With Autumn and Spring quickly coming upon our world, it's time to turn over a new leaf and embrace change. This week's Fresh Friday Features is here to show us change can be constructive or destructive. These characters are taking control over their lives, but not all will end up changing for the better.
- Comic - Rose: A classic fantasy tale about a girl trying to restore balance to a broken world. Rose must connect with her Khat Thorne to become the Guardian her world needs.
- Graphic Novel - FOOBUN: A Rabbit stranded in the afterlife, begs to be returned to the real world to rejoin their friend Foo Bun. Our tale follows the duo as they try to resurrect Ghost Bun to their former glory.
- Manga - CENTRAL: Following the original "MANGA CENTRAL MAGAZINE" the manga circle CENTRAL enters collaboration with MEIDO WELL to produce a stunning magazine.
- Webcomic - Lideran: In the not-too-distant future, a medieval tabletop role-playing game called Lideran has become a world-famous program. Participants do their best to bet everything they have and risk total loss of their assets and aggressive indebtedness.
Rose, 477 pages - Published by Image Comics, (cc/ @GCpartnerships)
A classic fantasy tale about a girl trying to restore balance to a broken world. Rose must connect with her Khat Thorne to become the Guardian her world needs. But things aren 't easy for Rose and Thorne. The sorceress Drucilla has many powerful and demonic allies all of them focused on stopping one scared little girl who 's desperately trying to stay alive and do what 's right. Collects ROSE #1-6
Story and Art by Ig Guara and Meredith Finch
Absolutely loving the idea of Khats as beasts that influence the various kingdoms and cultures. Also super excited to see a villainess with absolutely zero filter and zero mercy! Complete badass and can we have more of that please?! I'm two chapters in and would love to have this on my own bookshelf!
FOOBUN, 29 pages - Published by FOO BUN, (cc/ @foobun)
A Fantasy Webtoon Comic but instead of humans all our main characters are animals. A Rabbit stranded in the afterlife, begs to be returned to the real world to rejoin their friend Foo Bun. Our tale follows the duo as they try to resurrect Ghost Bun to their former glory. Little do they know that their quest is being manipulated by someone with more ambitious intentions.
Story and Art by FOO BUN
A bittersweet comic about grief, loss, fighting for the ones you love, and the adventure that is life. This utilizes the vertical format incredibly well, but don't be fooled by the art style! There's lots of tense and nerve-wracking moments. One thing I really appreciated in this graphic novel was the slowing down from time to time to talk about death, the afterlife, as the main character is almost completely unable to communicate with the living other main character. A fascinating dynamic in a story and wonderfully done!
CENTRAL, 136 pages - Published by Central, (cc/ @CENTRAL)
A new start- Following the original "MANGA CENTRAL MAGAZINE" the manga circle CENTRAL enters collaboration with MEIDO WELL to produce a stunning magazine. With the three series Rosaline, Tales of a Thief and King and Truck Isekai.
Story and Art by Central
I am SO stoked to see a nice, quality indie manga magazine from an official Doujin Circle! The first story appears to be a directed to more of a shojosei audience focused on fashion, which is not common, so that's SO lovely to see! In my experience, it is rare in indie manga magazines in the west. The second is a parody of the isekai Truck-kun trope by a name I definitely recognize. I remember seeing this story elsewhere before. The last story is adorable and starts in color, nostalgia factor +10, and a nice story to boot! I'm excited to see this magazine carry a lot of variety in the stories within, and I'll be watching its development!
Lideran, 33 pages - Published by Daniel Limart, (cc/ @DanielLimart)
In the not-too-distant future, a medieval tabletop role-playing game called Lideran has become a world-famous program. Participants do their best to bet everything they have so that their characters achieve their goals and survive the sessions, but the consequences can be disastrous when the opposite side of the millionaire prizes and promises of fame is the total loss of their assets and aggressive indebtedness.
Story and Art by Daniel Limart
A fun spin on the "what if games affected out real life" theme. This one feels a bit different as it's not about "you lose, you die", it's "this game can bankrupt you and ruin your life". That's not something that I can personally recall in very many stories, so I'm excited to see how this plot develops over the coming chapters. It's explained clearly and there's some good stakes here to keep it interesting. Great work so far! I look forward to reading more!
That's all for now, but we'll have another set of Fresh Friday reading recommendations next week. You can also browse through our Featured Comics news section and add them to your Library for future reading!
Check out more amazing stuff from @ArtCrumbs below.
Did you get a chance to check out any of these fresh picks? If you enjoy any of these stories, don't forget to add them to your library, and share your thoughts in the comments below! You can also join our Discord server to talk with other readers and creators.