#heaven no hell

[nonetoon]

✨ Big Comic Recommendation List! ✨

I’ve been wanting to compile some of my favorite comics into one big list in no particular order for a while. Again, I just want to reiterate that I’m in no way any sort of comic critic and all of these are just books that I personally enjoy, and if they seem up your alley I hope you’ll enjoy them too!

I also want to state that these are definitely more adult oriented books and not for kids. A lot of these stories have pretty graphic violence and tackle more adult topics like sexual or physical assault, so I’ll also be putting content warnings for where it applies.

1. Afternoon at McBurger’s by Ana Galvañ

Afternoon at McBurger’s takes place in a bright, colorful future where a group of young girls finally have the opportunity to participate in the Once Party provided by McBurger’s, a fast food restaurant. The Once Party offers a fantastical opportunity for anyone who turns eleven years old: the chance to visit themselves in the future!

The limited color palette of pink, teal, and yellow make for a very nice aesthetic that lends itself to the strange, futuristic world you get just a glimpse into. For such a short story there is a lot to keep track of that makes rereading fun and I felt like I discovered something new every time I went through it again.

CW: physical abuse

2. No One Else by R. Kikuo Johnson

Another short one but is definitely one of the more impactful. No One Else is about a woman (a nurse and full time caretaker for her elderly father) and her brother (a musician who has a much more strained relationship with their father) trying to process the sudden, accidental death of their father while also looking after her son. A very honest, holds-no-punches look at family, abuse, and neglect as each character struggles to cope with this sudden situation they find themselves in.

The artwork is beautifully done and the use of blues with a splash of orange makes for a great visual impact. I’m a big fan of character driven stories, and this book provides an interesting and messy glimpse into these characters lives. Very down to earth, very honest, and nicely tied together.

CW: physical abuse

3. Birds of Maine by Michael DeForge

A fun and meandering story about a society of birds that migrated to the moon to form their own world, away from human involvement. Birds of Maine follows both a group of young birds trying to find their place in this giant, complex world as well as gives glimpses of the many different facets of bird society and how they function.

This comic gives a very funny, matter-of-fact look into the absurd world of birds! It’s overall a great read if you like world building, and it’s presented with beautiful line work, bright pops of color, and abstract shapes that make up the bustling world and characters. The story overall feels like a stroll: it generally follows along a specific story with certain characters, but isn’t afraid to wander off to other points of interest.

4. Coyote Doggirl by Lisa Hanawalt

Set in the wild west, Coyote Doggirl follows said character as she tries to escape a group of bandits after she kills their leader’s brother. Along the way she meets new allies and has to decide to confront the past she is trying desperately to get away from or keep on running. It’s a funny yet honest book set in the beauty of the desert.

The story and characters in Coyote Doggirl are both hilarious and crude, which makes the more serious and genuine moments even more impactful. The loose style of the watercolors throughout this comic perfectly match the beautiful colors of the desert landscape. This comic also has probably one of my favorite endings (which I’m not going to spoil here).

CW: nudity, sexual assault, graphic violence

5. Eight-Lane Runaways by Henry McCausland

Eight-Lane Runaways follows a group of runners participating in a marathon through a fantastical and lively world. Each have their own motivations and desires for entering the race, and we get to see how each resolves as the race goes on.

The quirky and oddball characters and their ever-changing, winding landscape go perfectly hand-in-hand. It’s always amusing when clearly bizarre fantasy worlds, characters, and events are treated very plainly within the story. The characters are simple but fun to follow along with, from a character who is a frog, to a character who follows the instructions of a magical coat, to a character simply looking for two missing cats. Along with the beautifully done artwork and sprawling pages of landscapes, it feels as though you are only getting the smallest look into this big, wild world you want to learn more about.

6. The Book Tour by Andi Watson

The Book Tour follows a rather unlucky new author as, not only is his debut book not selling well, but a string of murders is following his exact tour route, leaving all signs pointing at him as the culprit.

It’s a very dry but still incredibly entertaining and suspenseful story. It’s hilarious, quaint, and baffling to watch the poor man get hit with bad luck after bad luck, only for him to be very proper, if not completely lost, about the whole ordeal. There are also many moving parts and details going on in the background that make for a great murder mystery story, definitely deserving of a reread to connect all the pieces that might have been missed on the first read through (I know I definitely did).

7. Heaven No Hell by Michael DeForge

A collection of 17 amazing short stories looking at a variety of characters and concepts. Everything from a woman pretending to be a surgeon, a karaoke party, a family killed in a car crash, and the creation of a hypothetical child.

My favorite stories of the bunch are “One Of My Students Is A Murderer… But Which?”, “Surprise Party”, “Album”, “Road Trip”, and “Soap Opera.” All of the stories in this comic are perfectly bite-sized looks into a variety of interesting visuals and concepts that keep you engaged from segment to segment.

CW: mild nudity

8. Flavor Girls by Loïc Locatelli-Kournwsky and Angel De Santiago

In Flavor Girls, a mysterious alien ship appears in Earth’s orbit, and its passengers cause death and destruction for life on earth. Luckily, a group of women dubbed “Flavor Girls” by their fans are gifted magical, fruit themed powers that aid them in fighting off the alien army. The newest, unexpected member of the group, however, is having trouble catching up.

By far one of the most visually stunning comics I have ever read. Very, very reminiscent of Sailor Moon in its characters, aesthetic, and story. This comic has some of my favorite character designs, the alien designs in particular are extremely fun to look at. Unlike the other comics on this list, it is not a complete story but at least it gives you something to look forward to!

CW: mild graphic violence

9. Beautiful Darkness by Fabien Vehlmann and Kerascoët

Last but absolutely not least, Beautiful Darkness is a surprisingly horrifying and violent story about cute and fun looking fairy-like characters trying to survive out in the woods. The less you know going in to this comic, the better.

The incredible beauty and meticulous detail of the environment in this comic lends itself well as a stark contrast to the horrific deaths littered throughout this story. It is bizarre watching how unfeeling and unbothered these cutesy fairytale creatures are with their friends dropping around them like flies, but it’s impossible to look away. Seeing how all of it shapes and warps the genuinely kind main character, Aurora, and the darker implications going on in the background make this a must read. By far one of the best openings to any comic I have ever read.

CW: gore, body horror

(That’s all I have for now! Hope to recommend more in the future ✌️)

[oddygaul]

Girl Juice and Michael DeForge

Girl Juice

P good. It has some absolutely hysterical, standout moments, but overall didn’t leave as much of an impression as I was expecting it to. I dunno, I might’ve just been expecting more of an ensemble thing, when in fact everything’s more or less centered around Bunny. She’s a pretty commanding character, for sure, but the humor loses a bit of its luster when she’s the punchline nearly every time.

I think the format contributed to this wear a little bit. Girl Juice is structured a bit like a comic strip / webcomic compilation, where each page is ostensibly its own standalone story; when they’re more straightforward gag strips with a payoff, they usually kill, but there’s some bits on the first half where it tries to be a bit more narrative / slice of life, and the layouts start to feel stiff and restrictive.

I did appreciate the ending story for branching out a bit in that regard, with deviation in both the paneling and the pacing.

Overall, the art and vibe and character designs are incredibly charming, and I quite like the author’s voice for dialogue, I just think medium-wise it’s a bit clumsy at times.

Also the slow drip feed of clownlore about Nana was fucking wild. The first time it dropped the clown fetish thing it was a fun one-off gag, then we see her clown boyfriend and hear about her clowning aspirations, and things start snowballing - by the end she’s wearing full-on clown outfits with ruffs and buttons, and suddenly I realize that her red nose, which I assumed was an artistic choice and didn’t think twice about, is a big ol clown honker she puts on / paints every day?? yo.

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Sticks Angelica, Folk Hero

Reading Sticks Angelica, Folk Hero consistently filled me with the same delight that first reading the title Sticks Angelica, Folk Hero did. which I consider a success story

This is probably my favorite thing I’ve read from Michael DeForge. I think (unintentionally) everything else I’ve read from him are collections of shorts, so it was kind of a shock to get something with this much of a throughline. DeForge is so confident with his style here, and I felt the longer format really gave him time to fully explore the tone and visual style of this setting.

The art is gorgeous throughout, and remains cohesive while still featuring lots of experimentation and playfulness. The tritone coloring is eye-catching, and DeForge really makes the most of it by constantly messing with line variation and texture, adding a huge variety of middle values even between each of the three printed colors. The book, generally, is incredibly lavish - while heavily stylized, both the characters and backgrounds are popping with detail and incredibly graphic, and it feels like DeForge rarely repeats himself with his visual effects. Lots of cartoonists making a strip-based story like this find a trick for certain elements then put them on autopilot; as if to make up for the book’s general artstyle not changing for once, DeForge instead finds new tricks for each element constantly.

All the designs are incredibly memorable, too, from the geese with their mouths constantly agape to the fuckin constantly sweating outline bear.

“Why should [she] be the exception? Penance is her birthright, just as this mushroom is mine.”

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Heaven No Hell

So yeah, after the relatively cozy Sticks Angelica, hopping straight in here was a fuckin trip.

This is DeForge back on his short story bullshit, and totally nailing every one. The man is a style chameleon - if not for the titling, I genuinely think you could convince someone this was an actual anthology. Visually, not every style resonates with me, but there’s no denying the sheer variety of aesthetic inside Heaven No Hell.

On the recommendation of some internet rando, I held myself to only reading one or two stories a day, leaving time in between to digest them, and… if anything, it only made collecting my thoughts on the book more difficult. Each of the stories is so short, maybe ten pages on average, and they’re all so drastically different - the voice of the writing, the artstyle, the setting - yet they all, to a one, left me with a sense of unsettling bemusement I couldn’t shake. It’s as if you see only a brief snapshot of a story, and are yanked away before you can fully come to grips with what’s going on. Heaven No Hell is almost short comics done as poetry rather than prose, which is a rarity in a medium so tied to narrative.

Some of them come off lighthearted - Soap Opera is one of the funniest shorts I’ve read in a minute, and the middle school murder mystery is surprisingly jovial for its subject matter (and the anti-carceral solidarity that all of the 11-year olds inexplicably share). Some are heady - the title track’s ridiculous tiered heaven system manages to strike a melancholy chord despite its flippancy (honestly bronze tier fucks tho), and the impostor syndrome society, where not a single person is who they claim to be, feels a little too real to be comfortable. Some are surreal and delirious - the war of the unreasonable, New Museum, was an incredibly potent tone piece that fully swept me up in its conceit. And then some are just legit actual nightmares, like the girl whose new ant stepdad keeps knocking up her mom, leaving clusters of giant squirming eggs rampant around the house, hatching and dying and crawling.

Fun panel but also this story is about a skeleton afterlife where the skeletons of every dying thing end up, their skin slowly blooming off them and collecting into a giant shell of flayed skin that girds the planet like a fleshy atmosphere

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“When the crowd cleared out and the snow off everyone’s boots had melted, we realized that at some point in the night our bodies had crushed and killed Barnaby. Barnaby was the littlest among us. He died the way he lived: misremembering the lyrics to a Hole song. We held a service for him, just a few of us stragglers–the ones tasked with cleaning up. It ended the night. We said a few things. Everyone knew the words.”

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In a few words: exhaustingly creative.

[symphonyofsilence]

Let the poor man rest.

[pink111shit]

[heavenswaif]

[eyes-of-nine]

pls assume i'm thinking about this moment 24/7 all week every week

[deep-space-lines]

I know Gabriel is canonically really popular with Heaven’s residents but there’s bound to be some heavenly loser with pronoun envy

[themaymoth]

the mermaid princess has fallen for your spell, just not the one you intended...💖💕

✨beefleaf fairytale au because ill take any excuse to draw lesbian mermaids✨

[vannahrt]

Are they winners, are they sinners? Cuz it’s cut and dry…

FAIR IS FAIR, AN EYE FOR AN EYE !!

I had this idea of Lute seeking revenge and coming back leading another extermination and running into Adam, now one of the lowest tiers of sinner. Then of course I was obsessed with what he’d look like so I incorporated his heaven fit and his cause of death (Nifty and the angelic knife).

I… I love them.

[ryllen]

have u never been scared by malleus draconia? be scared now because i enable him to use 12 pokemons specifically to destroy you

[neil-gaiman]

The Captions Are Fixed!

GOOD NEWS! Sarah-Kate Fenelon has worked very hard (thank you Sarah-Kate) and the Amazon engines have rolled, and if you watch Good Omens S2 with the closed captions on you should be in for a pleasant surprise.

If you've seen it before with closed captions, I'd watch it again.

(I just watched 10 minutes from episode 5, and every line was on the money.)

[peanutseagle]

guys i think they might be dating

[tampire]

♪ Everyday, it's a-getting closer ♪

♪ Going faster than a rollercoaster ♪

♪ Love like yours will ♪

♪ Surely come my way ♪

♪ A-hey, a-hey-hey ♪

Gabriel and Beelzebub eventually survive the consequences of The Metatron and Satan

Bonus:

[yourangle-yuordevil]

She drunk af? No, it's just his husband having fun in hell ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

[pink111shit]