUND, by Gina Biggs, is a sci-fi romance set in a time when touching has become taboo. Main character Abeille (yes, that's French for "bee") is looking for something more than a pre-programmed session with a computer, so she sets out to find someone to "experiment" with.
LOVE NOT FOUND is beautiful. The setting is Monotropa, a planet advertised as "A Nature Lover's Paradise," so Biggs has populated it with interesting plants, dryads, and tropical weather patterns. I'm an avid gardener, so I'm surely biased, but the fact that several of the central characters are botanists is fresh and interesting. The color and costume choices are sweet and fun, and reflect the flower-ful setting in which the story takes place. Characters of all gender expressions often have flowers in their hair and wear clothes shaped like or inspired by plants. Much of the comic is in shades of pink, white, and brown, with pops of yellow, green, and (rarely) blue. It's an unabashedly feminine pallette that doesn't feel childish, but rather playful.
The characters are diverse and engaging, with only one recent addition I don't much care for. Abeille is from a planet called Pasque, which seems to be mostly a permafrost-type biome. We initially don't know much about her family, background, or reasons for emigrating to Monotropa, other than that she wants to plant a garden in memory of her sister. She works in the cafeteria of a company that engineers plants to resist the bugs on the planet. She appears to be white, with pink hair and dark pink eyes.
Miel (French for honey, yep) works as a "logger" at that same company. His job is to log details about various species, including growth and transplant results. If he was from Earth, we would say that his mothers are of South-Asian and African descent. (They're such a fun couple and when you meet them you'll "aww.") Miel is more reserved than Abeille, and their awkward flirting is sweet and feels honest.
Ivy (Abeille's best friend) and her partner, Holly, have an interesting secondary storyline. They're co-researchers at the aforementioned company, choosing to live together out of convenience and efficiency. None of that messy "romance" stuff. Their relationship evolves as Ivy sees Abeille's attitudes changing and begins to want something more for herself as well. Ivy eventually meets Aster, a nonbinary therapist who uses the pronouns Zie and Zer and isn't afraid of touch. Biggs has grown the comic to include many more secondary characters, like Clove, Abeille's coworker who has a speech impediment, and Botan, the foxy head gardener who falls for him.
LOVE NOT FOUND may be adorable, but it also touches on concepts of fidelity, intimacy, grief, taboos, societal and familial expectations, ecology, and the ways in which technology both connects and isolates us. It's worth a look for fans of sci-fi romance, gardening, and/or nuanced exploration of physical intimacy in relationships.
A note on the rating: This might be categorized as PG-13 by the movie world, but I've given it an R rating because a) I've read some of the NSFW bonus content and b) even though it's not visually explicit, there's a lot of talk (and some subtle depictions) of computer generated orgasms.
Andy and Jeff both needed an outlet for their stress, and separately happened upon a local martial arts studio that seemed to do the trick. But there was more than just forms and punching to be found there . . . unexpected romance.
At 31 pages, this comic is simply too short. I wanted more. The two characters are attending karate classes for stress-relief and fight their "distracting" attraction to each other. One even goes so far as to switch classes to avoid the other. Naturally, that doesn't work. We're left with a sweet, sexy "happy-for-now" (as opposed to the "happily-ever-after") and I want a full length graphic novel. Please?
It's Robin Hood like you've never seen him before, based on scholarly and historical speculation about what's really behind the outlaw's legend.
13th century England. Robert Godwinson, former lover of King Richard, lives with his band of Merry Men in Sherwood Forest, away from the watchful eye of Prince John, who has outlawed homosexuality. Though isolated, the men live in peace—that is, until a stranger enters their camp seeking aid for a nearby town besieged by the Sheriff of Nottingham. Robert—nicknamed Robin—is reluctant to help, but equally eager to get rid of this perplexing stranger... and to put his formidable bow-and-arrow to use. It's Robin Hood like you've never seen him before, based on scholarly speculation about what's really behind the outlaw's legend.
A story of love and demons, family and witchcraft.
Nova Huang knows more about magic than your average teen witch. She works at her grandmothers’ bookshop, where she helps them loan out spell books and investigate any supernatural occurrences in their New England town.
One fateful night, she follows reports of a white wolf into the woods, and she comes across the unexpected: her childhood crush, Tam Lang, battling a horse demon in the woods. As a werewolf, Tam has been wandering from place to place for years, unable to call any town home.
Pursued by dark forces eager to claim the magic of wolves and out of options, Tam turns to Nova for help. Their latent feelings are rekindled against the backdrop of witchcraft, untested magic, occult rituals, and family ties both new and old in this enchanting tale of self-discovery.