“You know what I really need to stop doing? Sleep,” said no one ever.
But your TBR pile is a mile high and pretty stories are just calling your name, you’re not just going to ignore them, are you? Of course not!
And here I am, enabling you with webtoon and webcomic recommendations, like the non-toxic friend I am!
(Jokes aside, please sleep.)
Muted by Miranda Mundt
TW/CW: Childhood trauma from fire and family deaths. Emotional abuse from a family member. It’s still ongoing so I don’t know what else may crop up.
Camille Severin is a lesbian witch who needs to navigate trauma, abuse, secrets of her heritage, demons, love, and politics of New Orleans’ magical community. Politics which may result in her death.
Magic is portrayed here like kind of like science is in our world – everyone has a similar basic understanding, but there’s still so much mystery! As we follow Camille, we learn about her world, magic, and step into new territory with her. So far the story features White, Brown, and Black characters, but what really makes the comic panels shine is how all of them are rounded out as full characters. Even if you’re only seeing a particular character from afar, or the interaction is very short, it feels like you’re seeing interactions between real people. It starts with small touches like how the characters hold themselves, their styles that are at once unique to them and familiar to us, making our brains interact with them as if they were people we were meeting or conversing with.
Just from that, you can probably tell Mundt is very adept at combining subtle and overt ways available to her in this medium and format to immerse you in her story.
tl;dr: It’s SO PRETTY and the story is SO GOOD!!!!! Updates every Friday!!!! (Caution: Mundt is fond of cliffhangers.)
Lackadaisy by Tracy J. Butler
TW/CW: Violence and gangs.
Cats are people, it’s the prohibition era, and it’s all about getting the booze without getting caught or dead. Mitzy inherited the Lackadaisy speakeasy and the gang that goes with it from her now deceased husband, Atlas May. Since his death, the gang fell apart and the speakeasy went from being the ‘it’ place in St. Louis to being a shell of itself. Lackadaisy only has a few raggedy rag-tag members left, and bootlegging isn’t where good boys and girls come to play.
Butler does a lot of research about this era, fact-checks small details about that time and place for the comic, and regularly shares what she’s learned or had trouble finding when creating the comic at the end of a strip. (Did you know driving drunk was low key normal then?) Butler is incredible with creating expressions, stylizing the characters’ physicality to tell their story, all of which makes her another master in this medium, I think. The entire comic is sepia toned, with occasional touches of colour. When she makes stylistic choices that’s slightly inaccurate, art, design, or dialogue wise, she talks about it in her end-of-comic snippets.
Besides the comic also lots of gorgeous illustrations and side chapters that are as adorable as they are hilarious. Some of them are flashbacks to the good-ol’ days, some of them are in replies to reader questions, and some of them are fourth-wall-breaking fun!
We follow several different characters throughout the comic, giving us a further understanding of them and what the St. Louis was like for people in different walks of life. That said, no matter how much time you spend with them, it can be hard to explain what’s wrong with some of them. Like Rocky.
My one gripe with this comic is that it comes off as ‘there is no colour in this world, since everyone is a cat,’ which is pretty disingenuous, given that not only is this taking place in St. Louis, but Butler has managed to perfectly convey Eastern European origins of some of her characters. So far the comic has talked about voodoo, and in her end-of-strip snippets where she talks about what she’s found in her research, she did talk about its origins.
However, none of her characters are Black. She can easily indicate the Blackness of her characters in similar ways as she did her Eastern European characters – in their conversations, how people treat them, etc. I think it’d be very interesting to see cat-people experience the same racism we do, except as readers we can’t visually tell who’s part of which group – but the cats can. It’s the kind of accurate absurdity I’d dig if Butler went for it.
I still recommend this story, I just think she should round it out. Lackadaisy is ongoing, and from what I can tell, updates sporadically.
Carciphona by Shilin
In a world at once resplendent with magic and music, yet crumbling in on itself, Veloce journeys to find someone dear to her.
I’ve been following Shilin’s work since I was in high school, when her work was already pretty, and she’s only gotten better since then. She didn’t just improve as an artist, she also grew as a storyteller. (P.S. she’s self taught. Another inspiring example of what we can achieve if we’re patient with ourselves!)
Shilin’s degree was in performance piano, and you definitely see the heavy influence of her background in music. Shilin is particularly adept at articulating motion, which makes all the magic and action sequences particularly enjoyable. Her style, from the direction it’s read to how she styles her designs, are all in the tradition of manga.
Story wise, it’s a little dense in that the rules to this world is a bit intricate. There are myths, politics, different creatures, and, of course, how magic works here. Veloce’s understanding of these things is quite thorough, and when she’s not blowing everyone’s minds, she’s the one getting caught off guard! This story is definitely on the more mysterious, intense side of things, but there’s lots of fun to be had, too!
NB: It’s an ongoing work, so I can’t give a definitive content warning, but I haven’t spotted anything that I want to tell you about.
Amongst Us by Shilin
Shilin’s other webcomic, Amongst Us, is the Alternate Universe spin-off to Carciphona. All the lovely lesbian undertones in the original comic are loud and proud and cute as fuck here! Created in a webtoon format, it’s a slice of life story that takes place in our world, and there’s lots of music here as well! So far, it’s mostly snippets, like comic strips, rather than an entire story.
What about you? What webcomics and webtoons are you loving lately?
Aargh, like I needed even less sleep than I get now.
For anyone who has also decided they hate sleep, may I recommend Stand Still Stay Silent: http://www.sssscomic.com/ hugely long post-apocalyptic road trip through disease- & troll-infested badlands! Gorgeous artwork and more fun than it might sound at first (although c/w suicide, though it’s implied rather than shown).
Also, I think someone else recommended this fairly recently, but Lore Olympus has also beautiful artwork, and is a retelling of the Persephone & Hades myth (c/w for sexual assault (it’s one strip only I think, and is clearly tagged on the episode in question): https://www.webtoons.com/en/romance/lore-olympus/list?title_no=1320&page=1
My Webtoons picks are Spirit Fingers, True Beauty, The Devil is a Handsome Man and I Love Yoo 🙂 Because really WHO NEEDS SLEEP!
I think my very favourite webcomic is Heartstopper, a YA M/M romance. It’s adorable. Content notes are given where appropriate. https://tapas.io/series/Heartstopper
I second the recommendation for Lore Olympus (Greek mythology and slow burn romance—aaaaallll my catnip). Also, Love Advice from the Great Duke of Hell has a delightfully offbeat sense of humor that will not work for everyone, but if it works for you, it works.
For a while, I’ve been wanting to recommend “Boo! It’s Sex” here for young teens or even tweens.
Description:
“High school classmates Denise, Christine, Lindsey, and Kim, move into a former sorority house for their first year of college, and immediately discover the ghost of a dead sorority girl stuck in a discarded bottle of tequila. While the freshwomen are settling into college life, Tara settles herself into the center of their personal lives, acting as a seasoned mentor for their transition from girls to ladies. Being dead for a while (she never has the same answer for when or how) has given Tara a perplexingly thorough knowledge of sex, relationships, body stuff, and even friendship.”
If you haven’t read The Tea Dragon Society, I highly recommend it. It won the Eisner award for Best Webcomic in 2018, and is simply lovely, both the art and the story, about a girl finding her path. It has both an F/F and an M/M relationship in it. http://teadragonsociety.com/
I’m also loving Check, Please!, an M/M romance story about a figure skater who joins a college hockey team, and has a cooking vlog on the side. http://checkpleasecomic.com/
And for more mature adventure with a bit of horror, I’m reading Wilde Life, about a guy named Oscar Wilde who, sight unseen, buys what turns out to be a haunted house in Podunk, Oklahoma (Yes, that was a real place. It’s a ghost town now.) His house is haunted by a woman who was a computer for the army in WWII. And the town and surrounding area turns out to be something else entirely.
Oops! I left off the link for Wilde Life. Here it is. http://www.wildelifecomic.com/
Unsounded! It’s an amazing fantasy story with excellent characters set in a fascinating world, initially about a girl from a thieving family in a crooked city going to collect a tithe from a family member in another country, accompanied by the world’s only sentient zombie. Sette is a terror and a delight and one of the most unconventional heroines I’ve seen in ages. I adore her. Updates are regular and the creator is good about announcing her hiatuses. Plus she seems to actually know where the story is going.
I’m particularly fond of Questionable Content, which has been running for over a decade. It’s an odd slice of life with QUILTBAG characters that include AIs and folks who work at a café and university library. What’s not to love? 😉
I like Questionable Content too, despite it’s name it’s pretty gentle.
Aah, left off the link for Unsounded!
http://www.casualvillain.com/Unsounded
Oh, and another thumbs’ up for Tea Dragon Society and Wilde Life!
Thank you for the shoutout for Lackadaisy! This is really a great comic with some of the most beautiful art ever. And some of the most bizarre characters (like Rocky, and Mordecai the OCD hitman.) Just a few notes: Nico and Seraphine are coded as mixed-race Cajun; TW for violence (not always graphic, no eviscerations, but the comic does get real dark in places); and yes, it can be a long wait between updates because Tracy’s meticulous art style takes a long time to reach that visual perfection. (One of her side-articles shows that process and exactly WHY it takes so long, especially with her also having a real job to pay the bills: https://www.lackadaisy.com/exhibit.php?exhibitid=329 )
Seconding Unsounded, Lore Olympus (which had an Eisner nom this year, yay!) and Stand Still Stay Silent. Other faves:
Girl Genius by Phil and Kaja Foglio http://www.girlgeniusonline.com/newreaders.php the very best in insane Steampunk and pulp novel/B-movie shenanigans! I have been a fan of Phil’s for literal decades and this is his masterwork. Sentient castles, monsters of all kinds, pseudo-European royalty, possession, betrayals, hidden identities, talking animals, satanic cults, lost warrior princesses – it has it all! Caution: this tale has been going for a LONG time so give yourself a lot of time to binge.
If you like Boo! It’s Sex, check out Danielle Corsetto’s original comic Girls With Slingshots http://www.girlswithslingshots.com/ which follows a group of slacker 20-somethings through their daily lives. Caution for lots of drinking and sex. The comic is complete so you can read the whole thing at your convenience.
Breaking Cat News is my feel-good fave, featuring a multi-lingual and ever-expanding cast of cats broadcasting news of interest to cats. Great for all ages. Daily strips are here https://www.gocomics.com/breaking-cat-news/2019/08/15 and original strips here: http://www.breakingcatnews.com/ (My favorite is Vacuum Preparedness Week.)
Sleepless Domain http://www.sleeplessdomain.com/comic/archive is a manga-style comic about magical girls fighting the monsters that invade their city by night while dealing with a personal trauma. Mostly family-friendly but can get creepy and dark.
Far To The North concerns a group of women fighting off foreign invaders while their menfolk have gone to a moot; and specifically the romance between one of them and a mute young man being slowly turned into a dragon: http://www.farnorthcomic.com/comic/don39t-tell
Seconding the Tea Dragon Society. I read the whole thing in one sitting, though I should have sipped it!
The lovely “O Human Star” recently reached a major dramatic climax, and seems to be on the way toward its end. Which is okay, because the story has been so good, and I’m sure the ending will be *amazing.*
It’s near future science fiction about family, identity, and uploading people’s brains into robots.
Beginning:
http://ohumanstar.com/comic/chapter-1-title-page/
I dip in and out of various webcomics but mostly stay true to my first, Pictures of You by Gibson Twist. It’s been running for 12 years; I’ve been following for 11. Mr. Twist’s drawing style has evolved some. His story is strong. link is here: http://picturesofyou.smackjeeves.com/comics/2743380/were-twelve/
Tea Dragon Society is also available in print, with volume 2 out next month, if you prefer paper to screens. It’s nice and large, too!
Another lovely webtoon is Miss Abbott and the doctor! It’s super sweet romance with low drama and no love triangles (always a bonus in a webtoon) and a very cute art style. Basically, stuck up doctor and free-spirited girl initially dislike each other, and we all know how it goes from there. The setting is vaguely European, vaguely late 1800’s, so all of the fun with less of the rules.