Recs

Shortbox 2024: vibey queer fantasy comics, and other recs

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It’s the online comics event of the year: Shortbox online comics festival is upon us, for the month of October ONLY.

These are pretty specific to my own tastes, but there are a huge variety of genres, vibes and stories from some of the most exciting comics creators around, really showing off the incredible possibilities of the medium.

There are a LOT more I want to get and read, but wanted to shout out a few I’ve read and particularly enjoyed so far, while they’re still available…

1. FANTASY-ISH: Magical, vibey / dreamy (and queer)

Mythic, historical, romantic-feeling

Last crane / Narsid

Just beautiful colouring in a way that really serves this dreamy, emotional story, where someone lives in the wake of their divine partner leaving the earth.

Blade of the Fane / Theo Stultz

Last year this artist did ‘A Quiet End to the Mundane Age’ - both are very atmospheric, slow-paced historical-ish romance/ fantasy, which took me a bit to really get into, and then I LOVED. Once it’s in the swing, the romance is just 2 people drawn to each other that works great, and the dramatic moments hit SO hard. Also just some incredible swords and buildings and colours.

The creator also made an amazing retro looking trailer I truly can’t get over. Should I learn animation? I have plenty of time for that, right?

Compelling, emotional storytelling

Curtain falling / Marty Tina G

Someone is stuck in a fairytale dream that isn’t all it seems. This artist makes lesbian comics with just really good plots. A really good demonstration of how you don’t need every panel to be intricate to tell a compelling story, and another comic that makes me want to drop everything and change my style completely.

Home by the rotting sea / Otava Heikkilä

Two women sent to live with giants adapt to a new life. I think one of my new favourites of Otava’s comics. He has such an interesting, singular voice, unlike anything else I’ve read, and so emotional. Gorgeous and heartfelt and brutal. A beautiful, slow exploration about community, climate and conflict.

Abstract, visual-focused, futuristic

Death fiddles and we dance / Deb JJ Lee

The main character wakes up hundreds of years after their planet was destroyed, on a scavenger ship that’s preserving the life inside. The panelling gets almost totally abstract in a really interesting way that stays admirably readable. Beautiful and decorative

Clair de Lune / Xulia Vicente

The way this comic and colours are done - going in and out of B&W - makes the music feel incredibly magical!! What a powerful visual representation of music!!

I loved the accompanying playlist, too. I played clarinet in orchestras for many years before having health difficulties - so this very visual, at times quite abstract comic was very close to my heart.

2. OTHER GENRES!

HORROR. DISTURBING

Impasto / SJ Miller

You want to read a messed up comic? Have I got the one for you. Edwardian house, homoerotic vibe, really well-crafted story, incredibly disturbing horror.

FUN AND SILLY

Pretty good wizard / Claire Weber

Great. Just really good. Everyone should read this. horseshoe crab is my new favourite character ever

Hearth’s haunting / Jean Wei

Sweet! Comforting! He’s just been through a breakup! AND HIS STOVE IS HAUNTED!

Alas / Sajan Rai

Sajan makes incredibly funny comics full of the most awful little guys you’ve ever seen. Fun but not in a cosy/ comforting way, more “warning (/ advertising) for gore and shakespeare snacking on teeth”.

Last on this list, but the one I IMMEDIATELY went to buy and read first, and it did NOT disappoint. Sajan is one of my favourite artists, and I’m not sure it’s fair that he’s so good at comics, too.

Queer graphic novel recs, summer 2024

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Summer graphic novel releases I’ve been reading - with queer themes, creators, or characters!

Brownstone

This might be my favourite graphic novel I read this year.

A young teen who’s never known the Guatemalan side of her family is left alone with the dad she barely knows - and can barely speak to in broken Spanish - for a whole summer as he does up a house. She starts out reluctant and surly, feeling like an outcast in the Latin American neighbourhood (it’s hard not to feel like ‘try to connect!!!’ but that’s literally the whole point and she’s 14).

Read because I love this artist and it was even better than I expected. Super-strong cartooning, beautiful flow to the pages. The little moments of connection that overcome cultural and language differences were so beautiful. The plot was great and made me cry. Honestly just such a fantastic book and piece of comics!!

The Ghostkeeper

The main character does his best to coach ghosts through therapy instead of forcibly exorcising them, which people in the local town DO NOT LIKE.

The world works well and the portrayal of the character’s burnout hit very hard! The feeling like he’s drowning trying to help people and just can’t do enough is done really well.

Read if: you want something sweet, comforting and focused on mental health. (I think some people who liked the sweet parts of Finding Home might enjoy this!)

The Gulf

An extremely expressive book that captures a 00’s teenage runaway, yearning after a way to break out of the confines of society, and live with nature without causing harm.

The teen emotion felt SO real I personally found it frustrating - there’s an aimless ‘Catcher in the Rye’ or ‘Into the Wild’ quality to this book, which aren’t stories I personally vibe with. But I think my frustration speaks to De Souza really hitting something deep and real about childhood and human behaviour.

The small moments of the MC connecting with people and nature felt really beautiful, and so did the adults’ advice and refusal to belittle the teens’ concerns.

Edit: I’ve now also just read Ash’s Cabin by Jen Wang, who did The Prince and the Dressmaker. I feel bad for authors with similar books released at similar times - the style is different, but it’s actually a slightly similar story/ themes but set in present day California and focused on one nonbinary main character - who is more capable and engaged rather than aimless.

Ash feels like they’re the only person who cares about the climate or feels deeply about things, and goes out to survive in the wilderness.

There’s more of a specific focus on real survival and ethnobotany, and the art style is more realist and contained - and very beautiful!! It makes me want to go do a whole graphic novel in watercolour. It doesn’t get deep into the MC’s gender feelings, but I love how much it engages with the difficult reality of the wilderness.

Both reads for: young people, anyone feeling aimless and frustrated, or wanting to break away and find another way to live with nature.

DeadEndia 3

Finally out in the UK, this is the last part of Hamish Steele’s graphic novel trilogy (if you only watched his Netflix show, this volume finishes out the story!)

Extremely fun and silly and warm, while also throwing out nuanced, complex thoughts about queer solidarity and community through the medium of really tight jokes and one-liners.

Hamish’s cartooning is a delight, a read I would recommend to anyone that enjoys fun.

Don’t miss - happening now & coming soon:

Ruin of the House of the Divine Visage - just over a week left on this Kickstarter for a lovely hardback that probably won’t be reprinted!

One man glimpses another’s face in a monastery housing a god where it’s strictly forbidden. The story is SO engaging, the emotion drove me slightly nuts and the worldbuilding is incredibly cool. It’s a webcomic and you can read the start online too:

Buuza! Volume 5 - just about to launch, including bundles for new readers and cheaper earlybird books.

This fantasy slice of life/ queer drama webcomic was recently nominated for an IGNATZ, and with good reason. It has a really fun, easy to read manga/ telenovela feel, but the plot’s also been building together and things are really kicking off at this point in the story. Personally I’m massively excited to have this in my hands.

My favourite stories about: THE DEEP

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I’m starting preliminary work on a project about the vast ocean, its fathomless depths, and being drawn inexorably down into the dark - as well as thinking about the futility of the imperialist mindset trying to ‘conquer’ nature. Here are some of the books and games me (and co-writer Letty Wilson) have been most obsessed with the ideas in, and I found particularly inspirational on the theme of having a wet, bad time.

BOOKS

QUEER OCEAN HORROR: Emmett Nahil’s From the Belly

A man is cut still-living from the belly of a whale and kept prisoner on a ship where things rapidly start to go wrong and get weird.

Emmett writes queer horror that explores the beautiful and terrible, obsession and the body. Read for ominous growths, portents and prophetic dreams; doomed imperialist arrogance about whaling; and a hot mystery guy who, like the sea, may not be able to love you back.

You can pre-order direct from Tenebrous Press (it’s out May 30th apparently) to support a cool horror small press as well as a cool indie author.

* Full disclosure note: I hired esteemed horror nerd Emmett for his game writing expertise to edit on previous gamebooks (Into the Tower) because I really like his work!

NON-FICTION DEEP SEA: The Brilliant Abyss, by Helen Scales

Fascinating and extremely readable non-fiction about deep sea life, and a bit about the human forces threatening it.

I wish I was able to memorise all the facts from this and keep them in my brain - I ended up making my partner listen to big chunks of the audiobook, because I kept trying to recount all the information back.

Changed how I think about the ocean, and what natural landscapes we think of as ‘valuable.’

LITERARY SF EMOTIONS: Our Wives Under the Sea, by Julia Armfield

A woman’s wife comes back from a deep sea mission Wrong. A story about grief, endings and paralysing anxiety. Beautifully written prose, with a really compelling sense of the characters moving dreamlike through the world, unable to intervene in the inevitable.

On a personal level as someone with a severe chronic illness, the isolating helplessness of how it feels to have or watch a body and mind falling apart - with a system unwilling to help you - made a particular impression.

Really just a banger of a book, everyone I know who read it messaged me like ‘HAVE YOU READ THIS?’ and they were right to.

LITERARY SPACE SCIENCE: In Ascension, by Martin MacInnes

When an unexpected deep-sea mission gets weird and goes wrong, a scientist slowly follows the trail of anomalies into new deep-space exploration.

A sci-fi-later-on climate-y novel with a background of coming to terms with past abuse, and an awe about being part of huge, beautiful natural systems.

This book is philosophical, slow-paced and very interested in the science (listening to the audiobook and having a brief background originally studying astrophysics probably helped my enjoyment. Also warning for sea nerds, it’s only about the ocean at the start.) Not perfect & pretty long - you can honestly skip the first two chapters - but with moments of beautiful and interesting ideas, if you’re up for being patient.

SF HORROR/ THRILLER: The Luminous Dead, by Caitlin Starling

A ‘one last job’ dangerous cave-diving mission to get the MC the money to get off-planet, turned half-psychological horror as she realises her handler on the surface is holding back crucial information. Even as she starts thinking she sees things down in the dark, she crawls deep down into the alien planet, unsure if she’ll be trapped there.

This is cave- rather than sea- diving, claustrophobic, nightmarish and genuinely tense / scary (full warnings here).

The complex horrible lesbians and feeling of obsessively being drawn down into the dark absolutely changed me.

FANTASY WEBCOMIC/ GN HONOURABLE MENTION: Tiger, Tiger by Petra Nordlund

Truly one of my all-time favourite comics ever and I will use any excuse to talk about it, this is an incredibly drawn fantasy comic with a bonus cool and sexy ancient creature / wrathful, awful god brought up from the depths of the ocean in a diving bell.

Free to read (here), with the most awe-inspiring illustration, worldbuilding, queer idiots and extremely funny faces. What more could one look for in a piece of media, I ask you. If I could ever make something 1/10th as good as this comic, I would die happy.

NARRATIVE GAMES

IN DEVELOPMENT: Below and Behold

Felix Miall has been part of a team working on a game about a Clergyship of monks descending deep into the ocean. It doesn’t exist yet, but his ideas and art are always extremely inspiring - if you partake of social media, I strongly suggest following him somewhere so you know what he’s up to.

More pics on his:
- Instagram
- Twitter

* Full disclosure note: Felix is an esteemed beloved creator and deep-sea enthusiast colleague who illustrated on my previous gamebooks. We have both, by yelling about them to each other and through independent accident, enjoyed a lot of the media on this list.

TABLETOP HORRORS: Heart, The City Beneath

Felix was also the illustrator for Grant Howitt / Rowan, Rook & Decard’s RPG Heart, whose manual has the most lush and inventive and awful descriptions of being drawn inexorably downwards towards your doom.

It’s an RPG that’s very good at opening up its worldbuilding for the player or reader to invent more, rather than closing off creative possibilities.

* Another full-disclosure note: just remembered I also designed some pins for Heart, an exciting honour, because I really like Grant’s game writing.

SF SEA EXPLORATION: Subnautica

Actually more of an open-world adventure/explorer than the sort of narrative games I usually play, Subnautica’s atmosphere of being one very small person exploring a vast ocean blew me away.

After a ship crash, you’re trying to explore a planet underwater, looking for what happened to the other escape pods. The exploration and the terror of hearing or glimpsing a huge dangerous creature in the distance alone would make it fantastic, but you also gradually find other clues and audio files left behind and uncover a brilliantly evocative longer history of what happened on this planet and can complete the story.

The game spent a long time in development getting REFINED. A particular mechanic I absolutely love which emerged from that that is that there’s no guns, and almost no point trying to meet the leviathans that lurk in the depths with violence. It leaves you with this incredible impression of the unfathomable indifference of the natural world, how huge and untameable it is, and the need to work alongside as a part of it rather than against it.

MYSTERY SHIP / GAME OF ALL TIME: Return of the Obra Dinn

Me and all my friends’ favourite game. It’s 1807, you’re investigating a ship with all crew dead or missing to determine what fate befell them. Rendered in 1-bit, full of music I’m obsessed with, the game I most wish I could wipe from my memory to play again for the first time. If you can, avoid looking anything up before playing. I heavily blame this game (and The Terror TV show fictionalising the Franklin expedition) for the current fervour of my interest in ships.


Queer graphic novel recs, spring 2024

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New comics & upcoming books I'm excited about (with queer characters, themes, romances or authors)…


On Kickstarter for one more week: The Second Safest Mountain

Otava Heikkilä has a really interesting project funding on Kickstarter RIGHT NOW

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/quindriepress/the-second-safest-mountain

"The Second Safest Mountain is a story about leaving the mountain dedicated to sacred women, and the repercussions of entering the world below. When Aru ventures into the land beneath the mountain, they are soon confronted with what it means to leave the safety of being holy and beloved."

Otava's work is some of the most exciting in comics right now and I'm VERY excited about there being a print version of this visceral, philosophical comic!! A HARDCOVER, NO LESS!!



Just released: BUNT! Striking out on financial aid

Having a queer graphic novel coming out soon-ish in the strange world of mainstream publishing, I've been catching up on a few other recently-released GNs which are at the older / more plot dense end of ‘technically YA’. I especially enjoyed BUNT, which I haven't seen that much hype about, but it's so good???

Personally I do not care about sports, but this comic MADE ME CARE so much and actually yell out loud about the sports drama. Truly a testament to how well-crafted it is.

The premise is a college student has to put together a softball team and win one game to get a scholarship and be able to afford her fees... but all the possible student players are art school nerds.

It turns out I don't understand US art schools (apparently they actually have classes and learn things?? and I don’t know if I’ve ever seen anyone wear cat ears in an educational environment, so not all the nerd references land tbh.) That meant I was a little slow to get into it, but the MOMENT it got into the main Sports plot I was extremely on board.

It's written by Ngozi Ukazu who, if you’re not familiar, did the wildly popular gay sports webcomic Check, Please, and it’s drawn by Mad Rupert who does Sakana - so both of them are basically extremely experienced at comics and very skilled at the FORM.

The comic storytelling is just SO dynamic and strong and inspirational. I also enjoyed the underlying theme of “profit-oriented unis destroying a small town” and “it's genuinely fine to drop out”. And the way it was coloured was amazing, I want to study its low-contrast colour background secrets.


Some stuff to look out for, coming soon

If you're interested in a quiet, introspective look at growing up and exploring queerness through fandom, I’d really rec Sunhead by Alex Assan, out in May.

I also really enjoyed Molly Knox Ostertag's The Deep Dark, a sapphic YA graphic novel but definitely with an older/ darker tone than her other books that I found really compelling, out in June.

(Possibly paywalled but I've… also been enjoying her gay Sherlock Holmes fan comics that are very closely based on the books and short stories.)

And while the pages are only on Patreon right now, in late summer there's a new Quindrie press book coming called Ruin of the House of the Divine Visage that is VERY GOOD. Hard to describe, but it's sort of about forbidden love at a monastery where nobody's allowed to look at each others' faces, only the face of the god who lives at the heart of the monastery. Probably the best way to hear about the crowdfund is subscribing to Quindrie's newsletter.

Ruin of the House of the Divine Visage - preview from the webpage linked above, © Spire Eaton & Eve Greenwood

Favourite comics & graphic novels of 2023

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Looking back, I read so many amazing comics this year, most of them new releases - below are my favourites I really recommend!

SIDEBAR IF YOU’RE AN AUDIBLE PERSON: my favourite Book Thing of the year was LIBRO.FM!! It’s an Audible alternative that works almost exactly the same but gives money to local bookshops. It’s now available in the UK (and US & Canada), the switch was extremely easy, I strongly recommend it as an easy thing you can do right now to make positive change!

Probably my favourite book of 2023

  • Boys Weekend - by The Nib editor and cartoonist Mattie Lubchansky

Our transfeminine main character gets invited on a "boys" stag weekend on a lawless vegas-like island in the already-happening near-tech-dystopian slight-future. With the same satirical, witty energy of the The Nib and its non-fiction comics (RIP), this book is extremely funny while also being very real about transness imo, couldn't recommend it more!!

Fun lesbian romance comics. Both about sports, now I think about it

  • Belle of the Ball - by Mari Costa (I also really liked her demon/bodyguard comic The Demon of Beausoleil)

This luso-brazilian artist describes themself as an ‘unhinged lesbian' and just does extremely well-executed, fun, queer, easy to read comics. This book is a YA lesbian romance - it's in a high school and has a love triangle, both tropes I usually hate, but in this case the author has made actually really good somehow. What a magic trick.

  • Grand Slam Romance - by Hicks (artist of various horny butch comics) and their wife!

Messy, silly, funny, everyone's-lesbians (magical girl?) baseball romance with a non-binary butch lead. Definitely 18+ humour. Honestly just very cool to see a mainstream publisher going for an adult romance like this, and I think there's more in the series to come...

Thoughtful and beautiful

  • Salt magic (2021) - Technically children's, very beautifully drawn with dark and emotional themes and a winding Ghibli / strange fairytale energy.

  • LIBERATED - A short, nonfiction graphic novel that simply tells the life of Claude Cahun, a genderqueer jewish artist active in anti-Nazi circles in 1920s-30s Paris.

The story is very movingly portrayed by Kaz Rowe, who is also non-binary and Jewish and makes comics. Kaz is probably better known for running an amazing and massively popular history youtube channel - they do really understandable (but wonderfully nuanced and researched) videos, and also helped with my next book's historical research!

Adult GNs about women with haunted energy

  • Daughters of Ys (2020) - a beautiful, dark retelling of an ancient celtic legend from Breton France. It may look like gorgeous kids' art, but the themes here are adult, dark and weird (and I loved them.)

  • A Guest in the House - by Emily Carroll, master of queer horror comics. A previous dead wife's presence seems to haunt Abby's life with her new husband - alternates between daily life in B&W and fragments of her vivid, unsettling dreams. I found the ending too abrupt, but otherwise this is truly a masterpiece of comics storytelling. Panels are so full of weight and emotion and dread. I would love for my panels to have half as much emotion as Emily Carroll's.

  • Cuckoo - I WAS OBSESSED WITH THIS BOOK. A girl develops weird abilities in an extremely stylish, graphic format that makes the most incredible use of comics as a visual medium. The panelling itself and use of shape lends itself beautifully to the emotions and dreamlike sci fi of the story.

  • The Many Deaths of Laila Starr - the avatar of death is sent to live in Mumbai and forced to live with mortality. A gem from the world of traditional comics (ie floppies, collected in a TP) which is not usually my area, but I tried out since I slightly know the writer (Ram V) from doing a book event together, and I'm SO glad I did. There's also a great review/ essay here by Ritesh Babu about mythic portrayals of death in comics and across Indian cultures!