Lots of ghosts! I was ...
SHATTERED WARRIOR is a solidly YA graphic novel, but with lots of violence and, in Matt's words "an attempted rape scene and a boob." So, trigger warning for sexual assault and violence. (The breast in question is visible after a very subtle and consensual interlude.) All this has led to my R-rating, but I think it's totally appropriate for teens.
On to an ...
Review based on Dates 1:
Cravats. Latin. Rope-walking. Androgyny. Pirates. Girls in gowns running away together. Boys and boys and girls and girls and people who don't identify any particular way... This book is hard to review because not only is it an anthology, the stories within span thousands of years of history, continents, empires, cultures... it's impossible to pin down. ...
THE DREAMER turned 10 years old this Independence Day. That's 10 years of Revolutionary War nerdery and romance! Like pretty much anything having to do with American history, I have complicated feelings, but I think this comic has figured out what it is and does that pretty darn well. It's worth noting that this comic came before Hamilton, but has all the names you'd expect to ...
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.
THE LEGEND OF BOLD RILEY is an adventure comic featuring a (bold) princess who fights monsters, seduces ladies, and uses her wits to help people as she travels around Southeast Asia. The compiled book I read (not the standalone issues) includes several short stories, each with a different artist and plot. Riley is smart, beautiful, daring, and kind. I would have gladly spent more time with ...
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 ...
Issue 1 was a delightful exercise in world-building, with character introductions and little bits of plot underscored by various creatures and magical happenings in the background.
Our main characters appear to be a writer/barista werewolf and her centaur BFF and fellow barista. Julie, the wolfy one, is at the beginning of a relationship and, though we haven't yet met the lady of ...
SOMETHING NEW, Lucy Knisley's autobiographical graphic novel about her wedding, hits that indefinable spot somewhere between memoir and how-to. If you've read RELISH or any of her travelogues, you'll know what to expect from this one: humor, lots of internal dialogue, and a level of detail that makes you feel like you just might be Lucy's friend.
The narrative ...
Windrose seems to be going for a slow burn romance between two of the main characters, and I dig it. Leon loves Angeline but she's falling for Danielle. Danielle feels... ? We don't know! There was an almost kiss, but with all the kidnapping and escaping and thievery and lying... who knows what's next?!
You may like this comic if you like:
- Pirates
- ...
This is a hard one to review, as I both loved and hated pieces of it. Each of the four volumes is 50-60 pages, combining for something close to graphic novel length. Each of the volumes is a distinct arc, but the overall story isn't complete until the last two pages of volume 4.
Here's the part I hated: there is no Happily Ever After. That's the covenant that the ...
Bonnie N. Collide is a strip-based romantic comedy, full of roller derby and office hijinks. Bonnie is wonderfully wacky, and Stuart plays a charmingly awkward straight man to balance her off-the-wall antics. Their romance is awkward and slow to develop, but charming, and the cast of secondary characters (including a werewolf?) adds depth and humor to what would otherwise be a very sitcom-y ...
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 ...
With a whopping 400 pages, this book is something of a coming-of-age tome. With a spare, sketchlike style, Tillie Walden tells the story of her life as an ice skating child and teen.
Chapters are named after skating moves, a short description of the action mirroring the events of the story. Through skating, we see Tillie's yearning for acceptance and love: from other girls, ...
This continuation of the much-loved 90's movie, Clueless, isn't as heavy on the romance as the original, but it's getting a review here because I loved it and this is my blog.
The premise is simple: Dionne, Cher, and Tai are trying to figure out who they want/should be as they navigate senior year and an assignment from Ms. Geist. I'll warn you now - if you ...
First things first: the description of this comic is a bit misleading. I don't find it about Tinka learning to take responsibility for her actions so much as all of the boys in her life learning to take responsibility for theirs. Tinka is every girl who wants to be liked and is trying (unsuccessfully) to fit our society's completely unattainable criteria for acceptance and love. ...
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.
Read our full review here.
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 ...
This review is a bit late, since the 6 year old living in this household stole my copy of TAPROOT and ran off with it for a week. When I finally snagged it back and immersed myself in the beautiful, eerie world that Keezy Young created, I completely understood the 6 year old's urge to read it over and over.
Pitched as "a story about a gardener and a ghost," TAPROOT ...
When an older, problematic book is modernized, I have a habit of hoping for the best. I should have learned better by now, though. Despite being adapted by a writer I adore, I still couldn't like the story.
A large part of the problem is that I don't much care for JANE EYRE. I hate Mr. Rochester, and have never been able to understand why Jane Eyre would return to him ...
This is going to be a bit of a Squee - you have been warned.
I first heard of DESTINY, NY when I was scrolling through Kickstarter and decided to back Vol. 2. Magical girls in love? Sign. Me. Up.
Fast forward a bit, and I've got a digital copy of DESTINY, NY (Vol. 1) waiting for me on the iPad. I had a terrible day yesterday. Not going to get into specifics, but trust ...
I'll admit, when I first heard about MY BOYFRIEND IS A BEAR, my romance-reviewer brain went straight to "werebear." I was 100% expecting a man who turns into a bear on occasion. Maybe a rather hirsute man who was large and soft like a bear. Well, dear reader, I was selling this book short. The heroine, Nora, does indeed have a boyfriend and he is indeed a bear.
The ...
How do I love Raven? Let me count the ways...
1) Raven herself is a badass. She's been raised to take over for her father, the Pirate King, which has given her both her title (Pirate Princess) and a whole set of physical and strategic skills that she's determined to use to regain control of her family's pirate empire. (Long story short - her brothers are ...
Werewolf stories tend to be about men turning into wolves and smashing things, which is all well and good, but it's nice to explore the soft underbelly of the myth every now and again. In CAN I PET YOUR WEREWOLF, Kel McDonald has collected a group of stories that range from teenage were-girls bonding with their mothers to a werewolf who transforms into a human when he comes out as ...
BINGO LOVE is the heartwarming, second-chance, family-centered romance I hoped it would be. It's just under 100 pages, but the story spans over 70 years, from the time the two protagonists (Hazel and Mari) are young teens to their last breaths. It's effortlessly inclusive and tells us just enough about the secondary characters to have me impatiently waiting for the promised digital ...
Yellow Hearts is a comic about three people who met first, briefly, as children, and accidentally made a deal with a demon. Now, as adults, the demon has drawn all three of them back together, so that it may repay it’s debt to them. As children, they seem to have given it permission to have friends, to mimic humanity, and now the demon wishes to repay them with a single wish.
The ...
Maiden of the Machine is a story about a pair of down-on-their-luck sisters seeking adventure. The elder sister (Abhaya, known as Abigail to her cousins) seeks it to make ends meet. The younger sister, Elizabeth (known alternately as Eliza, Lizzy or Bette), finds her curiosity and sense of wonder stoked by a chance meeting with Mr. Lovelace during one of their jobs. (I am also now suspecting ...
Review from Issue #1:
SLEEPLESS is a love story with a black princess (kind of) and her bodyguard who has sworn to not sleep (I think) in order to be her guard 24/7. It's written and illustrated by some really talented women. If you aren't sold yet, get thee to your local comic shop and flip through it.
The costuming looks renaissance-ish, with voluminous sleeves, high ...
Allison Shaw's PERSEPHONE is beautiful, but lacks the depth that would have pushed it to the next level. The story progresses at a rapid pace, with some characters seeming to act without clear motivation. Readers who aren't familiar with the Greek pantheon might find themselves a bit adrift.
As a series of illustrations, it's quite lovely. The line work is spare but ...
Gothic Tales of Haunted Love was one of my most anticipated titles of 2018. I backed it on Kickstarter and was enchanted by the images I saw in preview. You can read the launch post here. All of this is to say that I suspect my expectations were set too high and somewhat unrealistically. The resulting ...
I've been waiting for this since Limerence announced it, and I'm super pleased with the result!
The first 25 pages is set-up: what are pronouns and why is it important to use the correct pronouns when referring to or talking to a person.
The middle section is the how-to portion of the book. How to use gender neutral pronouns in a professional setting, when you don't ...
www.loveinpanels.com/comics/circadia-issue-1
www.loveinpanels.com/comics/bear-company
www.loveinpanels.com/comics/open-earth
I really wanted to love SWING. I adored SUNSTONE and was ready for more of the humor, emotional depth, and romance. Unfortunately, Linda Sejic's lovely art couldn't save the awkward writing and construction of this first volume of SWING.
(If you want to read more about the series and the writing team, we Sugartown is, I believe intentionally, hard to categorize. The main character, Hazel, is in an open relationship with Gregor. She's in Portland, OR for the summer, while Gregor is back home in NYC. She meets a super-cute domme, Argent, at a club one night, and the two strike up a friendship/relationship.
The book explores themes of jealousy, long-distance ...
www.loveinpanels.com/comics/heathen
www.loveinpanels.com/comics/sugar-vol-1
www.loveinpanels.com/comics/heavy-vinyl
www.loveinpanels.com/comics/dream-daddy
www.loveinpanels.com/comics/loreolympus
www.loveinpanels.com/comics/body-music
www.loveinpanels.com/comics/twisted-romance-vol-1
www.loveinpanels.com/comics/norroway
www.loveinpanels.com/comics/merry-men
www.loveinpanels.com/comics/lets-play
www.loveinpanels.com/comics/unnatural
www.loveinpanels.com/comics/sincerely-harriet
www.loveinpanels.com/comics/the-prince-and-the-swan
www.loveinpanels.com/prose/little-moments-of-love
www.loveinpanels.com/comics/fortunate-beasts
www.loveinpanels.com/comics/strange-someone
www.loveinpanels.com/comics/queer-and-trans-identities
www.loveinpanels.com/comics/blossoms-in-autumn
www.loveinpanels.com/comics/bloom
www.loveinpanels.com/comics/croquette-and-empanada
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 ...
www.loveinpanels.com/comics/laura-dean-keeps-breaking-up-with-me
www.loveinpanels.com/comics/super-fun-sexy-times
www.loveinpanels.com/comics/shout-out-anthology
www.loveinpanels.com/comics/stage-dreams
www.loveinpanels.com/comics/mooncakes
www.loveinpanels.com/prose/comics
www.loveinpanels.com/comics/hide-and-seek
www.loveinpanels.com/comics/gender-queer
www.loveinpanels.com/comics/kiss-number-8
www.loveinpanels.com/comics/quick-and-easy-guide-to-sex-and-disability
Review of Ghosted in L.A.
Review of Lost Carnival
Review of You Brought Me the Ocean
Review of Cheater Code
Review of Come Together
Review of Patience & Esther
Review of The Daughters of Ys
Review of Silver
Review of The Girl From the Sea
Review of Embodied
Review of Chef's Kiss
Review of Money Shot (Vol 1-3)
Review of The Sea in You.
Review of Life of Melody
Review of Washington's Gay General
Review of The Princess and the Grilled Cheese Sandwich
Review of Hockey Girl Loves Drama Boy