I apologize in advance for the loss of productive time this thread may cause you. I really do.
Recently I received an email from Ariella, who was kind enough to inform me of Lore Olympus:
I just found the cutest romantic webcomic that I thought others might enjoy. It’s called Lore Olympus.
It’s a retelling of Greek Myths in a modern setting, focusing on Hades/Persephone but with Eros/Psyche and Hera/Zeus subplots. The art is ravishing. The romance is toe curling.
There is nsfw smut available on the author’s Patreon too, if people are interested. It’s the perfect hit of fluff in this dark world.
Heads up that there is a TW for sexual assault, though.
Updates Sundays. Enjoy.
Perhaps earlier this week you heard a strange sound, as if a to-do list collapsed in upon it self? Yeah, that was me, losing every productive minute and ounce of attention for other tasks because OH, MY GOSH is this webcomic good. Ariella was totally right. It’s adorable and so freaking delicious and addictive.
CW/TW: this is a mythology retelling, and there are depictions of coercion, drugging, and sexual assault, particularly in chapter #26. Be safe, ok?
Dang it, Ariella. I’m down the web comic rabbit hole into a land of loveliness. (Also: THANK YOU!)
Once I started reading Lore Olympus, I found other comics at Webtoons, which was my downfall. The next one I devoured, also still in progress: Let’s Play.
Sam is a programmer and game designer whose first game has been receiving great reviews – until a “Viewtuber” pans it, and his fans spam her rating until her account is disabled. Then he moves in next door. DUN DUN DUNNNNN.
Oh, gosh, it’s adorable. The characters are terrific. There is wonderful and inclusive representation of so many different people, including varying disabilities and sexualities, and every trope you think will go one way is subverted gleefully. SO MUCH GLEE. I love it. And the romance(s) that are developing aren’t obvious, either. Plus, geeky references everywhere.
Once I continued down the Webtoons rabbit hole, well, it’s been a very entertaining adventure. Among the comics I’m enjoying:
Always Human by Ari WalkingNorth, a love story between two women in Western Australia in a world where humans are modded and patched and upgraded, except for Austen, whose immune system is so strong it won’t tolerate modifications. When Sunati sees her at the transit platform, she’s fascinated by someone who isn’t modified at all. Then they get to know each other and my heart is melted into a puddle.
Also by Ari WalkingNorth: Aerial Magic. Wisteria is an apprentice witch at a broom and flight repair shop. She can’t read due to (I think) dyslexia, and has a familiar who is supposed to help her read things. He’s too busy doing whatever he wants because he’s that kind of character. It’s about insecurities and getting to know people and not being sure of oneself, and the collection of individuals is adorable. And the art comes with music files (as do the panels in Always Human) which adds a layer of charm to everything.
When I mentioned Lore Olympus to the others in SBTB HQ, Amanda agreed: “It’s such a great comic.” Which of course got us started talking recommendations.
And Amanda has many. This is not surprising.
Amanda: I’m going to limit my suggestions! I’m sure Sarah and I wouldn’t mind doing a part two with more.
I first discovered Austen Marie through Twitch.tv. She’s a video game streamer, illustrator, singer, and all around wonderful renaissance woman. As a bonus, she’s also the creator of Soul on Hold, a supernatural romance webcomic.
There’s dark humor, a scarred hero, a heroine with adorable freckles, and a deal with the devil (well, maybe not the actual devil).
TW/CW: A death occurs in episode #2, but it’s not graphic and is central to the story.
As of right now, there are six episodes out and updates are sporadic since Austen has a ton of irons in the fire.
The duo of Yuko Ota & Ananth Hirsh have a previously a
dorable published webcomic called Lucky Penny, but what I really want to talk about is Barbarous!
I really love the art style in this one, as we follow Percy, a wizard-school dropout. So what’s a wizard-school dropout to do? Help run an apartment complex full of magical and mystical creatures, of course!
The comic debuted in 2016 and has undergone several Kickstarter campaigns to bring hardcopy volumes to the masses. The last comic update was in late June and since then, the creators have been swept away in making Volume 2 into a book and attending conventions. However, they will be back to launch chapter four and I’m sure that’ll give you every opportunity to catch up.
What webcomics do you love? We want all your recommendations!
I’m definitely going to look into these! I am very excited about Barbarous and Lore Olympus.
I’ve recently gotten into a couple of webcomics, my first foray being Check, Please!, which is about a former ice skater-turned hockey player going to college, where he starts having a big crush on his captain. There are keggers and pies and the Haus. Bitty is adorable.
I’ve also gotten into a comic this month called Wilde Life, about a guy named Oscar Wilde who moves to a small town where weird stuff happens. His landlady is Barbara Yaga, he has a teenage werewolf “friend” named Clifford (he goes by Cliff and insists they’re not actually friends), and his housemate is a ghost. It’s quite entertaining, even before the discussions from the readers at the bottom, which I highly recommend you peek at.
If you haven’t read Sunstone on deviantart by Stjepan Sejic omg run don’t walk. Very NSFW with bdsm themes but the underlying plot is a straight up romance. The first series is wlw but the next story arc is a het pairing. The art is amazing. Characters are awesome and hysterical at times. Gives the warm feels even after 3 re-reads.
I have to plug Schlock Mercenary. Its a comic space opera about a company of Mercenaries, and its been updated daily for 18 years. Plenty of romance sub plots and really interesting scifi. The best place to start is either Force Multiplication, or the Longshoreman of the Apocalypse.
I was unexpectedly sucked in to Heartstopper by Alice Oseman, which you can find either on Tumblr (http://heartstoppercomic.tumblr.com/) or at https://tapas.io/series/Heartstopper – ongoing at the moment and regularly updated, it’s about teenage boys falling in love with each other and is really sweet.
There’s also Hotblood, which is about Wild West centaurs (yes, really) and is now complete, with a sequel set a few years later in progress. Again, this is m/m.
Some of my favorites are Dreamer (about a modern woman who goes to the revolutionary was when she dreams) and Phoenix Requiem a Victorian fantasy. I used to read a lot more webcomics, but I don’t have the time any more…
Assassin Roommate:
https://m.webtoons.com/en/romance/assassin-roommate/list?title_no=1050
The trials and tribulations of being a young woman who also happens to be an assassin. Ass kicking. Frequently shirtless roommate. Smooching. Fat rep and multicultural cast.
Welp, you weren’t kidding about kissing productivity goodbye! I just read through all of Let’s Play and it’s awesome – thanks so much for recommending it!
I can’t wait for the update and to see how the characters will develop. And the art is great too!
AHH a favorite topic of mine, and all of these sound great.
I’m going to heartily second Check, Please as a total joy to read and something that never fails to cheer me up. All online but publishing as a print book this fall too!
I also can’t miss this chance to yell about Rice Boy, an adventure story about a sweet little creature-turned-reluctant hero that is a perfect read when I want to sit in my feelings a bit. It’s hopeful but also melancholy and very very loving and oh my gosh just read it. It’s online in its entirety and also published in print if that’s your thing.
Probably my favorite is My Life As A Background Slytherin by Emily McGovern. It’s an utterly hilarious subversion of everything in the Harry Potter books. Draco is obsessed with Harry in what may or not may not be a crush, we get discussions of the relative lack of safety at Hogwarts, Snape flounces (my sister ordered me a print of Flouncing Snape for my birthday last year that I still need to get framed), and we also get some unmentioned kids from some of the other Houses; in addition to Emily (the titular Background Slytherin), we get Kevin the Background Hufflepuff (a complete little cinnamon roll and I love him), Violet the Background Gryffindor (a complete savage, and the source of my new favorite insult: “I guess the apple of failure doesn’t fall far from the fuck-up tree”), and Wanda the Background Ravenclaw (who often is asking the questions that many of asked as we read the books, like “why didn’t he Summon the egg? He knew Accio! Summon the egg!”). It posts new comics every other Sunday (I see it on Facebook) and it is always, always a highlight.
I just finished reading On A Sunbeam by Tillie Walden yesterday — it’s got this neat dual-narrative thing going between a girl meeting her first love and the girl traveling with a crew to find her again. Also they’re in space. It’s fully complete and available online, and I think it’ll be out in print this fall.
I’m also keeping up with Mias and Elle right now, by Jenny Clements, in which Elle gets kidnapped by a handsome arrogant wizard and taken to his alternative magical universe resembling England from centuries ago. A ton of romance catnip there 😉
@Crystal: I AM LOVING THIS SO MUCH. Oh my gosh, my cats ran away because I was cackling. Ominous bassoon music nearly broke me. Thank you so much!
aaaahhhh! <3 <3 I will have to try several.
The first two are m/m quasi-romances-ish, as it happens:
The Less Than Epic Adventures of TJ and Amal http://www.tjandamal.com
Complete (!!); mostly pretty tame/offscreen by novel standards I guess? Road trip, present(ish) day.
Funny; gorgeous scenery. Not technically romance (ambiguous ending). I loved this one to pieces while it was running. I may still order it all in print too.
O Human Star http://www.ohumanstar.com
Still going. Mostly UST, as we used to call it in olden times. Primarily not romance; it's a near-future science fiction story about… robots with imprints of human minds loaded into them, adolescence, family, and a sweet/ARGHJUSTKISSALREADY subplot. Still running, so HEA-or-not is up in the air.
I knew nearly nothing about this one going in, and ended up reading the entire backlog in one day. Surprise catnip!!
Oh, and I keep forgetting that ohjoysextoy.com (sometimes NSFW) is a webcomic, I guess because it's not a continuous narrative. That and oglaf.com (the very soul of NSFW), which I love, but only because I have a very very dark sense of humor and appreciate gorgeous art being applied to absolutely pointless and absurd gags.
Oh! One more: Behind the GIFs
https://m.webtoons.com/en/comedy/behind-the-gifs/list?title_no=658&page=1
I don't like the format much, but it's just so. dang. adorable. Every punchline is a goofy animated GIF, usually of animals being cute; each strip gives one a backstory.
Huge fan of Maiden of the Machine (maidenmachine.com) which I think is a bit like a steampunk Jane Austen. The official description is:
Elizabeth Watson is a young woman trapped between ideals that she can never reach. Too traditional to take part of her adventurer family lineage and too poor and obscure to be a true society lady, Elizabeth’s fortunes may change for the better with the introduction of famed industrialist Mr. Lovelace in her life. She is soon pulled into his world of industry and conspiracy- where violence is the norm, sky pirates roam the skies and a woman with wings made of brass and steel hunts in the night.
Not a narrative comic but I love Oh Joy Sex Toy! NSFW reviews of sex toys and general sex ed. Super fun, inclusive, and non-judgy. For fiction comics, I fell off reading them lately but I used to love Girls with Slingshots and Questionable Content. Both contemporary with various romance subplots and lots of comedy.
Ahh! So many!!
1) For theater nerds especially crew, Q2Q is hysterical. No romance. q2qcomics . com
2) thinkbeforeyouthink is fun (I think the artist/author was still a teen when she started it?) about a girl with a crush on a boy who can read minds.
3) Dovecote Crest is no longer updated but it has two finished story arcs. If you’re into romance amongst Civil War reenactors and historians, this is great.
4) BUT OMG THE BESTEST: Over on deviantart there is/was a webcomic called ‘Roomates’ which inspired a spinoff called ‘Girls Next Door’. Sarah Williams from Labyrinth and Christine Daaé from The Phantom of the Opera are roommates … living next door to their respective stalkers-slash-suitors , Jareth and Eric the Phantom. Hi-jinks and romance ensue, along with tons of other characters and crossovers. SO MUCH FUN. Link to first page . I find Deviant Art a little hard to manage to binge on a comic but if Jareth has any place in your
pantsheart you will adore it.I’m reading the webcomic, What’s Wrong with Secretary Kim, which has been turned into a Korean drama. The art is beautiful of course and the story is so sweet. The drama, which I also highly recommend, has finished airing but the webcomic is still going. Happy sighs all around.
Yessss my productivity for the next year is gone! So many new webcomics!!!
I’m going to recommend Scary Go Round / Bad Machinery by John Allison – it’s SUPER involved with at least a decade worth of backlog – but Bad Machinery is my favorite webcomic involving British teen sluthes solving supernatural and bizzare mysteries in their weird (but normal) town.
You can start with Bad Machinery if iffy art is a turn-off; the original Scary Go Round is Allison’s early work and therefore rough.
Sarah, thank you SO MUCH for Lore Olympus! I dove into that one head first and it is now bookmarked in my queue.
Heartily second The Dreamer although it is now on hiatus as Lora Innes is currently working on the Wynonna Earp comic. And all the YES for Girls Next Door, which I ADORE; hilarious and heartwarming in equal measure. Some of my other faves:
Girls With Slingshots https://girlswithslingshots.com/ a broadly inclusive comic about twentysomethings figuring out life, sex, relationships, sex, drinking, sex, careers – and did I mention sex? Lots of female supportive friendships. And a talking cactus. Weekdays.
Sleepless Domain http://www.sleeplessdomain.com/ Continuing story of anime type Magical Girls charged with protecting their city from the monsters that emerge after dark. One in particular is haunted by a mysterious tragedy and determined to find out what was behind it. Updates Tuesday/Thursday
Girl Genius by Phil Foglio http://www.girlgeniusonline.com Steampunk epic about Agatha Heterodyne, heir to a sentient castle and a terrifying family legacy. Mad science, adventure, romance, total insanity as only Foglio can create. A four-time Hugo winner. Monday-Wednesday-Friday
Unsounded by Ashley Cope http://www.casualvillain.com/Unsounded/comic+index/ Dark, rich, complex story of a little thief girl and her zombie wizard bodyguard navigating politics, war, and dark magic in a world crumbling around them. Can be gory and terrifying, so TW for blood, guts, and really horrific monsters. But Ashley exploits all the possibilities of a web-based graphic concept, adding animation, music, pop-ups and more. Monday-Wednesday-Friday
Lackadaisy by Tracy Butler http://lackadaisycats.com/ Cats as 1920’s bootleggers. Need I say more? GORGEOUSLY illustrated comic that can be dark and violent at times, insanely hilarious at others, and sometimes both at once. No graphic gore but implied and sometimes on-screen violence. Updates irregularly but causes much squee every time.
@Iona Lovell YAAAAAAAS all the John Allison love! Not webcomics, because you’ve already recommended them, but Giant Days and By Night are the only comics that I get via preorder at the comic shop, the novelization of Giant Days by Non Pratt is excellent, and John’s instagram is hilarious.
Questionable Content and Girls with Slingshots (sadly this has been discontinued) are my favourite SFW webcomics.
I love My Dear Cold-Blooded King (Webtoons). It’s a love triangle (Well, polygon, at times) With multiple hidden identities including mysteries around part of the heroine’s past. We’re on episode 74 of 100+ and I’m still not 100% sure which guy is/will be the Blood King at the end. Things do get a bit dark and stabby at times, so this one is Not for SB Sarah.
What I like about it is the mystery, the long hair on all the main characters that seems to grow longer every episode, the comedic moments, and that despite all these dudes trying to take away her agency at various times, they are also hiddenly supportive of her in ways that I won’t spoil. Oh and she’s pretty badass doing things woman from the time period (feudal fictional Asian country) generally wouldn’t have done, I’m assuming. The author has great twitter and Patreon feeds, too. Oh and there is a group of professional voice actors that are voicing the series on YouTube, which is very good too.
TW/CW for flashbacks to past child abuse, some violence (he’s called the Blood King for a reason, but he’s super conflicted about inheriting the title and the violence that comes with it), and the heroine occasionally punching one of her Baes in the stomach for being a scheming asshole.
i absolutely love webcomics – thank you so much for these recs! i also stayed up way too late last night reading both Lets Play and Lore Olympus :d
A couple of my own recs: my all time favourite webcomic is The Property of Hate, about a kid who gets taken to story-land to become a hero. It makes such wonderful use of the comic medium – everyone gets different speech bubbles and theres tons of imagery and symbolism and its just fantastic (it’s so beautiful, i just had to get the hard copies)
Ava’s Demon has got to be the prettiest comic though – every single page is a beautiful painting, and there are even some animations. the story is an awesome sci-fi fantasy about alien ghosts (sort of?)
My third fav is Prague Race, which is an alternate world fantasy with werewolves and trolls, great humour and wonderful representation (the casual introduction of trans and nb characters was A++). There’s also a shark-dog.
That Lore Olympus is really good, it has this great out of time thing going on that’s not a modern AU (which always feels weird to me because the characters have to not know the story)
And that sexual assault warning is real, BUT I love that Hades is a cinnamon roll who just wants to be loved, and thinks he can’t be, and that Hera seems to be mad at Zeus and not random girls!
@Cristal – aaand there goes the rest of my workday! Am loving My life as a background Slytherin and trying to smother my giggles so my colleagues won´t hear me.
Well my first attempt of linking in a comment did not go well – it got posted twice with a link that does not work! The correct link is here. Maybe one of the admins can fix this for me?
@Elva: No worries. All fixed!
Sorry, I may have accidentally repeated my post from yesterday? For some reason it didn’t load in the comments the first time I opened this today. My ‘puter must be borked up…
@EC Spurlock: Don’t worry – it was me. I fished your comment out of the spam filter this morning, so it was my fault. Sorry about that!
Oh my gosh, I haven’t been into webcomics for the last couple of years (since Love and Capes finished up, which – if anyone missed it – was a wonderful superhero romance webcomic that made me all nostalgic for Lois & Clark whenever I read it, and it’s online in full still). But I’m ill at the moment and I just binged all of Let’s Play this afternoon! Thanks so much for this post!
How is no one talking about Nothing Special by Katie Cook?!! (I am a nitpicker about multiple terminal punctuation, so please know how much I must be squeeing about this comic if I typed it like that…)
ANYHOW. There is a girl and she’s got some magic stuff and a boy and he’s got some secret stuff and a ghost of a radish who is snarky and adorable, and so much LOOOOOVE and season 2 is coming soon so it’s the perfect time to read season 1 and because I want you to know what magic cute love is all about, I’ve put it here for you. Clickity click click!
Chapter 1
(my apologies if my HTML skills are too rusty to have made that link work.)
I like the classics, like xkcd and Breaking Cat News (yes, some papers carry it, but mine doesn’t any more, waaah).
You weren’t kidding about the time loss! Loving Lore Olympus. I didn’t think it was possible to make an adorable love story about Persephone and Poseidon, which even for Greek myth standards is pretty far on the gross end of the spectrum, but I have little heart emojis floating around my head.
I also second the recs for Dreamer and Girls With Slingshots.