LOVE NOT FOUND is a story about a young woman living in a time where touching has become outdated.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?
(Available in English or Spanish)
After running away from home, Syrma has spent her entire life hiding in the forest, under a hard workout. So when she discovers that she is the victim of a curse that will end her life in a short time, she intends to change her fate. She has two options: surrender and die, or rebel and take over. For her there is only one possible solution: defeat the goddess who sentenced her along with all her family. And time is running out.
But she won’t be alone. Along with the dragon Menkar, her bodyguard, an also cursed sidhe witch and a banished treacherous god, she will seek the way to survive and change her fate.
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ISN’T IT BYRONIC?
He lived fast, died young, and left a good-looking (if a bit bloody) corpse—not to mention an incredible wealth of poetry and an immortal reputation for romance. He was the 6th Baron Byron of Rochdale, better known as Lord Byron—the original bad boy of British literature.
She is a 24-year-old computer genius with a serious fixation on old authors—Lord Byron in particular. Her name is Alexia Ryan, and her singular upbringing has molded her into the perfect coder to bring the struggling New Romancer dating site into the big leagues. But like a modern-day Prometheus, Lexy’s revolutionary software is built with stolen parts—and bringing it to life will have some very unintended consequences. To wit: a reanimated Lord Byron, suave and randy as ever, walking the streets of Silicon Valley some 200 years after his celebrated death. Will Lexy find a new love for the ages with this preternatural poet? Or will the forces she has unwittingly unleashed consign them both to the ash-heap of history?
Comics legend Peter Milligan and acclaimed artist Brett Parson take up Cupid’s bow in NEW ROMANCERS, a Digital Age bodice-ripper for the hopeless romantic in all of us!
I had such high hopes for this one. I didn't discover it until near the end of the print run, which means I was one of the many readers who didn't support the comic early on and therefore contributed to its early demise. Lots of factors combine to end the life of a comic early, and I don't want to go into them here. I'm assuming the story would have been better had it made it past this first arc, but there were enough problems with the book as it was that I can't recommend picking it up.
The concept was really fun! I was excited for some timetraveling romantic heroes. I was intrigued by the dating software gone wrong angle. The execution, however, was not so fun. Plot holes, uneven characterization, and a rushed ending put this one in the Nope pile for me. On the plus side, the art was pretty.
Read it here, plus links to physical and digital copies!
Pictures of You, the graphic novel series from Gibson Twist, a funny and emotional, drug- and sex-fueled chronicle of a group of friends as they come together and fall apart. MATURE READERS
It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife...
Tailored from the adored Jane Austen classic, Marvel Comics is proud to present PRIDE AND PREJUDICE! Two-time Rita Award-Winner Nancy Butler and fan-favorite Hugo Petras faithfully adapt the whimsical tale of Lizzy Bennet and her loveable-if-eccentric family, as they navigate through tricky British social circles. Will Lizzy's father manage to marry off her five daughters, despite his wife's incessant nagging? And will Lizzy's beautiful sister Jane marry the handsome, wealthy Mr. Bingley, or will his brooding friend Mr. Darcy stand between their happiness?
In Pumpkinheads, beloved #1 New York Times bestselling author Rainbow Rowell and Eisner Award–winning artist Faith Erin Hicks have teamed up to create this tender and hilarious story about two irresistible teens discovering what it means to leave behind a place―and a person―with no regrets.
Deja and Josiah are seasonal best friends.Every autumn, all through high school, they’ve worked together at the best pumpkin patch in the whole wide world. (Not many people know that the best pumpkin patch in the whole wide world is in Omaha, Nebraska, but it definitely is.) They say good-bye every Halloween, and they’re reunited every September 1.
But this Halloween is different―Josiah and Deja are finally seniors, and this is their last season at the pumpkin patch. Their last shift together. Their last good-bye.
Josiah’s ready to spend the whole night feeling melancholy about it. Deja isn’t ready to let him. She’s got a plan: What if―instead of moping and the usual slinging lima beans down at the Succotash Hut―they went out with a bang? They could see all the sights! Taste all the snacks! And Josiah could finally talk to that cute girl he’s been mooning over for three years . . .What if their last shift was an adventure?
Hitting the road on a journey of self discovery and acceptance, this coming-of-age tale gives a backstage look at friendships and the plights of fame as experienced by a modern British rock band.
On the fast track toward fame, the five members of the fictional British rock band, Radio Silence, enter into an exciting new life on the road with their best friends. As they tour across the United Kingdom, they excitedly embrace this new lifestyle and all the resulting challenges, including living in close quarters with each other with little privacy, and the overwhelming reaction of the public to their new-found success.
This comic explores mature themes, such as domestic abuse, self harm, sexism, sexuality, neglect, and life threatening medical conditions. It will also contain swearing and the occasional sexual themes, albeit avoiding being explicit.
Award-winning writer Nancy Butler, adapter of Marvel's best-selling adaptation of PRIDE & PREJUDICE, returns to Marvel with another Jane Austen classic: SENSE & SENSIBILITY! Alongside incredible artist Sonny Liew (My Faith in Frankie, Wonderland), Butler brings to life the world of Elinor and Marianne Dashwood, two daughters without parents or means, forced to experience hardship, romance, and heartbreak, all in the hopes of achieving love and lasting happiness.
From Volume 1 - Suzie’s just a regular gal with an irregular gift: when she has sex, she stops time. One day she meets Jon and it turns out he has the same ability. And sooner or later they get around to using their gifts to do what we’d ALL do: rob a couple banks. A bawdy and brazen sex comedy for comics begins here!