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Title: Deadendia
Comic Type: Webcomic/ Comic series; first volume available https://deadendia.tumblr.com/
Author: Hamish Steele
Illustrator: Hamish Steele
Target Audience: Teens and up
Status: Ongoing; print editions available through Nobrow



If paranormal summer jobs is your forte, then Deadendia could be the book for you!  Soon to be a Netflix series by the time of this post, Deadendia tells the story of Barney and his friends who are trying to keep their jobs at the local haunted theme park.  Not only will he need to handle ghosts, demons, and other supernatural oddities, he's got to balance his life beyond the gates of the park.

Deadendia has a vibe similar to works like Adventure Time, and I recommend it to anyone who enjoyed Finn and Jake's escapades.  I think it's the only comic I've read so far with a transman lead--and he is adorable?  I want to pinch his cheeks.


Seriously, if y'all know any other comics or other books with transmen leads, please hit me up.  I need to expand my palette.

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Title: Crowded
Comic Type: Comic series
Author: Christopher Sebla
Comic Team: Ro Stein (Artist), Ted Brandt (Artist), Triona Farrell (Color Artist), Cardinal Rae (Letters)
Target Audience: Adults
Status: Ongoing; available through Image Comics



In a future where the gig economy is king, the world's lowest rated bodyguard has been hired on the cheap to protect the most crowdfunded hit.  It's gonna be 30 days of avoiding death, taking care of a stolen dog, and maybe falling in love?

This shit gets wild, y'all.  It's like the premise of The Bodyguard but you also put in scores of money-hungry people, cynical jokes about the Millennial job market, and you make the leads sapphic.  And the target (Charlie Ellison) is actually a shitty person but she's cute so it's probably okay.


The biggest thing aside from the stress-induced relationship really is the chases.  When people get a whiff of Charlie in the vicinity, they come guns a-blazing and mouth foaming for that million dollar bounty.  She's worth that much.  And it's fun to see just how much property damage is done when she and her bodyguard try to get the fuck out of there.  Special shout out to how they treat the library.



God bless the library.

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Title: Tree Mail
Comic Type: Graphic novel
Author: Brian Smith
Illustrator: Mike Raicht
Target Audience: All ages
Status: available through Dark Horse Comics

Rudy's got a dream, y'all--to be the best postman he can be!  It doesn't matter if the job specifically asks for birds and not frogs; he'll do whatever it takes to prove he'll get that mail in on time!

This is a seriously fun and cute comic.  You care for Rudy with his sunshine personality, the friends he makes on the way, and all the ways the birds try to sabotage his success only for it to backfire on them.  It also has a couple sequentials that I can only describe as delicious--check this movement out!


If you can, definitely check this one out.  It's a blast.

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Title: Ice Cream Man
Comic Type: Comic series
Author: W. Maxwell Prince
Illustrator: Martín Morazzo
Target Audience: Older teens and up
Status: Ongoing; available through Image Comics



You ever just wanna get fucked up existentially?  Ice Cream Man can give you your fix, lickety-split!  This series reads like an anthology of people's experiences with, well, a lot of things, and the Ice Cream Man is the connecting thread to them all.  Whatever story you encounter in this collection, his hand is all up in it; a true force to be reckoned with.  What does he want?  Why is he here?  Hell if I know.  I think he just wants to sow chaos in his wake.



I honestly read the fifth issue first, and I had no idea what the hell was going on.  Then I read the first volume a couple of times, and it clicked.  It reads like an anthology, but it really isn't.  There's an ongoing story, and if you're real observant, you can sniff it out before you get to issue 9, the game-changer for the whole series.

I can't in all honesty show you the best bits because they include funny jokes and gruesome images.  Real visceral stuff.  You can skip this if bodily gore isn't your forte, but if you crave that flavor, order a scoop!

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Title: Upgrade Soul
Comic Type: Comic series
Author: Ezra Claytan Daniels
Illustrator: Ezra Claytan Daniels
Target Audience: Adults
Status: Complete; available through Oni Press



Did you like Ice Cream Man?  Do you want more existential horror?

Hank and Molly Nonnar have decided to do something special for their 45th anniversary--a procedure that would guarantee them a longer, rejuvenated life.  And it works.  It works too well, actually.



I would really like for y'all to go into this one blind, but it tackles the philosophical question of what makes "you".  Is it your body?  Your mind?  A combination of both?  And how far would you go to preserve "you"?

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Title: The Fox
Comic Type: Bande Dessinée
Author: Frédéric Brrémaud
Illustrator: Federico Bertolucci
Target Audience: preteens and up*
Status: available through Magnetic Press


This book is part of a series titled "Love," where the author states that the love between animals and nature is different from what humanity shares, and such a bond can be observed but not understood.  Contrary to that, this volume is my favorite because it appeals to a bond we can experience.  The Fox takes place in the Kodiak Archepelago, where the forest quickly catches fire.  While the rest of the fauna hurry to escape the flames, a single fox actually jumps into the danger.



Love is absolutely gorgeous to look at, and The Fox plays around with the orange/blue complementary palette in a way that feeds my soul.  The lack of dialog allows you to drink in the visuals and really take in the context for this story.  It's like a gorgeous nature documentary.

_{*other volumes in the Love series are a sliding scale of who they may appeal to.  There's animal violence and more mature situations that may not sit well with readers.  Use your best discretion.}

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Title: Rat Queens
Comic Type: Comic series
Author: Kurtis J. Wiebe
Illustrators: (rotated throughout the comics run) Roc Upchurch, Stjepan Šejić, Tess Fowler, Owen Gieni, Priscilla Petraites, Marco Lasko, Moritat, Casey Silver
Target Audience: Adults
Status: Ongoing



We just finished hosting the Dungeon Master of Disaster event, and you maybe want to read more comics along the vein of crazy things happening to a group of adventurers.  I gotchu covered.

Rat Queens is a high fantasy that focuses on a group of heroines who, um--

Okay, they're not actually heroines.  More like mercenaries?  They're maidens for hire who will do anything and everything for profit.  You have Hannah the elven rockabilly-themed mage, Violet the dwarven fighter who's shirked all traditional presentation of her culture, Dee the cleric who has no faith in her god, and Betty the halfling who loves to steal and smoke suspicious substances.  Very much a group that butts heads and keeps things crass.



In a nutshell, it's kind of like a group of people fucking around in a tabletop campaign, and you're reading the end result.

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Title: Sakana
Comic Type: Webcomic; https://www.sakana-comic.com/
Author: Madeline Rupert
Illustrator: Madeline Rupert
Target Audience: Teens and up
Status: Ongoing; print editions available through Hiveworks



You ever just want to read about a slice of life/romcom set in Japan without the manga-flavored melodrama?  I sure do, and I'm glad Sakana exists to fill that space.  Focusing on a group of young adults working in the Sakana fish market, you got some shenanigans afoot!  The bulk of the humor in this comic comes from the situations these characters find themselves in, mostly concerning how they look in front of people they have crushes on.  It's not really "manga" humor as it is wacky rom-com humor, and it's a nice change of pace.

_{check out the GLOW UP!}



This comic has been ongoing since 2010, and you see Madeline's style develop over that period of time.  And when you start witnessing her current level of work--ooh, it's a treat.  The crisp inked scans are so good.  She draws my favorite hands.  It's such a good title, y'all.

_{Give him a break, Japanese is his third language XD}

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Title: Saga
Comic Type: Comic series
Author: Brian K. Vaughan
Illustrator: Fiona Staples
Target Audience: Adults!
Status: Currently on hiatus; available through Image Comics

content warning: Saga covers a lot of subject matter that may not jive with you.  I've marked the whole list under spoilers--

Spoiler: ShowHide

Post-war trauma, war violence and murder, domestic abuse, drug addiction, pregnancy loss/surgical abortion, transphobia, homophobia, child sex trafficking, explicit sex scenes*, varying degrees of nudity from casual to sexual

and there's an auto-fellating dragon in here somewhere.  Just a head's up.

*_{I need to stress with the utmost importance that there are no sex scenes involving a child.
 All sex scenes currently shown in Saga are between consenting adults.}

If you haven't read Saga, you've probably heard of it.  If you haven't heard of it, the laconic version is this:
Saga chronicles the struggles of one family in a galaxy that holds everything against them.  Because when you're from opposing sides of the longest running war, no one wants to see enemies "get along," let alone have a loving union or a wanted child.


I don't care for Brian K. Vaughan's earlier work, but Saga is something I really enjoy reading.  Since the story is currently on pause, I reread the whole series so far, and it's pretty solid.  The best way I can describe its appeal to me is that, despite all the intergalactic politics and conflict going on in the universe, the story really is about families--ones made from unexpected bonds, bound by blood or adoption, and throughout all the joy and the tragedy, they still lean on one another to get to the next stop in their journey for a peaceful life.

I mean, unless you're The Will.  Then you've got a long road to walk alone, buddy.


And it's difficult to keep this post so compact because I'm only showing you the more ordinary looking designs.  We got robots with TV heads, at least one cyclops, a seal-man with a walrus steed, bug people, mammal people, centaurs, two-headed persons, a giant sphynx cat--so many different walks of life in this comic, and I adore the amount of care Fiona Staples puts into each idea.  It's a real treat to see them on the page.

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Title: The Adventure Zone
Comic Type: Graphic novel
Author: Clint, Justin, Travis, and Griffin McElroy
Illustrator: Carey Pietsch
Target Audience: Not for Kids*
Status: Ongoing; available through First Second
_{*which I only mention so you babies will know just how cool you are for reading.  What's up, you cool baby? B)}


The Adventure Zone is an adaptation of a podcast where three brothers and their dad play a tabletop campaign.  Jokes and improvisational acting ensue, and it's a fun ride.

This series is based on their most popular "Balance" campaign, where three men are hired to locate and destroy dangerous artifacts to prevent world-ending tragedy.  And I have to say the first book is not the best one.  It's fine, but it's not the best one.  The Balance series really starts getting good around the second and third arcs with the introduction of more long-standing characters and the unfurling overarching plot.  And it's funny and heartfelt and heartbreaking.







What's stellar about this adaptation is the tweaking of plot points and character writing.  If you've heard the podcast and expected this to be a 1:1 adaptation, you're gonna be surprised.  Of course, locations and characters needed to be renamed because of copywrite, but The Boys are written to be more consistent from the get-go and important scenes are either recreated or made special for this comic's run.  Petals to the Metal is currently the best example of this

Spoiler: ShowHide

by maintaining the tragedy of Sloan and Hurley's sacrifice without accidentally evoking the Bury Your Gays trope, a criticism brought up when the arc initially ended

.

It also slips in some fun nods to other McElroy jokes if you're familiar with the family's work.  If you're not, I encourage you to listen to some of the scenes that didn't quite make it into these books.  Like the buck wild way they got the Philosopher's Stone in The Crystal Kingdom.

And I'm writing this before The Eleventh Hour's publication, to which I say y'all.  Brace yourselves.  That's a ride and a half.

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I'm BACK in time for Pride Month, so let's make this whole dang topic GAY

Title: Long Exposure
Comic Type: Webcomic; http://longexposurecomic.com/
Author: Kam Heyward
Illustrator: Kam Heyward
Target Audience: Older teens and up
Status: Complete

Content Warning: Long Exposure contains drug and substance use, harsh language and slurs, verbal and physical abuse, general violence, and sexual situations.



If you haven't read this comic, but you like:
- Paranormal happenings like in Stranger Things, but something more grounded in reality
- A good soft boy and a tough beanpole boy falling in love
- Realistic teen dialog
- Realistic depictions of tougher subjects like homophobia and related slurs, physical abuse, eating disorders, and drug use
Then this might be a comic for you.  It was good pacing, the characters are beautifully human, and I just love these boys.

Like, they go from THIS


To THIS



And I grabbed some relatively spoiler-free pages so you get the gist of the progression without knowing too much about the plot.
Give it a whirl, see if you like it.  I definitely did.

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Title: A Woman's Voice
Comic Type: Bande Dessinée
Author: Aude Mermillod
Illustrator: Aude Mermillod
Target Audience: Adults
Status: Complete; available in English through Europe Comics, can be checked out at hoopladigital.com



Based on Martin Winckler's novel of the same name, A Woman's Voice dives into women's health from the perspective of a medical student hesitantly doing her final residency in a gynecological department.

This is a very clinical description of this book, but it's quite an emotional story and the only comic I've read to state to have an intersex character.  You learn about the trauma these patients endured through their dialog, and every story element is treated with the utmost care.  It has a gentle approach to heavy topics, and it's a book I would recommend to people unafraid to face these issues.

No page previews, unfortunately.