#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 ✌️)

#text #long post #excuse any typos I have been staring at this for too long #comic recommendations #book recommendations #beautiful darkness #flavor girls #Heaven no hell #birds of Maine #the book tour #eight lane runaways #coyote doggirl #afternoon at mcburgers #no one else

[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.

---

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.”

---

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

---

“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.”

---

In a few words: exhaustingly creative.

#will's media thoughts / virtual brain repository #comics #girl juice #heaven no hell #sticks angelica folk hero #michael deforge #long post

[eyes-of-nine]

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

#ahsjgdh i love the young xianle quartet sm they're almost barely not traumatized...kinda #they're very silly especially in retrospect #aaa i do also really want to draw young xie lian and mu qing but the idea of rendering that much gold detailing sounds like hell ywy #i'll do it but christ alive #my art #fanart #tgcf #tgcf fanart #tgcf spoilers #technically #also i haven't read past book 3 for now ywy #tian guan ci fu #heaven official's blessing #feng xin #hua cheng #...he gets one tag bc i'm not keeping track of all the aliases #every time i draw hc his hair gets worse and worse #my man has not seen a hairbrush in the past 800 or so years of his existence

[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.

#im my fanon Adam either goes to the hotel to get back to heaven for her or she kills herself to get to hell for him theyre toxic like that #vannahrt #hazbin hotel #sinner adam #adam hazbin hotel #lute hazbin hotel #adam x lute #do they have a ship name? #luteadam #adamlute #hazbinhotel #hazbin fanart #hazbin hotel fanart #guitarspear #sinner!adam

[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

#my art #ultrakill #gabriel ultrakill #i love angel pronoun lore #he earned those pronouns fair and square and now he gets to wear a he/him pin like the badges on military uniforms #of course he has blue wings and pronouns #also can you fuckin imagine being a virtue?? #imagine you live your entire life as a Good Christian(tm) and then u get to heaven and find out not only do u still have to work a 9 to 5 #you have to do it in hell #forever #man i’d be salty too #straka's shitposts #sketches

[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.)

#closed caption hell #closed caption Heaven

[yourangle-yuordevil]

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

#crowley #good omens #aziraphale #vines my beloved #Loved how Aziraphale got fun in hell while Crowley in heaven got MORE TRAUMA #give him some rest pLEaSe!! #Crowley colleziona traumi come fossero francobolli [cit.Sof] xD #good omens art

[mobius-m-mobius]

Oh, Crowley. Nothing lasts forever.

#aziraphale #crowley #michael sheen #david tennant #good omens #good omens 2 #well guess who finished s2 and will be ill for the foreseeable future WTF JUST HAPPENED😭😭 #never giffed so quick in my life lmfao gotta get some of this angst out or i'll implode #honestly understood what he meant bc they can't ignore heaven and hell but... sick and twisted twisted and sick!! #msheenedit #dtennantedit #good omens spoilers #goodomensedit #gos2spoilers #dianagifs

[iridium-daydream]

I think I figured out what makes a soul go to either Heaven or Hell!!

In the latest episode Welcome to Heaven, we see a moment during the trial where Charlie asks Adam what he thinks it takes to get into Heaven. And he doesn’t actually seem to know. He makes a list of what he thinks got him there, but when provided evidence of a demon doing the same thing, defaults you “then why isn’t he here?”.

We realize that NONE of Heaven actually knows what gets someone to Heaven, and the characters acknowledge that angels are free to be as sinful as they want, but they still get to stay.

Which got me thinking, yeah, how did Adam get into Heaven? He’s awful. Then it hit me: he’s there because he thinks he deserves to be. Think of the demons we know. Alastor, Angel, Husker, Cherri, Valentino. These are all people who have done wrong and they know it. If you were to ask them, I think they’d tell you they deserve to be in Hell.

Isn’t it strange? That we’ve never met a demon who thinks there’s been some mistake? That they deserve to be in Heaven and they shouldn’t be in Hell? Hell should be chock full of people like that, but it isn’t.

I think it’s because if you think you deserve to be in Heaven, that’s where you go. And if you think you deserve to go to Hell? That’s where you stay. It explains why Adam is an angel-despite being a horrible person, he’s completely self righteous, even saying “I’ve never made a mistake in my fucking life.” Of course he’d think he deserves to go to Heaven! It’s how Molly went to Heaven and Angel went to hell, despite them leading similar lives-she thought she should go there.

If this is the case, then all the good deeds in the world won’t redeem a sinner. The only thing that will is repairing them and their mental state enough that they truly feel they deserve better. And I’d be fascinated to see how that goes!

#hazbin hotel #hazbin hotel spoilers #Heaven #hell #angel dust

[sreegs]

You're interviewing as a software engineer and you sit down to begin a coding exercise via remote video chat. Your interviewer joins a minute late. You exchange light pleasantries, then intros. They ask you a few questions relevant to your experience and you answer them satisfactorily.

The interviewer says, "Right, lets move on to the coding exercise," and directs you to a collaborative coding website. You select your language of choice and they begin to describe your problem.

"You have an array of souls recently liberated from their mortal shell, represented by this array of signed floats called "theDead". You must design a function that determines which souls go to heaven and which souls go to hell,"

"Heaven and hell are empty. The cumulative value of all the souls in heaven and hell must both be nonzero, and exactly equal to each other. You may leave any number of souls in purgatory,"

"Your function must return a bool indicating whether the balance of heaven and hell can be met given the array of souls. The count of souls will be 0 < n < 1,000,000. Do you have any questions before you begin?"

#programming #hell #heaven #coding

[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✨

#i made this last year actually but its still pretty good i smile when i see it everytime #i planned on making more of this au but i got sucked into tma au hell and here i am #tgcf fanart #tgcf #beefleaf #shi qingxuan #he xuan #tgcf fairytale au #tgcf au #tian guan ci fu #heaven official's blessing #my art

[wolfythewitch]

I put your jesus art on my wall (/ω\)

(hope that's ok)

Heaven yeah that's definitely okay

#Starting a bit where whenever Jesus is involved I say heaven yeah instead of hell yeah #doing otherwise feels like heresy #wolfy tedtalks #wolfy religious tedtalks #lifegoalsofafish

[rookesbane]

Wherever she is, is where I’ll go.

#first post of 2024 let’s go~ #the twelveclara x orpheuseurydice agenda never stops!!! #twelveclara #whouffaldi #hadestown #orpheus x eurydice #doctor who #twelfth doctor #clara oswald #dw #dwedit #dwgifs #timelordgifs #face the raven #heaven sent #hell bent #dw series 9 #jenna coleman #peter capaldi #mine #*mine: edits

[crowzirawho]

Heaven: Wow, Aziraphale, I am impressed. It's a miracle how your Absolute Worst Enemy, the demon Crowley, has not noticed you for 6000 years.

Hell: so do you guys fuck or what

#good omens #pre apocalypse #based on gabriel in s1e1 #and compared to the 1941 minisode #i think its funny #aziraphale #crowley #aziracrow #ineffable husbands #heaven #hell #gabriel #shax #furfur

[illustratus]

Chaos watches as the Rebel Angels are thrown into Hell (Milton's Paradise Lost)

by Gustave Doré

#gustave doré #art #paradise lost #john milton #chaos #fallen angel #fallen angels #war #battle #heaven #paradise #hell #lucifer #satan #angel #angels #demons #christianity #christian #religion #religious art #crown #sceptre #fall #fallen #rebellion #armour #shield #bible #biblical

[dalliancekay]

Innocents

In S2 we got to see Crowley before everything that happened to him

and Gabriel after everything that happened to him was put away in a container

What does this show us? How the systems hurt them both? That both, angels and demons could be much happier if they weren't bound to their weird, horrible, damaging, bullying homes/workplaces?

And how did Azi know there were certain things in place by then that better be not mentioned/poked.

What happened to the baby angel that he was a cautious, anxious little ball of fluff already?

#good omens #aziraphale #crowley #neil gaiman #good omens 2 #archangel gabriel #heaven #hell #before the beginning #aziracrow #kaypost