Comic of the Month

[Keep Looking]

Linebyline, I'd be happy to see what your recommendation is!

[Jitter]

Linebyline, please go ahead! Your recommendations are always interesting!

[Linebyline]

Aw, shucks, thanks!

Okay, y'all liked Sleepless Domain, right? Well what if I told you that its writer, artist, and sometimes colorist Mary "Cube Watermelon" Cagle used to work in Japan as an English as a Second Language teacher? You'd probably say something like, "You're just stalling to try to think of a comic, aren't you?"

But no! Cagle documented her time in Japan in Let's Speak English[url=http://, a black-and-white, autobiographical gag strip that ran from 2013 to 2016 and [url=https://hivemill.com/collections/mary-cagle/products/lets-speak-english]is available in print form from the Hivemill store], a black-and-white, autobiographical gag strip that ran from 2013 to 2016 and [url=https://hivemill.com/collections/mary-cagle/products/lets-speak-english]is available in print form from the Hivemill store.

I still don't have access to the place where I normally post the art excerpts, so here's a representative page instead:

Spoiler: #14 • show

(Spoilered for space; there is no ongoing plot so there's nothing to actually spoil.)

The humor mostly derives from Cagle's fish-out-of-water experiences as an American in Japan, and from her grade school students being adorable, unpredictable goofballs. Your mileage may vary, but I found it to be very charming and cute.

Spoiler: kind of dark tangent having nothing to do with the comic • show

"Fish out of water" is a really horrifying metaphor, isn't it? It's supposed to mean "awkward due to being out of one's usual culture/environment" but what it actually, literally describes is a painful death by suffocation.

As the content warnings go, there's very little to worry about. Some of the humor is very mildly scatological (foreign toilets are weird) or suggestive (grade school kids know what boobs are) and there are recurring references to a local mascot character that sensitive viewers might find mildly off-putting and/or existentially horrifying. You'd want to read it first before sharing it with young kids, but you wouldn't be embarrassed if your grandma caught you reading it.

P.S. Cagle's other other comic, Kiwi Blitz, is also worth your time, but it's on hiatus until Sleepless Domain wraps up.

[Keep Looking]

Ooh, I've read this one! Mary Cagle is a great illustrator and writer, the Let's Speak English comics are very entertaining and I'm impressed by how well she captures funny moments from everyday life in them.

I hadn't heard of the hiatused Kiwi Blitz though, I'll have to check it out!

[Linebyline]

Re. the weird mascot:

Spoiler: show

It's got to be a mouth, right? I mean, it has the lower lip pretty clearly defined.

Unless... it's a nose, and what I'm reading as the line under the lip is supposed to be the mouth.

Side note: Emmy is updating again. Yesterday's update came with this explanation:

Hey everyone, in case you were wondering why I took a break from updating the comic here for a while, please check my instagram and twitter to see where I explained the current situation.
But I wanted to let my readers on here know that the comic's story will still be updated here and instagram after Patreon, which will also have more exclusive comics! I'm sorry for any confusion!

[Keep Looking]

Does anyone want to take March for comic of the month? I'd be happy to take it if nobody else does

[Jitter]

Keep, please go ahead!

[Keep Looking]

Alrighty! My comic of the month for March is:

The Witch Door
By Anni K

After burned-out nurse Katariina is forced to take leave from her job due to bullying by her coworkers, she accidentally befriends her neighbour Jousia. Jousia is a witch who can speak to the dead, and visit other witches through the "witch door" in his apartment. As Katariina meets Jousia's friends and clients she gradually forges new connections and gains more confidence in herself. However, greater schemes are afoot in witch society that threaten the magical library of Lintukoto and its keepers, and soon Jousia finds himself becoming involved.

The Witch Door is a story about friendship, human connections and modern magic. While there's a broader overarching plot, many chapters are slice-of-life focusing on one of Jousia's friends or clients and Katariina's involvement with them. The cast is diverse and interesting and in general it's an enjoyable and heartwarming webcomic.

The Witch Door currently updates every Wednesday.

Content warnings: workplace bullying and biphobia, mentions of sex (one of Jousia's clients is a sex worker), minor character death and general dealings with death and grief due to Jousia's powers.

[Jitter]

Ooh extremely interesting! Thank you Keep! I don’t (yet) know if it’s explicitly set in Finland, but clearly the author and the character names are Finnish. I will surely check it out!

[Keep Looking]

Yes, it's set in Finland!

[Jitter]

I love Witch Door!

Any takers for April?

[Jitter]

Ok, I’ll go. Sorry for not following up sooner.

My comic for April is Root and Branch by artist Pink.

Note! NSFW! See content description below.

Root and Branch follows Arianna,an elven druid in search of an ancient power to save her homeland. During her journey she finds ruins and other remains from elves long gone, but the lands are now inhabited by humans. Arianna is endlessly fascinated by the ways of humans, so often incomprehensible to her.

From the human point of view Arianna is in many ways naive to a fault, sometimes in a charming but sometimes infuriating way. She finds companions who help her along, but sometimes the patience of the companions is also getting tested. A lot. But when Arianna gets angry, which may happen if some bad people are bad to good people, the perpetrators don’t live to tell the tale. She’s delicate but not weak.

I like the fairytale feeling of it all, and I enjoy the watercolor(like) art, although the ears of the elves look like they would look disturbing if they were actual people and not art. Sometimes the story takes weird turns, as in something is just left in an unsatisfying (to me) manner, but on the other hand it also serves to illustrate how the elves are not human and don’t always think like humans.

It’s currently updating approximately weekly, but Pink has recently had a baby so it’s possible there may be some pauses. But there are almost 900 pages now, so a lot to go before updates become an issue.

Content description: The comic has several occasions of full frontal nudity in non- sexual context (elf maiden lounges in moonlight in the nudd). There is also so far one sex scene, which is not graphic but is the centerpiece of the page and there is no uncertainty about what is going on. Some scenes are quite violent and there is blood and occasionally serious injuries and death. It’s not violent as a whole, but it’s there. And there are some occasions where mushrooms are used for purposes that are not recommended to be tried at home.


https://www.rootandbranchcomic.com/comic/root-branch-a-journey/

[Keep Looking]

Just checking it out now, and I like the artstyle!