I've been wondering how to do some good with my blog instead of only using it to toot my own horn (although I'll keep doing that too, because self-promotion is hugely important for small-press writers, since we don't have a lot of others to lean on that horn for us).
But, I also want to tell you about some of the best things I've recently encountered across the arts and entertainment worlds. Let's start with some of the best comic books, series and collections I've come across over the last year or two. I'm definitely no expert in this field, and really only came to graphic novels a few years ago, but following are some amazing things I think others might enjoy reading, too.
Because being bi keeps me particularly aware that solid LGBTQ2+ representation is still a rarity in nearly all art forms, all content recommended below is either LGBTQ2-themed, -inclusive, or, at the very minimum, -friendly.
If you have your own recommendations, please share them in a comment!
The Less Than Epic Adventures of TJ and Amal (NSFW)
Available as an e-comic and graphic novel, primarily black and white with painted, full-colour splash pages
By E.K. Weaver
The staff at Argo Books in Montreal turned me onto this book, and I fell deeply in love, as, not surprisingly, do TJ and Amal.
A cross-US tale of travel, love, discovery, deceit and growth, it's like On The Road, but with a point (don't @ me; you know it's true).
The omnibus edition includes a number of extras, including some fantastic footnotes.
However you read this collection, the comic includes smart dialogue, great bi rep, class commentary, pop culture references up the wazoo, gorgeously rendered scenery, and sex scenes that manage to be sexy and beautiful while also reflecting both characters' deep insecurities.
Monstress
Graphic novel series and collected editions, colour
By Marjorie Liu and Sana Tanaka
If you can stop ogling the individual artworks that make up this magnificently imagined series on ancient politics, feline poets, and interspecies wars, you will find yourself in a world where no one trusts anyone, and the story's hero certainly cannot trust herself. That's because Maika Halfwolf, a stunning, one-armed warrior, shares her body with the soul of an ancient, demonic monster with its own agenda and a hunger for human flesh.
Be patient through the first several issues' focus on building the series' elaborate world of Arcanics, Monstrums, cats and Cumaeans; it is very worth it to keep going.
This series is beyond brilliant in creating a world where everything is everything, and nothing is what it seems. Also contains excellent disability rep, and powerful women throughout.
Starfighter (NSFW)
Erotic M/M space epic e-comic, also available in print issues, black and white
By HamletMachine
Hot, exciting fun (CW: emotional abuse and domination at the start, however crucial for the plot and characterization). This engaging sci-fi story about space-based fighter pilots in the future battling intergalactic enemies and unknown beings, also delves into the deceptions among the many political layers above and around them.
The black and white art is stark yet nuanced, as, it turns out, are the characters, and improves significantly as the series evolves. An ongoing web series, Starfighter includes intriguing, if not entirely new, ideas about the possible connections between matter, energy, intellect and emotion, as our hero, Abel, learns he can use his more positive emotions in a new and powerful way, even as those in control sink lower and lower as they try to weaponize him.
Above all, this sci-fi adventure mystery is sexy and fun in a Matrix-but-with-plenty-of-gay-sex kind of way. Has some non-binary minor characters, and excellent building of backstories.
Novae: The Necromancer and the Astronomer's Apprentice
Historical M/M fantasy e-comic, colour
By KaiJu
I am a sucker for beauty, and this ongoing e-comic has it in spades, in its characters, its full-colour artwork, and its slow-burn romance.
The historical fantasy connects Raziol, a brilliant, young 17th-century Arab astronomer lauded by his kind mentor but struggling under classism and racism in Paris, with Sulvain, a brilliant necromancer of enormous, unknown age reticent, after loss, to open himself up to love again.
Updated Mondays and Thursdays, the series is just reaching its stride recently, as we learn there may be more to both Sulvain and the streets of Paris than to all the stars in the sky.
Main character bi representation and carefully conveyed emotional subtleties.
Step Aside, Pops
The third collection of Hark! A Vagrant comic strips
By Kate Beaton
Kate Beaton's Hark! A Vagrant witty, esoteric comic strips have been collected into three books so far. This third continues to combine her deceptively simple drawing style with scathing social, scientific and cultural commentary.
Not everything in the collection will appeal to all readers, as Beaton narrows in to deliver burns to some very specific recipients, including composers, thinkers, scientists, politicians, explorers, superheroes and more.
But, if you are a person and are interested in, well, anything, you'll find sets of strips here to make you laugh, chortle, roll your eyes and/or holler "Damn right!. You tell him where to go!"
Scooby-Doo
By various writers and illustrators
My kid continues to love Scooby-Doo comics, including Scooby-Doo, Where Are You? and Scooby-Doo Team-Up, and I have to admit, even for adults, these are just so much fun.
I'm not linking to these, though, because you should really head out and support your local comic book retailer if you can!
If you can't, don't forget that most libraries already carry, or will appreciate your recommendations to order, a variety of graphic novels and comic books.
More Novel, Graphic Recommendations
If you want to know about other great graphic novels and series more broadly across the genre, or be warned away from some of the lesser or evil, visit my partner James K. Moran's blog, where he reviews comics, films and fiction, and talks about the writing life. You'll find he's quite smart, despite having married a fellow writer.
But, I also want to tell you about some of the best things I've recently encountered across the arts and entertainment worlds. Let's start with some of the best comic books, series and collections I've come across over the last year or two. I'm definitely no expert in this field, and really only came to graphic novels a few years ago, but following are some amazing things I think others might enjoy reading, too.
Because being bi keeps me particularly aware that solid LGBTQ2+ representation is still a rarity in nearly all art forms, all content recommended below is either LGBTQ2-themed, -inclusive, or, at the very minimum, -friendly.
If you have your own recommendations, please share them in a comment!
The Less Than Epic Adventures of TJ and Amal (NSFW)
Available as an e-comic and graphic novel, primarily black and white with painted, full-colour splash pages
By E.K. Weaver
The staff at Argo Books in Montreal turned me onto this book, and I fell deeply in love, as, not surprisingly, do TJ and Amal.A cross-US tale of travel, love, discovery, deceit and growth, it's like On The Road, but with a point (don't @ me; you know it's true).
The omnibus edition includes a number of extras, including some fantastic footnotes.
However you read this collection, the comic includes smart dialogue, great bi rep, class commentary, pop culture references up the wazoo, gorgeously rendered scenery, and sex scenes that manage to be sexy and beautiful while also reflecting both characters' deep insecurities.
Monstress
Graphic novel series and collected editions, colour
By Marjorie Liu and Sana Tanaka
Be patient through the first several issues' focus on building the series' elaborate world of Arcanics, Monstrums, cats and Cumaeans; it is very worth it to keep going.
This series is beyond brilliant in creating a world where everything is everything, and nothing is what it seems. Also contains excellent disability rep, and powerful women throughout.
Starfighter (NSFW)
Erotic M/M space epic e-comic, also available in print issues, black and white
By HamletMachine
The black and white art is stark yet nuanced, as, it turns out, are the characters, and improves significantly as the series evolves. An ongoing web series, Starfighter includes intriguing, if not entirely new, ideas about the possible connections between matter, energy, intellect and emotion, as our hero, Abel, learns he can use his more positive emotions in a new and powerful way, even as those in control sink lower and lower as they try to weaponize him.
Above all, this sci-fi adventure mystery is sexy and fun in a Matrix-but-with-plenty-of-gay-sex kind of way. Has some non-binary minor characters, and excellent building of backstories.
Novae: The Necromancer and the Astronomer's Apprentice
Historical M/M fantasy e-comic, colour
By KaiJu
The historical fantasy connects Raziol, a brilliant, young 17th-century Arab astronomer lauded by his kind mentor but struggling under classism and racism in Paris, with Sulvain, a brilliant necromancer of enormous, unknown age reticent, after loss, to open himself up to love again.
Updated Mondays and Thursdays, the series is just reaching its stride recently, as we learn there may be more to both Sulvain and the streets of Paris than to all the stars in the sky.
Main character bi representation and carefully conveyed emotional subtleties.
Step Aside, Pops
The third collection of Hark! A Vagrant comic strips
By Kate Beaton
Not everything in the collection will appeal to all readers, as Beaton narrows in to deliver burns to some very specific recipients, including composers, thinkers, scientists, politicians, explorers, superheroes and more.
But, if you are a person and are interested in, well, anything, you'll find sets of strips here to make you laugh, chortle, roll your eyes and/or holler "Damn right!. You tell him where to go!"
Scooby-Doo
By various writers and illustrators
I'm not linking to these, though, because you should really head out and support your local comic book retailer if you can!
If you can't, don't forget that most libraries already carry, or will appreciate your recommendations to order, a variety of graphic novels and comic books.
More Novel, Graphic Recommendations
If you want to know about other great graphic novels and series more broadly across the genre, or be warned away from some of the lesser or evil, visit my partner James K. Moran's blog, where he reviews comics, films and fiction, and talks about the writing life. You'll find he's quite smart, despite having married a fellow writer.
