Originally published in French as Le bleu est une couleur chaude, Blue is the Warmest Color is a graphic novel about growing up, falling in love, and coming out. Clementine is a junior in high school who seems average enough: she has friends, family, and the romantic attention of the boys in her school. When her openly gay best friend takes her out on the town, she wanders into a lesbian bar where she encounters Emma: a punkish, confident girl with blue hair. Their attraction is instant and electric, and Clementine find herself in a relationship that will test her friends, parents, and her own ideas about herself and her identity.
Vividly illustrated and beautifully told, Blue Is the Warmest Color is a brilliant, bittersweet, full-color graphic novel about the elusive, reckless magic of love. It is a lesbian love story that crackles with the energy of youth, rebellion, and desire.
First published in French by Glenat, the book has won several awards, including the Audience Prize at the Angouleme International Comics Festival, Europe's largest.
BLUE IS THE WARMEST COLOR was recommended to me by an instructor as a masterwork of sequential art, so when I picked it up, I had high expectations. It's also won several awards and been made into a movie, which is rare for non-cape graphic novels.
It's a lesbian coming-of-age story that starts and ends with pain, but the romance is beautiful and immensely moving. I was reminded of the work queer communities have done to get us to this place of openness. Yes, there's much work to be done, particularly with and for the trans community and for PoC in queer spaces. But to be taken back to the not-so-distant past as we follow Clementine through her journey of self-awareness and self-acceptance in the 90's? Oof. Spoiler: Clem's parents kick her out at age 17 when they find out her best friend is really her lover. I know that still happens today, but maybe a little less frequently? I can't speak to gay culture in France today, but in the US it's improved.
This is one of those stories in which one of the queer protagonists dies, but it's not because she's queer. This isn't a spoiler - the book opens with Emma visiting Clem's estranged parents following the funeral for Clem. Most of the narrative is told as written in Clem's handwritten journal, giving Emma and the reader a look at Clem's emotional journey. I was weeping at the end of the book, but I'm not sorry to have read it. It's not going to give you the feeling of Brokeback Mountain or other stories that mine gay pain for emotional power.
As for the art, Julie Maroh makes interesting and successful choices throughout. The only pop of color in the book is blue. Several pages have no written dialogue, giving facial expressions and action more weight. Maroh gives readers close-ups of Clem's smile after her first positive sexual interaction. We can feel the joy with her, just as we later feel her intense sadness. Emma is best depicted in the opening and closing scenes of the book, after Clem has passed on. Only then is Emma given the freedom to have her own story told, which makes sense considering that the entire middle is from Clem's POV.
TL;DR - this is an excellent book. I'm glad I read it. It's not a traditional romance, since there isn't a Happily Ever After, but considering that the two protagonists have a solid 13 happy years together? I'm willing to bend my definition.
Cindersong is the tale of a misanthropic healer and her mild-mannered dragon as they search for her girlfriend's murderers. Unfortunately, her quest for bloody vengeance is frustrated by a series of increasingly cordial and well-meaning companions who insist on helping one another, learning new things, and exploring their feelings. Their travels take them through a wild and unexplored world- making friends, dodging foes, and skirting a deadly war.
Cindersong will contain mild language, mild romance, LGBTQ themes, lush food drawings, and genre-typical violence. It is not recommended for readers who are emotionally unprepared for any of those things.
The SS Odysseus was a long term, long distance research vessel tasked with finding alien life. Technically, the mission succeeded when, 20ish years into the mission, the astronauts– Kay Chalabi, Latoya Monroe, and Nike Marmaledov– were woken from cryosleep and were immediately kidnapped by aliens.
Before they could be sold off to the highest bidder (or eaten) the crew were rescued by the Argo; a sentient-ish ship with a motley crew.
The crew: Fuzz, the foul mouthed Furby-looking engineer, Tachs, the four-armed HR rep, Dr. Worm, a doctor who is also a worm, Charli, the teaching robot with calculated control over her emotions, Vee, last dude in the universe with a tragic backstory, and finally Captain Samira Doshi; morally ambiguous space pirate captain with a heart of gold and indisputable leader of the ship.
Now they all travel from place to place, trying to solve the mysteries of the universe: why are we here? Is there common ground between species? Why was humanity wiped out? And can you make bonds with people who don’t have your past– just your present?
DAR! chronicles the six year long autobiographical story of Erika Moen, a lost 20-year-old lesbian artist-wannabe in college who falls in love with a boy in England and the evolution that her sexual identity undergoes before winding up marrying him as a queer 26-year-old full-time cartoonist. Along the way there are many vignettes about sex, farts, the queer community, the Brits, vibrators and figuring out sexual identity.
(This is the comic that preceded Erika Moen's Oh Joy Sex Toy)
The king is dead and the prodigal daughter has returned to claim her throne... Much to the frustration of the Queen, the infamous stepmother. Everyone is anticipating on the return of their sweet princess, but who actually knows the heart of someone who has been away so long...
Desire and power make a poisonous combination, but who can resist
The fruits of Fairest Love
Born from Cruelest Hearts
A fantasy queer romance based on traditional Scandinavian folklore with two adorable huldre wives and delicious Scandi food!
On Huldra:
Huldra are a type of Scandinavian troll, which have variations depending on which country they come from. They’re generally accepted to be temptresses, similar to Greek Sirens, who draw men into the woods to drain them of life. When viewed from the front, they are said to be beautiful beyond compare until they turn around. Their backs are usually depicted hollowed out like a tree trunk rotted out. Some Huldra have been described with a tail like a fox, or a tail like a cow. This is usually their give-away as one of the fair folk.Ildri, our Huldra, is a mixture of these folklores. She has an open back, and the tail and ears of a cow. Huldra are not necessarily completely malevolent. Several stories exist where a human has shown kindness to a Huldra, and she has rewarded them with generosity in return through crops or material goods. Typically they appeared to shepherds and coal-burners, seeking food or warmth. Huldra were powerful, but could be tricked into marriage by capturing them or drawing their blood. When they marry a man in a Christian church, their tail comes off and they lose their beauty, but their children are strong and retain their magic.
On Hollow’s Content:
Though nothing explicit will ever be posted in the story’s canon content, certain panels might be NSFW or not intended for an audience under 18. Due to the nature of Ildri’s body, some might find images of her hollow back disturbing. Also, while careful research has been conducted to root Hollow’s story in a believable culture, the story takes place in a completely fantasy environment, any resemblances of actual people or places are coincidental, and no harm is intended.
Author Mariko Tamaki and illustrator Rosemary Valero-O’Connell bring to life a sweet and spirited tale of young love in Laura Dean Keeps Breaking Up with Me, a graphic novel that asks us to consider what happens when we ditch the toxic relationships we crave to embrace the healthy ones we need.
Laura Dean, the most popular girl in high school, was Frederica Riley's dream girl: charming, confident, and SO cute. There's just one problem: Laura Dean is maybe not the greatest girlfriend.
Reeling from her latest break up, Freddy's best friend, Doodle, introduces her to the Seek-Her, a mysterious medium, who leaves Freddy some cryptic parting words: break up with her. But Laura Dean keeps coming back, and as their relationship spirals further out of her control, Freddy has to wonder if it's really Laura Dean that's the problem. Maybe it's Freddy, who is rapidly losing her friends, including Doodle, who needs her now more than ever.
Fortunately for Freddy, there are new friends, and the insight of advice columnists like Anna Vice to help her through being a teenager in love.
www.loveinpanels.com/comics/laura-dean-keeps-breaking-up-with-me
Two timelines. Second chances. One love.
A ragtag crew travels to the deepest reaches of space, rebuilding beautiful, broken structures to piece the past together.
Two girls meet in boarding school and fall deeply in love―only to learn the pain of loss.
With interwoven timelines and stunning art, award-winning graphic novelist Tillie Walden creates an inventive world, breathtaking romance, and an epic quest for love.
Tillie Walden has written a GIANT queer space opera that manages to be quiet and tense at the same time.
The story is told in two timelines, past and present, with a corresponding color change. The worldbuilding is fascinating, with the characters traveling through space to rebuilt various historic sites. The character development is also detailed, and though it's a little hard to sink into, with so many characters and two timelines, the payoff is worth it.
This book is over 500 pages, so when I say it's big? I mean it. It's sort of YA, sort of not, but it's definitely an f/f romance.
POWER & MAGIC: The Queer Witch Comics Anthology collects fifteen original comics about queer witches of color as they master their abilities, discover their traditions, and navigate love as beings with incredible power. This edition of POWER & MAGIC is 178 pages, black and white, and features the work of 17 women, demigirls, and bigender creators of color. From the euphoria of holding the stars in your grasp, to the sacrifices we make to reach them, POWER & MAGIC explores what it means to be a person of power in all its complexity.
The second volume of Power & Magic is funding on Kickstarter right now (7/14/17) and the first volume just won a PRISM Award. Since I've had the PDF on my iPad for a few weeks, I figured it was time to give it a read. It's... wow.
What you get for your $10 (digital) is 15 stories about queer witches of color, some more magical than others, all of them accessible and engaging and evocative. I don't know if I've ever truly liked every story in an anthology before this one, and that alone makes this volume a stand-out. Lest this turn into an incoherent episode of fan-girling, I'm going to bullet this out:
In short, it's obvious why this beautiful, inspiring, comforting, heart-achingly real yet magical anthology won an award. I can't wait to read the second.
When the heroic princess Amira rescues the kind-hearted princess Sadie from her tower prison, neither expects to find a true friend in the bargain. Yet as they adventure across the kingdom, they discover that they bring out the very best in the other person. They’ll need to join forces and use all the know-how, kindness, and bravery they have in order to defeat their greatest foe yet: a jealous sorceress, who wants to get rid of Sadie once and for all. Join Sadie and Amira, two very different princesses with very different strengths, on their journey to figure out what “happily ever after” really means--and how they can find it with each other.
Quick note to say that we've rated this as PG13 because that's as low as we go BUT it's really an "all-ages" comic, recommended for 3rd grade and up.