The Rec League: Romance-Friendly Comics

The Rec League - heart shaped chocolate resting on the edge of a very old bookSome of the best love stories I’ve ever read have been in comic books. Comics are full of great romance, but unless you are looking at a graphic novel or a stand-alone story arc, you need to be thinking less “Romance Novel” and more “Soap Opera” because of the lack of closure due to the serial format of the genre. That being said, comic books have been exploring all kinds of romances since they first became popular, and they continue to explore those romances today.

I’ve reviewed several romance-friendly comics for this site. Saga remains a favorite with me as it tells the story of a couple on opposite sides of an intergalactic war who just want to be left alone to raise their baby. Bonus – they get together because of a romance novel, and this same romance novel has potential to end the war.

Lumberjanes Vol. 1
A | K | AB
 Lumberjanes has a sweet, age-appropriate romance between two summer campers. Sex Criminals tells the story of two people who have the ability to stop time during orgasms – but the comic is actually about sexuality in all it’s physical and emotional weirdness and complexity. The first comic I ever got into was Elfquest, which has multiple romances in a fantasy setting.

If you like retro comics, there are several anthologies of Golden Age Romance comics in print. They aren’t cheap, but they are often available used or at libraries. I reviewed Young Romance: Vol. 2 and described it as being like a bowl full of Cheetos: “There you are thinking that Cheetos are not very good and suddenly you’ve eaten the whole bag and you’re hands are marked with the Orange Dust of Shame.”

Meanwhile the new magazine Fresh Romance takes the retro format and gives it a fresh spin with romances featuring racially and sexually diverse couples.

Sarah: I have more suggestions! Thanks to an email from Tegan I have fallen deep into manga, and to my absolute delight there’s a NAME for the manga I’ve been enjoying, which means I can spend money at midnight when I finish reading find lots more of it!

Midnight Secretary, Volume 1
A | BN | K | AB
Way back in the day, I was clued in on Midnight Secretarywhich is amazing, but to my sadness was only available in pirated translated scans that weren’t authorized by anyone who had rights and power and whatnot. Tegan tells me that there are legit English versions now – woot!

Tegan reviewed Midnight Secretary at her site, too, if you’d like more information. Midnight Secretary is like if Harlequin Presents and manga had a baby, and added vampires. The hero is a director of a company who is a vampire (as you do), and the heroine is a secretary who is assigned to be his executive assistant. She’s good at her job, and she figures out pretty quickly something’s weird about her boss, and not just that she has “pants feelings” for him. Though, Kaya always wears a skirt, so maybe they’re “pencil skirt feelings.”

Tegan also explained:

I know that occasionally you’ve touched on Manga here, but I wanted to contact you about a new manga publishing trend I’m seeing and wasn’t sure you were aware of: josei manga. This is manga aimed at young women in their teens into adulthood.

Spell of Desire, Volume 1
A | BN | K | AB
Then Tegan did a terrible thing and told me about a new manga by the same artist, whose name is Ohmi Tomu: Spell of Desire. It’s all the things I liked about Midnight Secretary, only this time with witches, guardians, ingenue herbalist heroines, and the flow-iest hair this side of old copies of The Raider by Jude Deveraux.

I’m new to this form of storytelling, but I do know comics and manga are not the same thing, though there’s some overlap.  I had to let all of you know how much I’m enjoying this one. Even when it’s cheezy and I wonder if the heroine’s eyes are going to take up more than 65% of her face on the next page, I’m so into it, I stay up too late, finish one, buy the next and keep going until I fall asleep with my phone on my face.

Plus, I reviewed new Archie reboot as well and the new Jughead, both of which I also recommend.

Amanda: I was telling the ladies that I used to be a manga addict. I think I still have my old collection (100+ volumes) in my parents’ shed, plus whatever I used to read online. However, it’s hard for me to remember any titles because I am becoming (what I like to call) an old.

But instead, I have a couple of great resources if you’re into searching for comics and manga that fit your reading tastes. And if you know me, you know I love a good Advanced Search.

Comixology is usually what I use for digital issues of comics. While I’m not above buying single issues, sometimes they can be hard to find at my local shop. Comixology does a great genre breakdown you can browse by, and yes, romance is one of those genres. You can also add a wish list to save titles if you don’t want to buy them right away.

For manga, I tend to use Baka-Updates. Not only do they give an explanation of each of the genres, but the Advanced Search lets you pick and choose which genres you want to search and which you’d want to keep out of your results. You can also register and make a wish list on here as well!

Happy browsing!

Who are your favorite couples (or trios, or quadrangles – whatever) in comics? What romance-friendly comics do you recommend?

Comments are Closed

  1. Julia aka mizzelle says:

    If you want something self-contained, I’d try Thom Zahler’s Love and Capes published in trades by IDW. Think super hero romantic comedy from dating through marriage. I love Mark and Abby as a couple.

  2. Kate says:

    Terry Moore’s Strangers in Paradise is a classic, long-running (1993-2007) comic series about Katchoo, who is in love with her best friend, Francine, and David, who is love with Katchoo. It sounds very much like the dreaded love triangle, but it’s more than that; deeper and more adult. Plus, since the series ran for years, all the relationships develop realistically over time.

    Plus, there’s this thriller element, with a shadowy crime organization! There are a bunch of side characters who get fleshed out over time and have their own relationships. It’s my favorite comic series ever.

    I own the series in a set of six matching “pocket” omnibuses (slightly shorter than trade paperbacks, they look so pretty on my shelves!), but I don’t think they sell those editions anymore. I know there were new hardcover editions maybe two years ago. Get your hands on them somehow, they’re absolutely worth it!

  3. Katrina says:

    What does anyone who actually likes manga think about the Harlequin mangas?

  4. Katie says:

    Katrina, I started reading those because one of my absolute favorite manga creators switched to them, and honestly, I think they’re incredibly fun. The absurdities of Harlequin plots mesh well with manga, which is prone to similarly rushed plots and ridiculous contrivances. My husband, who’s an avid josei fan, and my best friend, another major manga fan, both agree. They do tend to favor older/more dated art styles, but those styles are my favorites and I mourn their passing in the mainstream, so I’m quite happy to find them here.

    (For anyone who’s curious which manga creator I mean, Tori Maia, who used to write some of my favorite violent BL (m/m) bdsm manga, switched to writing Harlequin adaptations as Marito Ai after her marriage — to a famous male bdsm manga writer. Makes one wonder. Especially since she did a Gena Showalter adaptation a couple years back that shows her love of black leather and men in pain is alive and well, to my delight.)

    There isn’t much non-Harlequin josei available legally other than Tomu Ohmi’s work. The only one I can think of off the top of my head is Happy Marriage. For good romance manga, I’d rec Stepping on Roses, which is one of those shoujo titles that deals with more adult themes and concepts, and is set in the Meiji era (about 1868-1912) so you get historical costuming and a good reason everyone is treating the 16-year-old heroine as an adult. If you can track down Kimi wa Pet, which was published by Tokyopop as Tramps Like Us 10-15 years ago, that one’s great. Victorian Romance Emma is seinen, but has a wonderful romance plot. And while I wouldn’t call it a romance, Pink is interesting chick-lit from the bubble era.

    If people are interested in things that are less legally available, and never likely to be licensed in the States, I can recommend those too, but will refrain until asked. The sad truth is that manga fandom is firmly built on a foundation of piracy because only a tiny fraction of work is ever released legally (the vast majority of titles never even get fan translations), and most of the US manga companies have an uncomfortable reliance on fan translators to help them spot new trends. I don’t think we’d be seeing the current josei publishing trend without the increased interest in josei fan translations that’s been building over the last five or six years.

  5. Amanda says:

    @Katrina: So I Googled Harlequin manga because that sounds right up my alley, but I’m not a fan of the art style. I’m hugely picky when it comes to that. 🙁

  6. Kelly says:

    Alex + Ada by Sarah Vaughn and Jonathan Luna is a wonderful sci-fi romance through the lens of artificial intelligence. The whole run is collected in 3 volumes. Also, the most recent Silver Surfer comic run, by Dan Slott and Mike Allred, is basically a fantastic cosmic space love story, unconnected to everything else happening in the Marvel universe. There are two collected volumes of that, and the series will be returning later this year!

  7. Tegan says:

    @Katrina & Kaite, I read Happy Marriage and you can find that review on my blog. I really found I did not enjoy it by the end and Viz really stopped promotin around the later volumes, but they did market it with Midnight Secretary.

    Tramps Like Us! I’m thinking of going back and picking up the volumes I missed. I got about half way through it, got distracted and never got the rest. I did enjoy what I’ve read so far.

    Harlequin Manga is awesomely bad (in a good way). They cut down quite a bit on plot and it feels a little rushed (and drawn in a great 80s/90s style despite a 2003 publication date in Japan). I’ve scored 2 Harlequin Violet books so far (used). I think they were a very short lived product and I’m not sure their history.

  8. sally says:

    @katrina

    I got into romance novels through Harlequin manga, and I still real them occasionally, but I much prefer the novel version because they have more depth. It’s hard to translate a novel (even ones as short as a Harlequin) into a fully-formed manga in only 122 pages. 🙁

    As to manga, I second the recommendation to Happy Marriage!?. If you’re into fantasy, try some older classics like Red River (time travel into Anatolia aka Turkey) and Basara (epic post apocalypse Japan) although both are hard to find in print but available digitally. Full disclosure, I intern here, but I like many of the shojo and josei manga licensed by VIZ if you want to view their catalog.

  9. AnnaA says:

    I really like the manga-ish versions of Gail Carrigers books “The Parasoll Protectorate”! Sadly only the first three books got mangaized, but I keep rereading them.

  10. Julia aka mizzelle says:

    Yeah, unfortunately, most of Harlequin manga that has been turning up on Comixology/etc has been the older style manga artwork, which some people adore and others just stare at the eyes and hair. It’s funny — I don’t read a lot of the blatantly shoujo/romancey manga out there — but like my genre reading they usually have a romance subplot. I’ll echo Kaoru Mori’s Emma, if you love the Victorian period or just really detailed art. They’re being released as hardcover omnibi by Yen Press right and they’re *gorgeous*. Bride’s Story is a harder sell as a romance, since the main story features a 21 year old bride and 12 year old groom, although it’s nice seeing them grow into each other.

    DC/Marvel side, I’m more of a fan of particular couples and will read good runs for those pairings. Comics are sadly very like soap operas in the sense that your favorite couple will never be happy for long. And lately the trend is for heroes to remain single and more relatable than say stable.

  11. Andrea D says:

    Back in the 1990s, I was a big fan of the X-Men comics, and I loved the Betsy/Warren romance and the Remy/Rogue romance. But the soap operaish nature of the comics eventually made me lose interest. Still love elements of the story arcs, but I don’t read the books any longer.

  12. Zoey says:

    Yes!! A comics post! Boy do I ever have some recommendations…!

    With the manga stuff, a lot of what comes out over here is intended for a teen audience (josei tragically sells pretty poorly here). I’ll point out the more YA flavored titles though.

    I totally second Happy Marriage?! If you like “fake marriage turns into feelings” stories you’ll loooove that one. I also love Spell of Desire and Midnight Secretary.

    Nana (Viz) is about two women both named Nana with very different personalities who end up living together. One is the lead singer of an up and coming punk band who previously refused to follow her also-musician boyfriend to Tokyo because she wanted to succeed on her own. The other is the opposite: directionless, followed her boyfriend to the city only to get dumped. This series is very long and Yazawa has yet to finish it due to health issues, so be warned. It’s a drama and full of pretty heavy issues as we follow these women’s lives, but it’s soooo goooood and Yazawa has a great art style and a keen eye for fashion.

    She has another series out in English from Vertical called Paradise Kiss that’s complete in 3 volumes. It’s about Yukari, a girl in her last year of high school who has spent all her life studying for college, only to find herself wondering why. That is until she’s asked to be the model for a group of fashion majors at the local arts high school, and she’s drawn into their world (and a relationship with their confusing and attractive designer George). PK is an excellent coming of age story in the best way. (Warning: I love it so much my first tattoo is in reference to it.)

    If you like comedies, Lovely Complex is a great teen title about Risa, a nerdy girl who towers over most of the boys in class, and Atsushi, a boy with the opposite problem. All they do is bicker, but they decide to team up to help the other one get their crush. Things do not go as planned. The artist has a title for adults that’s really great, but sadly not out in English, called Dame na Watashi ni Koishite Kudasai (Please Love the Useless Me) about a woman nearing 30 who had never had a real relationship because she keeps falling for no good guys with pretty faces. Nakahara is really funny so if you see any of her works, I’d check them out!

    If you like pirates, fancy outfits and hot people I recommend Windrose from Chromatic Press! This is an English language comic from Spanish team Kosen and it’s great! Chromatic actually has an ongoing digital magazine called Sparkler Monthly that has light novels (illustrated prose), comics and audio dramas all made by and for the shojo/josei reading audience. They aim 16+ with their titles and even have some raunchy side stuff with Cherry Bomb so I’d check them out! (Disclaimer: I recently became their sales rep, but because I love their titles so my recommendation is entirely genuine!)

    Other things I like with less preamble: Tramps Like Us, Honey and Clover (art school students), Alex and Ada, My Faith in Frankie, From Far Away (fantasy), Black Rose Alice (a really weird vampire story), High School Debut (sporty girl tries to find love), Basara (post apocalyptic star-crossed lovers), Kamisama Kiss (YA modern fantasy comedy), Red River (time travel), Emma (Victorian romance), In Clothes Called Fat (chick lit), Butterflies Flowers (contemporary), Princess Jellyfish (not out yet but the anime is), and Saga.

    Whew! I think that’s a decent chunk… I could go on about this forever.

  13. Xandi says:

    So.Much.AWESOMENESS!!! (YA Manga)Otomen, (Yaoi Manga) What Did You Eat Yesterday? “After long days at work, either in the law firm or the hair salon, Shiro and Kenji will always have down time together by the dinner table, where they can discuss their troubles, hash out their feelings and enjoy delicately prepared home cooked meals!” (Manga) A Bride’s Story…the art is amazing! Same feelings @ Saga…it’s amazing.

  14. ppyajunebug says:

    If you want to try a comic from one of the Big Two (aka Marvel and DC) with a romance as a strong through line, might I recommend the 2013 Young Avengers series (by Kieron Gillen and Jamie McKelvie, the Wicked + Divine team)? Think YA novel about teenage superheros hopping between universes to save the world from their parents (sort of). One of the main plots is how two of the characters, Billy and Teddy, can maintain their relationship in the face of the powers they have and the pressures from their friends and responsibilities. Plus it’s pretty sex positive and there’s no bi erasure and it’s really really fun.

  15. Has nobody mentioned Girl Genius yet? It’s wonderful, and available for free online at http://www.girlgeniusonline.com/. I’m way behind because I’ve been hoarding it up for one massive binge. You can start at the very beginning and read the whole way through, which is what I did when I discovered it a few years ago.

    It’s what the authors call a “gaslamp fantasy” because it started before Steampunk was really a term, but I’d categorize it as Steampunk now. The heroine, Agatha, is a mad scientist in the best possible way. It’s by turns funny, charming, exciting, suspenseful, goofy, and touching. There’s a lot going on, so you will most definitely need to start at the beginning to understand everything.

  16. Jessica says:

    Since you already said Saga, I’ll throw my hat in for the Runaways series by Brian K Vaughan. A group of kids find out that their parents are actually supervillains and go on the run. It’s got two of my favorite romance tropes: you are not what your parents are and being on the run. The series went downhill HARD in the last two trade collections, but otherwise it’s pretty great, especially the telepathically linked velociraptor named Old Lace.

  17. Katie says:

    The one romance I really wish would come out legally in English (because I would buy all of it, seriously, and rec it everywhere) is Nana to Kaoru, which is a super cute high school romance about a pair of teenagers, who have grown up as next door neighbors, experimenting with BDSM. It’s fetishy as hell, of course, and I know the fact that the protagonists are underage (there’s no nudity or sex, to be clear) has to make potential licensors nervous, but it has a sweet heart and a solid grasp of kink. The combination is amazingly potent. It’s still unfinished, but I think it’s finally charging toward its conclusion, and I fully expect that to be sweet and emotionally satisfying.

  18. Heather S says:

    “Girlfriends” by Milk Morinaga is a great yuri (lesbian) romance between two high school girls. There’s also “Love My Life” (not available in English, but there’s a live action film version with English subtitles), which is so cute – one of the women finds out her parents are gay, her mother had a female lover and her dad has a male lover. It’s all the hijinks! Since I encountered shonen-ai/yaoi manga via FAKE, back when yaoi was just starting to be published around 2000-ish in the US through Tokyo Pop’s Blu imprint, it’s pretty much dominated my manga reading. “Hate To Love You” by Makoto Tateno is a favorite light yaoi of mine.

  19. Kelly S. says:

    Fushigi Yugi is the manga that pulled me in and I also love Fruits Basket.

    Comics, I must recommend for this group Girls with Slingshots http://www.girlswithslingshots.com. I learned about mustache rides there.

    For people with kids: Sheldon – super sweet & funny and all of it free online at http://www.sheldoncomics.com about a billionaire 10 year old boy genius being raised by his G’pa & living with a duck who he educated to a point where he (the duck) can talk. Also bu Dave Kellett is Drive, a sci fi space saga http://www.drivecomic.com

    And for librarians, of course, Unshelved http://www.unshelved.com takes place in a library

    I’m also a big fan of Brooke McEldowny’s work. 9 Chickweed Lane is delightful and I highly recommend starting with the early books to get to know the characters when they were younger. He does age his characters. Also his strip Pibgorn is delightfully colored & fun too with Pib being a fairy and then there’s Drusilla, the succubus, and the man they love, Geoff a church organist.

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  22. Melissa says:

    I just reread all of Midnight Secretary after seeing it on this list, and it is so much better than I remembered. I don’t think I fully appreciated how completely great a character Kaya is on my first read- I wish it also had a novel form so I could love it again!

  23. Anna P-J says:

    Fables!!! It’s an amazing comic series by Bill Willingham from Vertigo. It’s a completely wonderful play on old fairy tales (Prince Charming: what a cad!) and also has some wonderful romances, especially the relationship between Snow White and Bigby Wolf. Gorgeous artwork as well, although some of the female characters tend to look too much alike.

  24. Anna says:

    Great post about comics and the villanesses that make them fun.

    I would love to recommend a ff bdsm comic called sunstone:

    http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/1632152126/ref=mp_s_a_1_1?qid=1444716952&sr=8-1&pi=SY200_QL40&keywords=sunstone&dpPl=1&dpID=51kwl8iDSZL&ref=plSrch

    What I particularly like about it is that the main focus of the work is the relationships people build and the trust needed to get a bdsm relationship to work. I dont usually read ff romances but this is worth checking out.

    Also, you can get a free taste of content and artstyle at deviantart username:shiniez

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