Jeremy Whitley Comics

🏳️‍🌈 BOOK REVIEW 🏳️‍🌈

Aces & Aros Vol 1 by Kat Calamia, Jeremy Whitley & Phil Falco

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

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This was a great little graphic anthology of ace and aro stories. There’s so much variety between these pages, so many different ways to identify across two broad spectrums, with such a fun range of genre’s.

I was a little worried that 21 stories jammed into 100 pages would be too chaotic and the stories would fall flat, and while I would have loved for some of them to have been longer, most of them actually perfectly fit into the few pages they had and quite a few gave me warm, fuzzy feelings.

Artober day 14, Navigating with You, by Jeremy Whitley and Cassio Ribeiro.

Alright, summary time: We follow Neesha and Gabi who meet on their first day as new kids. Both are from very different sides of the world: Neesha, who is disabled and suffers from a form of Cerebral Palsy, and Gabi who moved from the coast and leans into a surfer aesthetic. The principal makes some gross assumptions about both of the girls, and Neesha helps Gabi out who gives mad golden retriever energy. The two later find out that they were both obsessed with a very hard to find comic series, Super Navigator Nozomi, and make a game of finding as many volumes as possible in order for them to share the series and finally read the ending. The story is told in two ways, where we get the two girls’ adventures and friendship (and even eventual romance), and snippets of Super Navigator Nozomi, and the manga and the girls’ lives reflect each other in many many ways (where Neesha is very much the ‘rival’ character, Kazane and Gabby is like the main character, Nozomi). It has a bit of a bittersweet ending because they won’t be able to see each other as often, but I know in my heart of hearts that they’ll stay in each others’ lives forever.

Comics read in October

Aces & Aros vol 1

aspec comic anthology I backed on kickstarter! while obviously being only a few pages each (maybe 10pg max?) means none are super in depth, I felt like they were more than just surface level aspec concepts. They're generally either about an normal aspec character + some aspect of their life, or more thematic/metaphorically aspec, or sometimes sort of playing into the surface level tropes on purpose as a comedic concept (but like. the character is probably also aspec). A good range, and I enjoyed pretty much all of them!

Silenced Voices

Two brothers learn about their mother's experiences growing up in Guatemala after hearing about the ongoing genocide trial - something that she's kept to herself until now. Heartwrenching story about sisters and generational trauma, and really well told story considering some of the awful subject matter, which is not something I knew much about. Great art too (there's a loopy thing in the lineart style I enjoy a lot.) (there's also some lesbians)

Hello Sunshine

I've been eagerly awaiting this and it did NOT disappoint, wtf. fantastic YA horror about a group of kids coming together to find their friend/brother/boyfriend who disappeared after a violent breakdown. Fantastic art with a retro style, so many interesting details and genuinely very creepy demonic things. and the way the art and layout degrades into chaos with the increasing hallucinations.... It handles mental health (specifically schizoaffective / psychosis and delusions) with a lot of care, the way that the horror genre traditionally does not.I love how much the teens felt like teens, both visually in the art style and how they acted. messy but also so sweet.it's also a big one! 300 something pages is decently chunky for a GN these days and it really let the story and characters be properly fleshed out. also yes it made me cry

On Starlit Shores

YA contemporary fantasy, a girl and her friend go back to the small town she grew up in and barely remembers in the wake of her grandma's death, and finds out some magical secrets about the town and her grandma's life. Very pretty art (particularly loved how the starlight was drawn), and nice focus on friendship, grief, and queer/sapphic characters. I also liked the detail of the MC wearing wrist braces - maybe carpal tunnel or just preventative, as a bit of casual representation of that. i guess. It's somewhere between whimsical and serious - and i feel like it was an awkward place in between, tonally? also the very realistically proportioned people made expressions/emotions feel a bit awkward and stilted, as nice as the art was illustratively. this is me being very picky - but i think it resulted in me not being as emotionally invested as i could have been. (also - the way that the supposed old cottage and lighthouse’s interior design felt so modern due to the colour palette and clean lines)

Cannon

A woman under stress from her chef job, her aging grandfather and mother who won't help care for him, and her fracturing relationship with her best friend/roommate (a self absorbed writer) - which all leads up to the breaking point of her trashing the restaurant she works at. Some messy complicated characters and relationships, exploration of being queer and Chinese in Montreal, and interesting build up of tension within a mundane slice of life kind of plot

Navigating With You

This is a graphic novel where two girls new to a school bond over their love of an out of print manga, beginning a competition to see who can track down more of the series, growing closer and closer as they do. Interspersed within their story, sections of the manga they are reading are included.

This was straight up adorable. Not that it's all fluff- they are dealing with very real issues of ableism, racism, and debilitating PTSD, but it was so sweet and fun to see their relationship develop and all the adventures they went on to track down the books. And the manga itself, while definitely over the top and cheesy, was also a lot of fun and I definitely see why Neesha and Gabby love it.

I have been working with my friend Carolina Shuda to create something badass out of our mutual frustration.

I wrote a lot of stories for My Little Pony and while I'm very proud of those stories, I hated getting shot down or reconceptualized any time I wanted to have a lesson that was progressive or especially queer. I wanted to explore a world where friendship wasn't so easy, where you were always working to be friends against the rules of society and the prejudices of your family and where, sometimes, friendships turned into something more. Where characters were allowed to be hard to love and difficult to like - but they were still trying to be friends through all of that.

Caroline was frustrated that she didn't get to design new fashion for Monster High characters or build monsters that reminded her of herself.

Out of those frustrations, our current project "Friends from Heck" was born. I've been pitching it as "My Little Ponies meets Mean Girls, with demons" and it's a definitively YA story of friendship between a group of girl demons who were never supposed to be friends, who are hard to get along with, and who are just as often defined by their faults than their best qualities.

Are you ready to be friends with some high school girls who are real demons?

Pictured above is Betty, the punk rocker of our group. She's probably my favorite design because she reminds me of a friend of mine who was, in her own way, pretty difficult to love.

Say hello to Molly, the meanest of mean girls. Always best dressed and always dripping with gold.

I have been working with my friend Carolina Shuda to create something badass out of our mutual frustration.

I wrote a lot of stories for My Little Pony and while I'm very proud of those stories, I hated getting shot down or reconceptualized any time I wanted to have a lesson that was progressive or especially queer. I wanted to explore a world where friendship wasn't so easy, where you were always working to be friends against the rules of society and the prejudices of your family and where, sometimes, friendships turned into something more. Where characters were allowed to be hard to love and difficult to like - but they were still trying to be friends through all of that.

Caroline was frustrated that she didn't get to design new fashion for Monster High characters or build monsters that reminded her of herself.

Out of those frustrations, our current project "Friends from Heck" was born. I've been pitching it as "My Little Ponies meets Mean Girls, with demons" and it's a definitively YA story of friendship between a group of girl demons who were never supposed to be friends, who are hard to get along with, and who are just as often defined by their faults than their best qualities.

Are you ready to be friends with some high school girls who are real demons?

Pictured above is Betty, the punk rocker of our group. She's probably my favorite design because she reminds me of a friend of mine who was, in her own way, pretty difficult to love.

I have been working with my friend Carolina Shuda to create something badass out of our mutual frustration.

I wrote a lot of stories for My Little Pony and while I'm very proud of those stories, I hated getting shot down or reconceptualized any time I wanted to have a lesson that was progressive or especially queer. I wanted to explore a world where friendship wasn't so easy, where you were always working to be friends against the rules of society and the prejudices of your family and where, sometimes, friendships turned into something more. Where characters were allowed to be hard to love and difficult to like - but they were still trying to be friends through all of that.

Caroline was frustrated that she didn't get to design new fashion for Monster High characters or build monsters that reminded her of herself.

Out of those frustrations, our current project "Friends from Heck" was born. I've been pitching it as "My Little Ponies meets Mean Girls, with demons" and it's a definitively YA story of friendship between a group of girl demons who were never supposed to be friends, who are hard to get along with, and who are just as often defined by their faults than their best qualities.

Are you ready to be friends with some high school girls who are real demons?

Pictured above is Betty, the punk rocker of our group. She's probably my favorite design because she reminds me of a friend of mine who was, in her own way, pretty difficult to love.

Say hello to Molly, the meanest of mean girls. Always best dressed and always dripping with gold.

Someone needs to culture these women

Wanda Maximoff

HAPPY LESBIAN VISIBILITY WEEK! We asked our rec list recommenders for books starring lesbian characters, and boy did they deliver! With these books added in, we’ve now recommended over 100 books with lesbian main characters over the past few years (links to those full lists are at the end of the post). The contributors to the list are: Ivy L. James, Tryan A Bex, Shea Sullivan, jumblejen, Evangeline Giaconia, Shannon, Rascal Hartley, Shadaras, Sebastian Marie, Dei Walker, Mikki Madison, Puck, Nina Waters, E. C., and Linnea Peterson.

Breaking Character by Lee Winter

Brighter Than Scale, Swifter Than Flame by Neon Yang

The Girl from the Sea by Lee Knox Ostertag

But Not Too Bold by Hache Pueyo

Kase-San and… series by Hiromi Takashima

The Lady’s Guide to Celestial Mechanics by Olivia Waite

Goodbye, My Rose Garden by Dr. Pepperco

A Master of Djinn by P. Djèlí Clark

Bury Our Bones in the Midnight Soil by V.E. Schwab

Unconquerable Sun by Kate Elliott

Matrix by Lauren Groff

Empress of Forever by Max Gladstone

The Traitor Baru Cormorant by Seth Dickinson

One Last Stop by Casey McQuiston

The Beauty’s Blade by Feng Ren Zuo Shu

Spent by Alison Bechdel

Alter Ego by Ana C. Sánchez

Gideon the Ninth by Tamsyn Muir

She Who Became the Sun by Shelley Parker-Chan

A Memory Called Empire by Arkady Martine

All the Painted Stars by Emma Denny

The Unbroken by C.L. Clark

Pembroke Park by Michelle Martin

Mrs. Martin’s Incomparable Adventure by Courtney Milan

Camp Damascus by Chuck Tingle

The Care and Feeding of Waspish Widows by Olivia Waite

Navigating With You by Jeremy Whitley

Burning Roses by S.L. Huang

Idlewild by James Frankie Thomas

Yuri Espoir by Mai Naoi

Last Night at the Telegraph Club by Malinda Lo

Proper English by KJ Charles

Skullrunner by Vyvre Argent

Find these and other books on our Goodreads book shelf, grab our Pagebound.co list, or buy them through the Duck Prints Press Bookshop.org affiliate page.

Happy International Women’s Day! There are so many amazing books starring queer women – here’s a selection of our favorites. You can see way more by visiting our lists on Goodreads, Pagebound, or the Duck Prints Press Bookshop.org affiliate page.

Want even more? Check out the 2026 itch.io bundle featuring stories by women, starring women!

The contributors to the list are: Tryan A Bex, Shadaras, Shannon, JD Rivers, E. C., Shea Sullivan, Dei Walker, jumblejen, Mikki Madison, Linnea Peterson, Nina Waters, polls, Terra P. Waters, S. J. Ralston.

The Girl from the Sea by Lee Knox Ostertag

Goodbye, My Rose Garden by Dr. Pepperco

The Order of the Pure Moon Reflected in Water by Zen Cho

The Isle in the Silver Sea by Tasha Suri

A Lady for a Duke by Alexis Hall

The Care and Feeding of Waspish Widows by Olivia Waite

Lucky Day by Chuck Tingle

The Space Between Worlds by Micaiah Johnson

Camp Damascus by Chuck Tingle

The Princess and the Grilled Cheese Sandwich by Deya Muniz

The Luminous Dead by Caitlin Starling

Skullrunner by Vyvre Argent

Detransition, Baby by Torrey Peters

A Clash of Steel: A Treasure Island Remix by C.B. Lee

We Could Be Rats by Emily Austin

Coffee Shop in an Alternate Universe by C.B. Lee

Juliet Takes a Breath by Gabby Rivera

Brooms by Jasmine Walls

Siren Queen by Nghi Vo

Last Night at the Telegraph Club by Malinda Lo

This Is How You Lose the Time War by Max Gladstone, Amal El-Mohtar

Landlocked in Foreign Skin by Drew Huff

In the Vanishers’ Palace by Aliette de Bodard

Dreadnought by April Daniels

The Fireborne Blade by Charlotte Bond

Rust in the Root by Justina Ireland

Foundryside by Robert Jackson Bennett

Mrs. Martin’s Incomparable Adventure by Courtney Milan

The Mercy Makers by Tessa Gratton

If It Makes You Happy by Claire Kann

The Last Girl Scout by Natalie Ironside

Seraphina by Rachel Hartman

The Water Outlaws by S.L. Huang

All the Painted Stars by Emma Denny

Fire Logic by Laurie J. Marks

Ophelia After All by Racquel Marie

A Master of Djinn by P. Djèlí Clark

Level Up by Paisley Rose

Dear Wendy by Ann Zhao

Not Your Sidekick by C.B. Lee

Idlewild by James Frankie Thomas

Fortune Favors the Dead by Stephen Spotswood

Lucy, Uncensored by Mel Hammond

Navigating With You by Jeremy Whitley

I Kissed Shara Wheeler by Casey McQuiston

Planeta by Ana Oncina

Make Room for Love by Darcy Liao

Hold Me by Courtney Milan

Awwww I actually love this so much. More than all their banter and everything, this really shows why Amerikate as a ship works, they have so much care for each other, it's so sweet

#hello again martin and bosco!! sending you boys round for another go :)