It’s the most wonderful time of the year! No, not Christmas, we’re talking about ShortBox Comics Fair. The brilliant small press publisher has created something unlike any other comics festival, releasing over 100+ digital comics that are only available during the month of October. There’s a fantastic array of creators with eclectic styles, stories, and sensibilities making it a true smorgasbord of sequential storytelling. Here at WWAC we’re huge fans of ShortBox and were very excited to dive into some of the fantastic comics and curate a list of our favorites.
Minnow Soup! by Felipe Ortiz
This gorgeously cozy comic sums up what ShortBox has always done best. It’s a beautiful, quiet, and moving piece of work that centers on Clove’s quest to get the ingredients to make her grandmother her healing Minnow Soup. Sweetly rendered in a blue, yellow, and orange palette, this is a warming story about home, love, and the power of a nourishing meal. Ortiz crafts a world that you want to spend time in and in just sixteen pages makes you care about the two characters at its core. Though this comic is short, you’ll get a lot of joy out of rereading it again and again to revisit the dew-covered forest and steaming pots that fill its pages.
ShortBox has published some of my favorite ever food comics and this quickly joins that list. If you’re looking for a read that will wrap you up like a sumptuous hug and fulfill your cozy comic book needs then make sure that this one is on your ShortBox Comics Fair list.
— Rosie Knight
The Future Saints by Niv Sekar
You know those strange childhood memories, the fuzzy ones that somehow feel both vivid and vague? I have some: movie scenes that impacted me heavily but in unexpected ways or simple moments that I shouldn’t remember and are now totally removed from context, but they’re just still there. Niv Sekar locks onto that kind of memory in The Future Saints, in which an adult queer person latches onto the memory of a children’s TV show that was, at least to them, “kinda gay.” But was it gay just for a moment, or not at all because it was actually quite religious? Was it just hope? Were they searching for a familiar or curious feeling so strongly that they imagined it instead? Using just blue, black and white Sekar walks through this moment of reinvigorated obsession, allowing us to project our own colorful ideas on what this show could have meant to a young queer child. As a librarian I love this kind of story, because we talk so much about finding mirrors of ourselves in media, but we can’t always predict where we’ll find those mirrors, and how a small moment can provide such a brilliant or terrifying realization.
— Alenka Figa
Pickled Onions by Blue Delliquanti
I loved Blue Delliquanti’s webcomic (now book!) O Human Star but this short zine is a very different offering. Through narrow lettering, soft reds and oranges and specific, instructive images — the sole of shoe being glued back on, a pot steaming on a stovetop, a needle piercing a thigh — Delliquanti moves the reader through a neat, orderly list about how to complete useful tasks. When that narrow script appears in red instead of black, they also recount childhood traumas, problematic relationships and self-hatred manifesting as a lot of rough, negative self-talk. Delliquanti delivers awful truth in-between simple instruction, pushing the reader to simply look, take in these small moments both bad and difficult, and then continue onto the next step. On the surface this zine feels like a light-weight read, but it delivers an incredible amount of complex emotions about a young trans person weighed down with trauma. Easy on the eyes but not on the heart.
Light Through Memory by Jean Wei
Jean Wei’s Light Through Memory introduces two young star gazers in two different parts of the world long ago, connected by their night time discovery. In an age of marvel and curiosity, these two young young adults stand out as individuals to follow just like in any of my favorite coming of age stories. While reading I was really struck by how ancient, pre-telescope astronomy looked and evolved in the world of old. Wei’s intentional way of using her black and white artwork to link together her two young stargazers on the same page witnessing an incredible nighttime event serves as an endearing and wondrous read.
This is the comic you buy this year for an accessible yet hopeful story for those who like historical fiction. Light Through Memory is the comic you buy to remind yourself that we are all connected to each other through world events and some memories–more than others, are worth cherishing through the ages. Fun fact: Wei is the artist who did the initial branding for the ShortBox Comics Fair, and has been doing the posters for the past few years! This year is her final year so I am happy to give her flowers as I’ve always loved her posters and her artwork featured on them! Cheers, Wei! Thank you for your work!
— Carrie McClain
My Unhinged Food Diary by Shazleen Khan
Shazleen Khan was one of those names that I looked for first in the ShortBox Comics Fair as I have been reading their amazing coming of age webcomic BUUZA!!–where a misdialed number leads to an unexpected, long distance romance–for years now. Whatever Khan was giving to the Fair this year, I knew that I would buy it! Their entry this year is the compilation of their auto-bio comics. My Unhinged Food Diary opens with content warning and begins with Khan’s childhood, focusing on the fraughtness of certain foods they were unable to eat. These comics are an intimate look on the necessity of food wrapped around childhood comforts and complicated yet valid cultural and religious reverences from the author’s past.
As readers follow the author’s growing up and traveling, the comic blossoms into discovery after discovery–some good and others terrible, with a sort of horror present within the pages. Did I think back on childhood experiences where I hated a certain dish for years after? Yes. Did I internally interrogate the trust that I had with certain loved ones in the kitchen whose cooking I adored? Yes. Yet by the end of My Unhinged Food Diary, as a reader–I felt at peace. I love that through the years and over a few times moving around, Khan also finds their peace and relearns joy through food: eating, preparing, experimenting and sharing with loved ones. This is the comic you buy this year for a layered, colorful, meaningful work on a creative’s experiences with food and how they navigated the world then and now, with more agency.
— Carrie
Special Delivery by Danielle Harmon
In the Romance category of the ShortBox Comics Fair’s website this month you can find Special Delivery: a short, black and white comic with a synopsis of: “After moving to a new place, Emery has a strange encounter with the local delivery man.” Danielle Harmon’s work features a young woman who, after being all moved in, notices she could use a few more pieces of decor to complete her place. Her curiosity ramps up the action as she buys a doorbell camera but can never catch the delivery person on screen. I had so much fun reading along to see not just who was making the deliveries but if the two would ever meet! No one told what a delightful and fun meet cute this comic truly is! If you’re looking for a wholesome and very cute comic with the rom-com vibes for spooky Szn (with fun worldbuilding on deck), this is the comic you buy this year!
Carrie
Every Night I Dream of the Devil by Sam Wade
So far, from my first wave of purchases from this year’s ShortBox Comics Fair, Every Night I Dream of the Devil by Sam Wade has been my favorite horror comic. Wade’s colored comic is intense and full of all types of body horror imagery that speaks to the isolating and also confusing floodgate of feelings and changes that come with pregnancy. The protagonist is hunted, clung to, loved on, and even abducted on pages that bring up themes of codependency, overconsumption, bonding and perhaps body dysmorphia as well. Every Night I Dream of the Devil is a harrowing read that moves along a narrative of how dreams influence our everyday lives colored by our emotions and real life experiences. If you’re looking for a read that challenges the idea that our bodies are our own and yet–are the perfect containers for new life and the unknown which can manifest in terrifying and compelling ways, this is the one to buy.
— Carrie McClain
OCEAN by Lucie Bryon
I just adored Thieves when I read it last year, so I was excited to see new work from Lucie Bryon! OCEAN is a breezy, chill story about super cool time traveling agents who find themselves stuck in a little French beach town for an indeterminate length of time. The characters are fun to follow and cute, and Bryon does a great job of creating a beachy atmosphere. There is also a very cute cat. Reading this comic really created a sense of peace, for me? I enjoyed it a lot.
— Masha Zhdanova
Sofa King by Meg Selkey
I also want to shout out my friend Meg Selkey’s comic, because it’s really good. Sofa King manages to show all of the ups and downs of childhood in just 16 pages, which is super impressive. It follows Krishna, trying to do a dance to a Cheetah Girls’ song at a friend’s house in 2007 (what a throwback) and running into the friend’s older brother, who decides to try and talk to her. Selkey packs a lot of complex emotions into a small amount of space, and shows how kids are mean, and funny, and resilient all at the same time. And I think it’s awesome.
— Masha Zhdanova
Kanna Has Never Seen a Cat by C. R. Chua
In Heian period Japan, Lady Kanna leads a carefree but secluded life, writing poetry and playing with her beloved dogs. Animals are easier to understand than people (especially her distant father), or so Kanna thinks – until one wintry night when a mysterious “trickster spirit” invades her room. Of course, the irresistible title reveals the creature’s secret: Kanna Has Never Seen a Cat Before. C. R. Chau’s sweet, spirited comic follows Kanna as she bonds with her strange new companion, drawn alternately as a faceless black streak darting about Kanna’s chambers or an adorable, pointy-eared ink blot curled up on her lap. On their best days, cats are confounding even to the biggest, frizziest-haired cat lady you know, and Chau embraces the humor and chaos inherent in meeting one for the first time. After all, who’s to say that cats aren’t trickster spirits sent to test us?
— Kayleigh Hearn
It All Ends With Me by LaweyD
A captive princess. A wicked queen. A kindly servant. A foreboding castle. We know the players and the setting – at least, we think we do. But nothing is as it seems in the mesmerizing fairytale It All Ends With Me. At over 100 pages, LaweyD’s baroque fantasy is a spiky spiral into darkness and a must-read for fans of dark 90s shoujo manga and the works of Emily Carroll. A beautiful maiden grows up lonely and abused in an abandoned castle; she makes a bargain for freedom with her mysterious maid, but how far is she willing to go to get what she wants? I don’t dare say anymore, because like a half-glimpsed shadowy figure reflected in a mirror, It All Ends With Me should reveal its secrets to you in the dark of night.
— Kayleigh Hearn
Make sure to check out ShortBox Comics Fair now and find some new faves of your own!
