I wanna help you find new comics to read! I'll try anything that I don't have to read on webtoon or tapas and very much prefer things with smaller audiences. Do not send me Questionable Content, even as a joke. Main blog is Shinesurge!
Hi! I’m on this site on my main blog basically constantly so I’m always around even if this blog looks a bit slow! It takes me a while but I do read most everything I’m sent Eventually, so please feel free to recommend comics at any time.
This endeavor is meant to promote webcomics that might be Struggling in the current internet climate where bringing up the topic usually prompts responses like “oh do you mean a Webtoon lol” and “people stopped making new comics like ten years ago what the fuck are you talking about”. With that in mind, I’m mostly interested in helping people who are running their own websites (a comicfury site or tumblr blog is fine!) and who aren’t already pulling in ten thousand views every time they post anything. Additionally,
please don't recommend comics that are signed on with a publisher or already otherwise having their promotion handled for them (so, spiderforest is a-ok; hiveworks is generally Not). They are already getting professional publicity and don't need my help!*
- I encourage you to recommend your own comic!
- I encourage you to recommend your friends’ comics!
-Please send recs to the inbox! Linking to an existing post is fine too, but please don't tag me on other posts; it's more likely to get lost, and I'd really like to discourage folks habitually showing up to promo stuff without actually interacting with the blog. This project is about paying things forward and generating positivity in the community!
- It helps to tell me at least a little about what you’re sending, it’s not like NECESSARY but it makes it easier to navigate my list. Try to keep it under 250 words and no more than one image, just enough to entice people to check the site! It is also okay to send more than one thing at a time, or come back and send me something else later.
- Any genre or rating is okay! I will mark it accordingly if I decide to post it, and if you have any specific warning tags you’d like attached to it please let me know. Keeping any promo images mostly safe for work is encouraged but it's not a huge deal; if something's too much for the blog I'll let you know.
- If the comic is MIRRORED on webtoon or tapas that’s fine as long as I can read it somewhere else myself.
- This blog also sometimes features resources for comic authors to set up their own sites and things! You can find that under the “building a website” tag or the “comic help” tag; I also tag anything that isn’t a rec with “not a rec”
- I try to limit it, but I make a comic and read many of these myself so sometimes the same comic will appear here more than once. If you'd like to avoid that, you can filter out "reruns".
- My name is Aria and you can use any pronouns to refer to me.
- read more fucking webcomics
*Are you going to message me to tell me how hiveworks doesn't actually do anything for their artists? You're not the first and you won't be the last! I hear from disgruntled HW artists a lot, y'all should really consider taking it to your publisher. That said, in light of Hiveworks potentially crumbling under their own incompetence, if you USED to be on Hiveworks and have since jumped ship, I'm happy to rec your new site once it's rebuilt without the branding. However, I'd really prefer for the artist to send in the comic themself; there are a lot of bad feelings between myself and that crowd that I'm unaware of, and I don't want to assume anyone is cool with me promoting their stuff here unless I hear it directly from them lmao
Can you believe it's been two years since the first comic posted on the Dust n' Dread website? I certainly don't!
The past two years has been an absolute blast working on this comic…
excited to see what the next two years have in store!
If you're interested in reading Dust n' Dread, it can all be read here! Make sure to check the Patreon as well for early comic updates and concept work (and maybe even a sensual image or two...). Free members get updates a week in advance!
Hello welcome to my new comic! I have a few things to tell, if you want to peek under read more!
This will be a long one! Not (hopefully, knocks on wood) as long as Bus was, but around 300 pages or more. Schedule for posting is up in the air a little bit, I try to post weekly chapters, but they might go for biweekly.
I've listed most obvious triggers in "about the comic" page, but this one will skiddle around some heavier subjects. I'm not going to talk about them exclusively, as I don't think I can properly, but they will be there.
Plant is a non-chronological comic! It will all make sense, eventually, just buckle up!
hey guys it's time for me to shill for ComicFury again
ever think Man, I want to support artists but I can't afford to be on 60 different Patreons and fifty separate ko-fi subs?
well, you can support ComicFury at Patreon or Kofi instead and through a single donation support the actual hundreds of comic artists hosting there!
ComicFury is one of the only old school webcomic hosting sites still active, with seventeen years of putting its actual community of artists first, including such rarities as a no-ai policy and an active healthy forum with fair and clear moderation.
It's grown a lot in the past year and so needs have grown alongside it, so here I am doing the PBS Style donation drive post, lmao.
Here's Kyo's forum post about it since he's got a fairly concise explanation of what he's hoping to do from here (he didn't ask me to make this post, you can see me on page 4 saying I'll make it unsolicited).
Keep in mind this ask is only if you're in a position to support artists and have been wanting to, but ComicFury has been my comics home for years now and I'd like to see it continue to thrive, especially in the current environment of exploitation, censorship, and other abuse webcomickers have to deal with on other platforms. (because guess what, you can show violence and/or tiddy AND swear all you want on ComicFury as long as you properly rate your comic for it.)
creating Free Webcomic Hosting
Support ComicFury
Obviously Tumblr isn't going to let me blaze this post because it never does, lmao, so reblogs are appreciated!
Here is your yearly reminder that the creator of "Cirque Royale" is black and, even though they aren't human, many of the characters are black coded. ✌🏾
Want to read more webcomics?
What about using tags to find one JUST for you?
Find your NEW FAVOURITE webcomic to read!
WEBSITE
Are you a webcomicker yourself? Submit your comic to the catalogue!
SUBMIT YOUR COMIC
A lot of folks were wondering after the Hive open letter where to check out webcomics! Well, my peers @luckbat (The Automans Daughter) @lumalilac (Webcomic Library) and I have you covered!
Check out hundreds of comics all catalogued by genre, tags, formats, and update schedules HERE!
We wanted to make a more up to date catalogue of every webcomic too, and having the authors submit them makes it more accurate! So if you make webcomics, please submit to the catalogue (and make sure you have an RSS feed ready! ;) )
It's been a long ten years and I finally get to talk publicly about what happened behind closed doors.
Please take the time to read this letter linked above and please avoid working with these people. You are more valuable than an opportunity for people like them to use you as cash cow for your work.
Three years ago, I was approached by many artists at Hiveworks asking if their mistreatment was normal. That their feelings of horrible self worth within the company was really just a 'them' problem.
Turns out, it was unfortunately normal in that we ALL felt that way.
Stolen funds, reworked projects without permission, favouritism, opportunity sabotage- These were the common occruances over at Hive. Artists felt used, ignored, and walked all over to pay Hives bills and ego. People didn't know what to do.
I helped co-found the guild in response to so many artists feeling this way, and we slowly gathered together to make a better Hive. Yeah, that's right- we thought we could help change and save the company if we all colaborated, hurt set aside and transparency deeply needed.
Unfortunately, that wasn't in the cards. We spent 3 years going back and forth with staff to understand the debt, the mistreatment, the empty promises only to realise that the staff who was left to deal with the mess (because the CEO and COO went hands off or left) couldn't fix what was destroyed.
Hiveworks was supposed to be a beacon for webcomickers. It was supposed to be an indie opportunity to flourish in the small ways we can. But it became yet another example of a greedy publisher who saw an opportunity to take and take and take.
It was also a vanity project for Isa and Xel too. They wanted the prestige of working in 'publishing' but didn't care a lick about the artists who brought readers in. If you were someone she thought was an artistic threat, Isa would go out of her way to humble you and put you in your place.
That happened Many MANY times to me and my fellow creators. Not only was Hive using our work, it also would remind us how worthless we were in the same breath. Everything felt like some sort of competition, and Isa and Xel made sure artists didn't talk to ecahother about it too. So many instances of the two of them going around gossiping in public about 'the real story' when it came to their mismanagment and inability to handle their job. They would use someone else as a scape goat and pretend they did all they could. It was highschool stuff.
As for my particular case, I was the bane of their existance apparently. I was rumoured to be out for Isas job because artists would go to me for support and she hated that. I was apparently trying to ruin things because I saw those cracks.
Squeaky wheel and all that. I took the risks I did, i didn't care about being 'everyone's friend' or missed out on 'the connections' because I didn't want to play that game. Artists were feeling used, stolen from, and neglected. I spoke up, and many others started to feel safe to do so too.
The more we shared stories (and man, there are HORROR stories) the more we realised that the inner workings of Hive were more tangled than we thought. Our years of organising lead us to approach the cartoonist co-op for extra help. We tried our best to do what we could for Hive to survive.
After we were hit with the 'actually we're in a quarter of a million in debt' and they wanted us to help financially (while owing artists and staff money) it was the curtain call for Hive as a company.
Isa left the sinking ship previously to avoid responsibility, and Xel ghosted the rest of us.
All of this is to say that these kinds of people who promise the world with your work and take advantage are such a common and frustrating thing in not only comics, but all creative avenues.
And speaking up and against them is the only way to make these cycles stop.
Please support the artists who were affected by this. Please spread the word and speak up against people who use artists like this. Hiveworks is an example in a sea of greedy people who want our work to inflate their ego.
Don't let them forget we can bite back, and without us, THEY are nothing.
For anyone who is curious why I bailed out of Hiveworks, please read this.
My particular experience is pretty mild comparatively, but it mattered very much to me, and I hold grudges. I'll put this under a cut because it's long.
I joined Hiveworks in early 2015. I was pretty excited! It was the first time I'd ever felt remotely validated as an artist among my peers. I'm generally shy, and my art is something I've been conditioned into keeping to myself, so I'd never had much confidence or luck in finding a community of other artists. Hiveworks built my website, I moved off of Smackjeeves, great. The terms of my contract with them, among other things, were that they'd invest $2k into promoting the comic. I have no way of validating if they did this. I doubt it, given the only way this could've possibly been done was through running ads on other comics, and $2k seems like an awful lot. I think this was before they had a relationship with Flight Rising. It almost doesn't matter now; they will not have records of this. They don't even know how much they owe artists and vendors now.
The other major part of my contract was that I would get a certain amount of revenue from ads run on my site:
Firstly, in retrospect, the fucking nerve of them to suggest that income from my Patreon (something they have never, ever had anything to do with) be taken into account as far as how much they'd pay me. Xel has continued this attitude, by the way, as if she was doing us a favor by not taking a portion of Patreon income from artists.
What I actually received from Hiveworks varied over the years. If I remember correctly, it varied from month to month for a while before becoming a flat $100/month, which then halved to $50/month in early 2020ish with no explanation. I never hit anywhere near $1k, lol. I also never once saw any documentation for how the ads on my site were actually doing, despite asking for it towards the end of my stint with Hiveworks (more on that later), so I have absolutely zero idea if they were paying me anywhere near the right amount at any point.
After I was onboarded, that was pretty much it as far as communication with Hiveworks aside from payments and the stray email; there were newsletters much later on. I held up my end of the contract even after it expired in 2016 (!) and I never saw a renewal (more on THAT later)--my job was to update at least once a week excepting for sudden sickness or pre-arranged hiatus and to not post WN anywhere else besides my own site and Patreon. I've had to turn down offers for translation and serialization in a magazine due to this last thing.
I think there were a few different group chats for Hiveworks artists and staff over the years; I was in a Slack briefly, but I seem to remember it being very quiet. I had to ask for an invitation for the Discord after finding out it existed from the newsletter; Isa told me that she must have had the wrong username in for me, despite us having had DM'd each other for some reason in the past, and even then she could've just emailed me for the right username. Whatever, right.
The thing is, I got ghosted so many times by Hiveworks that I kinda felt like I wasn't really wanted. I didn't bug them about my contract expiring because I was legitimately worried they'd tell me they were going to cut me loose instead. Up until very recently I've been easily discouraged and very sensitive to rejection; I've spent too much of my life trying not to take up space in one way or another. Even then I was also aware that a lot of my confidence issues were probably me projecting, so I just kind of kept my feelings to myself. But it's also crazymaking, to keep perceiving that I'm being avoided while telling myself I'm just projecting.
In late 2019 Hiveworks sent out an email saying they were going to get everyone caught up on current contracts. This never happened. They also let us know that we were being assigned editors-slash-main points of contact at Hiveworks, and to expect a ~personalized~ message soon from that person. I never got that either; I finally asked who it was, and it was Isa.
To make something very, very clear: no one has ever, ever acted as an editor on White Noise. Hiveworks has never, ever had any input whatsoever on it. Isa never contacted me to talk about my comic; I'm not even really sure why she assigned herself to it, given I know for a fact it does not overlap with her interests very much. White Noise is, for better or worse, wholly written and drawn by me. I don't even have a beta reader. I want to stress this because Isa seems to really like getting to call herself an editor, and it personally irks me to think that anyone might remotely perceive that she had any hand in my comic.
In 2020-21 I was trying really hard to get older pages of White Noise up to print readiness, so I could do a print Kickstarter in 2021. People have been asking for this! I wanted to do it! So I emailed my Hiveworks point of contact for help:
You can see how long this process was. At this point, Isa DM'd me on Discord acting as though she'd been trying to message me the whole time but that her messages just weren't going through, or something. Like, an obviously flimsy excuse. I don't believe her; even if that was true, she could have just emailed me. Whatever.
Followup email I sent afterwards. Never got a response. Everything I am asking for here is stuff that other Hiveworks artists were being (selectively) provided (if Isa wanted to.) After this time my dayjob got super busy due to the pandemic and never really slowed down, and I just felt kind of defeated, so I didn't pursue it.
I also tried to get a storefront set up through Hivemill, by the way, and was ghosted after one email on that as well. Not by Isa, it was another staff member, and to be fair I should've followed up on it--but my window of having the extra bandwidth to deal with setup closed, and again, I just felt kind of defeated, so. Whatever! It's just, if you've ever wondered why I haven't managed a print version of WN or even a POD store, it's not for lack of trying.
I got invited into the Hiveworks Guild in 2023 just as I was hitting a wombo combo of extreme loss of confidence and what I didn't recognize at the time as bad burnout. I cannot thank the creators in the Guild enough for having me there; the knowledge that my experience was not unique helped me get a lot of confidence back in myself and my work.
It also made me angry. I got off really easy by being ghosted, actually. Other artists have had their Kickstarter funds stolen, withheld, used for other projects, ???, used for Xel's personal purchases. Some should have made more money on their Kickstarters, but Isa would purchase overly large book orders with the funds (and a lot of those are still in the warehouse, and creators are struggling to get their stock shipped to them, some overseas, some with no place to store them.) And I wasn't the only one who was made to feel less than by Isa, but with them it was down to her condescension in both inappropriate casual conversation and in 'editorial' meetings.
So I got involved in the Guild to, initially, try to get Hiveworks straightened out in its treatment of artists. I have an easier time getting angry on other people's behalf than mine anyway. I am now also a union steward at my day job and have 11 years administrative work experience, so NOW I know what I'm talking about when it comes to worker treatment and how long any kind of paperwork should take--experience I didn't have when I was a dumb 24yo just signing onto Hiveworks.
I ended up being one of the first Guild members to leave Hiveworks as a member in 2024. One of the things we tried to tackle first were the contracts, which were still not any closer to being up to date since the last time they were brought up in 2019. We were told continually that new contracts were 'in the works.' When a draft did finally appear--read to us, I shit you not, line by line by Isa in a Discord call that was supposed to serve as a 'town hall'--it was so absurdly unprofessional that it had to be discarded anyway. It does not take 5 years to draft a boilerplate contract; it does not take 5 months. It doesn't even have to take 5 weeks. You could have a workable draft in an afternoon if you had your priorities straight.
Another thing was pay transparency. We asked for Isa (who also did payroll) to send us any kind of reports on how our ads were doing each month, so we could, I don't know, correlate that to how much money we got at all. Isa complained that the data was too difficult to share that way. She once said that the data was in CSV format and that made it too hard. Anyone who is notionally familiar with Excel will know this is a fucking ridiculous thing to say. What I think this was really about is that 1) the books were actually a huge mess and I'm not sure Isa was ever paying anyone the correct amount and 2) if we were able to compare our pay vs ad performance, that would be really clear. Not for nothing, but part of my day job is to do payroll every two weeks for ~100 employees in under four hours. Isa was an admin with Hiveworks about as long as I've been at my current day job. She was either simply bad at her job or lying about it, or both.
Personally my last straw was when an email from Hiveworks came out in early 2024 that ad minimums (the amount each artist was guaranteed to get each month even if their ad revenue fell below it) would be discontinued. Not after a new contract was signed; just discontinued. Xel walked that back after the backlash, sort of, because then some people stopped getting paid anyway. I left by the end of January iirc.
I've stuck around the Guild since to help in whatever way I can. I wrote a guide that several comic artists have used to migrate their sites away from Hiveworks servers and am part of the Cartoonist Co-op, where I've helped with their action to assist more Hiveworks artists in leaving. Isa left Hiveworks and has seen no consequences for mismanaging the finances or Kickstarters as badly as she have. I don't know what her deal is.
As an aside, Chimera Comics Collective was indeed born out of the Hiveworks Guild, not as a response to Hiveworks discontinuing their publishing arm (that was after CCC's formation and they should've fucking done that years ago when their Kickstarter queue started to get so backed up due to mismanagement) but because we met and talked about what a) we wanted from Hiveworks in the first place, b) we'd miss if we left Hiveworks, and c) we could sustainably do, and a webring has thus far been the answer. Whether it will ever be anything besides that remains to be seen; we're all very tired, lol. But we can at least lift each other up in the meantime by linking to and promoting each other!
This is about what I have to say on this subject. There is SO much more, but so much of it isn't my story to tell. I'm very grateful to the Cartoonist Co-op and the Hiveworks Guild, and I'm glad I could do something useful to help out. Suffice it to say that if you think I'm being too mean about Isa and Xel...lol. I am not. I could get meaner.
A last note: 99% of the problems with Hiveworks are down to Isa and Xel. The rest of the staff have largely been lovely people who actually care quite a lot, and a lot of them have ALSO been going without pay. Many of them have left Hiveworks as well (no idea if they got their pay!), though I think there's a couple that are still sucked into the vortex because no one is being hired to replace them. Please be kind to them if you run across them. And I don't think I have to ask, because my readers are also largely wonderful people, but please don't harass anyone involved in this. Just do not, under any circumstances, trust Xellette Velamist or Isabelle Melançon with your work or your money.
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As you may know (and if you haven't, see recent pinned posts) the future of JL8 is in doubt due to my financial situation, so I'm having a sale in hopes of raising funds to continue. Think of it like a PBS pledge-drive. This comic can continue with support from Readers Like You.
50% off all mass-produced items with code SAVE50
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Visit yalestewart.bigcartel.com to purchase
Engagement is super appreciated, as it will help get this post in front of more folks.
A webcomic I picked up last year on a whim and wound up liking way more than I expected to is Copper Eyes. I read the summary and went in like, "Okay, this is probably going to be amatonormative slop, but," but man, it...was not that. BUT I've found it difficult to rec or discuss because I feel like all the things that I really liked about it are better experienced going in completely cold. Like the story spools out in a satisfying way, it's a treat.
Also if I had a nickel for every webcomic I've read where everyone except the protagonist takes a daily pill suppressing a fundamental part of the human experience I would have two nickels. Which isn't a lot but it's weird that it happened twice.
Thank you very much for reading part one of Silver & Iron!
This was a project to introduce my original characters, the context of the setting they exist in, and how they met.
I plan to post a lot more about them - sometimes as full comics, like this, sometimes just as snippets and jokes or individual illustrations - so if you enjoyed this comic and would be interested in knowing more, please do consider following this blog and sharing this comic with your friends! Thank you 🫰
My book is finally available today!! If this looks interesting, you can read some of it for free on my website. If it looks really interesting and you're feeling adventurous, the epub is cheap and you can get it from my ko-fi or from amazon! For the slightly less adventurous, maybe check out the reviews we got so far on Goodreads or Storygraph.
All the buying info for both the print and digital editions is under the cut, along with a text transcript of the synopsis!
First: I was asked to remind y'all you can request this one from your library, so here's me doing that!
The ISBNs for both covers are:
Variant cover (Phin and Ulrich): 979-8-9994625-0-3
Destination cover (Tower): 979-8-9994625-2-7
My distributor is Ingram and Sprawlworks is the publisher, if you need those too. If you know of any place that might be interested in working with me by carrying this and they need to get at me, you can direct them to the contact page on my author site!
For individuals, print copies are in my shop, and if you're in the US or the UK specifically you can also order a Destination or Variant edition direct from the distributor if you prefer (the only difference will be less cute packaging and no signature)! Despite the listing's confusing lack of cover images, both paperbacks are also available on the amazon page and through pretty much any bookseller in the Ingram network, but it'll be a bit more expensive in those places.
You can get the digital version of this book from:
My ko-fi shop and itch.io - DRM-free epubs!
The Kobo store and Amazon - Files automatically delivered to your account, and your device if you've got one! By the way, the Kobo file should be available through Overdrive too, so even if your library isn't interested in the print version for whatever reason you can still rent the epub that way with your library card.
Here's that text transcript for the back of the book:
In a world under the boot of its gods, Phineas Kidd is a heretic with a chip on her shoulder.
After her murder by the sun god, Phineas Kidd was resurrected as a commander- one who trades their soul for the ability to rewrite reality through sheer grit. Phineas uses it to punch things. Now grown and armed to the teeth with weaponized optimism, she sets out to catch the sun: an urban legend that will either help her liberate the world from the deities tearing it apart or destroy her in the process.
But first she'll need a ship, and a crew too.
When Phineas rolls into the desert outpost of Last Chance the only ship in sight belongs to Cold Hazard, the wizard terrorizing the town and its mining operation. Fortunately she also meets Ulrich, a perpetually irritable stage magician who only wants to kill her some of the time. With his pistols and her fists, it should be no trouble to climb the town's radio tower and deal with one crusty old dude.
...though, the things lurking in the depths below Last Chance might be more trouble than they or anyone else can handle.
Grist is the first novel in a humanist series about monsters who love each other, thriving in a world that wants them dead.
And hey, if you decide to give it a shot, please consider leaving a review or posting about it on social media! I'm all on my own out here, so visible reader interest really helps me out with those libraries and cute little book shops.
Thanks so much for being here for this! I hope it's a fun time! :D
Hey! I'm so glad I stumbled on this account, holy crap it's so hard to find webcomics that aren't on the corporate crapfest that is Webtoon! I want to rec my own comic FaerieTales too, you can read it on literally just about any platform BUT Webtoon and tapas because I will slut my work out just about anywhere but those two places, but my site is the one I promote the hardest: www.faerietales.net.
I'm not gonna go on my full "back when the Internet didn't suck" rant, but thank you for having this blog, seriously. It's so nice to see webcomics promoted with no platforms involved, the way things used to be.
Y'all can read it here! https://www.infernalium.net/
Happy to do it! I'm insanely distracted recently with my own work and it's certainly cut into my resource budget for promoting other stuff but this will always something I care deeply about; it's just as encouraging to me to hear that there are still other people who want this kind of thing.
hi, i'm sending a rec of my own comic Missed Connection! I'd say the genre is cyberpunk, historical science fiction and dramedy. Missed Connection follows a group of friends meeting at a goth club MORG having a stupid conversation that becomes more serious. I'm hosting it on my own website and comicfury. It updates every Friday :)
Here's the link to my actual promotional post: https://www.tumblr.com/eteroutsider/793796384292749312/finally-i-can-announce-my-one-shot-comic-missed?source=share
Hey nice!! Here's the website y'all, it's very old school I love it https://eteroutsider.neocities.org/missed_connection
hi there! i’d like to recommend my webcomic, rose of the world! the website is here: https://roseoftheworld.thecomicseries.com, and this is the blurb about it:
Rose of the World is a historical fantasy comic set in 15th century Bavaria, Germany. We follow the formidable Black Knight, the once feared right hand of Satan, as they live their new life serving one of the Dukes of Bavaria. As they slay monsters plaguing the towns of Bavaria, a troubling discovery regarding the fate of the world is made. Compelled by destiny, the Knight is sent on a perilous quest to bring order to the realm—but who’s really pulling the strings?
This story will explore themes of womanhood, identity, grief, and moving on with one’s life.
