Transfixed is a trans and genderqueer erotic comics anthology that collects over 200 pages of brand-new stories, all exploring the fantastical worlds of fairy tales!
Title: The Other Side: An Anthology of Queer Paranormal Romance
Creators: Format: EBook Print
Color: Black and White
Romanceiness: Romantic Elements
Heat: PG13
Tags: paranormal queer gay lesbian
Creators: Format: EBook Print
Color: Black and White
Romanceiness: Romantic Elements
Heat: PG13
Tags: paranormal queer gay lesbian
Where to Buy or Read:
Synopsis from the Creator:
Featuring 19 comics by 23 different creators, THE OTHER SIDE is a celebration of queer romance and the paranormal! Inside, you'll find positive romance stories featuring a wide variety of queer and trans protagonists -- as well as poltergeists, shadow monsters, guitar-playing hypnotists, lost angels, genderfluid vampires, trickster ghosts, and many more!
THE OTHER SIDE features the talents of: Kou Chen, Mari Costa, Natasha Donovan, Melanie Gillman, Kori Michele Handwerker, Gisele Jobateh, Margaret Kirchner, Hannah Krieger, F. Lee, Kate Leth, Mildred Louis, Sfé R. Monster, Katie O'Neill, Amelia Onorato, Aatmaja Pandya, Fyodor Pavlov, Bitmap Prager, Ezra Rose, Britt Sabo, Bishakh K. Som, Sarah W. Searle, Laurel Varian, Mary Verhoeven, and CB Webb.
Love In Panels' Review:
As a reader of comics and paranormal romance novels, I was reeeeally excited about this anthology. While I ended up really liking it, it wasn't what I was expecting, so here are the talking points summarized for you:
- These are not explicit romance. Maybe PG-13, for some kissing, but if Love in Panels had a PG rating, I'd probably give it that.
- Lots of ghosts! I was expecting werewolves and vampires like we see in PNR novels, but it was a pleasant surprise to see a full spectrum of paranormal.
- Most of the stories are fairly short, so unlike some anthologies, you may not have a strong emotional response to a story by the time you've finished it. That said, the length and variability of the stories really appealed to my 2017 brain.
- Queer is loosely defined in this anthology, meaning that the characters are free to be who they are, often without explicitly defining themselves to the reader. This was one of my favorite aspects of the book. Queer folks finding happiness, having full lives, not being only defined by certain pieces of their identities... more of this!
- This is a book you could give to family members, that kid you're mentoring, the library... you name it. It's a strong piece of supportive and fun fiction without being violent or sexually explicit.
If you want a light, happy read in which you can find some queer people finding happiness with paranormal entities, this is the book for you.
I've been a big fan of First Second since I started reading getting really into comics, so I'm thrilled to read this piece of news.
Faith Erin Hicks pairs a socially awkward hockey girl with an outgoing, confident drama boy in her latest YA graphic novel. Alix loves hockey, but her teammates... not so much. Team Captain Lindsay is a bully and none of the other girls stand up for Alix for fear of Lindsay turning on them next. Classic toxic high school behavior. One day something in Alix flips and she punches Lindsay. She's horrified by her behavior and, most of all, the fact that she didn't seem to be in control of herself at all.
The Princess and the Grilled Cheese Sandwich is almost exactly what the cover suggests: a whimsical queer romance with lots of cheese.
While everyone else was busy theorizing about Alexander Hamilton and John Laurens, Josh Trujillo and Levi Hastings were captivated by the story of Baron von Steuben, a Prussian military strategist--and kind of a con man, tbh--who played a pivotal role in the American Revolutionary War. Washington's Gay General: The Legends and Loves of Baron von Steuben is the expansion of Trujillo's much shorter comic at The Nib and is a much more thorough biography supplemented with author commentary, historical context and the inclusion of other figures of the time.
Thanks to Shop Your Shelves, I finally read Life of Melody, by Mari Costa. It's everything I hoped it would be.
Way back in 2018, I wrote a post about Merfolk in Romance and included what was then a webtoon publishing on Tapas, The Sea in You. Five years later--dang, I've been at this for a while--Iron Circus is publishing it in all its sapphic underwater glory! This full-color book is out in March, 2023.
When folks come to me looking for high quality erotic comics (this is more frequent than you might think), I almost always point them toward Iron Circus Comics' Smut Peddler series. These are giant collections of just-long-enough comics full of consent and joy, pining and hope, diverse bodies and identities and more. They're often weird, unique or thought-provoking. In all, they're good smutty fun.
Money Shot is a classic case of an entertaining premise falling apart after the first few issues. Without doing any research, I suspect that the creative team had planned out one arc and then the series was successful enough that they got more issues and just flailed about for a while. All that said, the first trade is very funny and appropriately porny.
Sigh. Chef's Kiss is pretty to look at (art below) but it's really shallowly developed. The opening scenes consist of Ben moving in with three roommates shortly after graduating from college. He applies to and interviews for lots of writing and editing jobs before stumbling upon a job opening at a nearby vegetarian restaurant. Thus begins a drawn out plot in which Ben has to cook three existing dishes and develop one new one for the restaurant and get approval of the chef's pig, Watson.
