Graphic Novel Panels Novels & Stories

Not even a single try. “What does it say?” I asked, brows furrowing as I rubbed both of my palms to create warmth. The cold had been much cruel today ever since we arrived at the healer’s cabin. I encouraged myself to look at the drawings instead; the art style is pretty much gothic, if not ancient. It wasn’t inked. Hues of black and white were embedded on the golden brown pages of the material. I saw the graphics of a human and a werewolf. They were doing something strange… some sort of a ritual. Elliot did not flip the pages further so I ended up guessing that that was it.

“I’m looking forward to studying you very closely, Juniper Sinclair. Lay you out over my lap like a good book. Trace my fingertips all along so I can follow your story.” I pretend I’m not blushing, turning my attention back to the engravings as he steps close. Both of us fall silent, our teasing fading away. Anton stands at my side, both of us studying the panel before us. Which is…very unique. Mostly because…Life isn’t in it very much at all. I cock my head to the side, my eyes moving over the three moons at the top of the panel – references, obviously, to this world and the celestial bodies that are almost always visible in the dark sky.

The First Hybrid's cycle, the return across generations to finish the original work, the power recurring in new forms at intervals the murals indicate with astronomical events, the cycle visible in the pattern of the recurring figure across what appears to be several centuries of painted narrative. The most recent panel is fresh. The paint on it carries none of the age that the earlier panels show, the pigment not yet fully settled into the stone, the rendering detailed and specific and depicting a figure that Lior stops in front of and does not immediately move past. The figure is Lucian.

Hair products were on the nightstand, while notebooks covered another table. His eye was drawn to a colorful drawing. As he approached the table, he saw that the notebook was full of drawings. Not just drawings—some kind of graphic novel? He began to flip through the notebook. He was hardly some graphic novel enthusiast—he hadn’t read a comic since he’d been a kid—but he could see talent in the drawings. The strokes of the pencil, the light and shadow, it all seemed to reflect Thea as a person. When he came to one passage, he even chuckled at the dialogue.

The studio smelled of ozone and turpentine. It was a scent that didn't exist in nature, a collision of the organic and the digital. Hope Vale-Cross stood in the center of the room, surrounded by twelve wooden panels. They were heavy. Real. They took up space in the physical world, demanding to be walked around, demanding to be touched (though the signs would say Do Not Touch). She called the series The Weight of Light. Each panel was a study in transparency. Layers of resin poured over photographs, metal shavings, and acrylic washes. She had trapped moments in amber—Ethan’s shadow on the pavement, the curve of her mother’s neck, the jagged line of the city skyline at dusk.

My eyes were enormous circles with jagged lines coming out—lightning, maybe. Underneath, in Rowan’s careful, wobbly handwriting: THE KERSED LUNA. The second panel had a moon with angry eyebrows and what I thought might be teeth. A tiny figure (me, presumably) stood under it, frowning. Panel three showed a blob with too many arms, and what I assumed was Malric’s crown, being bitten by a smaller blob with pointy teeth. Panel four was just me again, this time with a wolf tail and a baby in my arms, the angry moon now… smiling? Or having a stroke. It's hard to say.

The human figure was shown in a cage. Ethan was trembling against her, but not from pain. He was humming, a low, resonating note that seemed to vibrate in Tess’s teeth. “It’s a lament,” he whispered. “A song of betrayal.” The final panels were the largest, taking up the entire back wall. They showed the human figure again, but changed. It was merging with a magnificent wolf with lines carved to suggest a white, glowing pelt. The White Wolf. It stood over the cave entrance, howling. And from its mouth flowed not sound, but lines that connected to the hearts of all the wolves around it, pacifying them, uniting them.

Feared. Beautiful apparently. Very fucking beautiful according to how many times she described him. I scoffed quietly while turning another page. “Ridiculous.” But my eyes still kept reading every single word where she described the male lead’s hands, his voice, his stare, the way he entered rooms like he owned oxygen itself. That woman spent way too much time looking at me. If only she’d admit it out loud. The artistry though… fuck. It was incredible. The visual design alone could carry the entire thing and paired with the writing? I could suddenly understand why the internet lost their minds over it. Every panel carried emotion and Fabian’s drawn body was ridiculously accurate too which ho

I groan, half laughing, half horrified. I lean back and sweep my eyes across the rusted panels and sun-bleached stone walls. There’s graffiti everywhere and some drawn with actual effort, but most of it is chaotic and stupid. I catch a stick figure with fangs chasing a terrified chicken. I snicker. There’s also a jagged crown floating above a butt and one sketch that looks like a wolf got flattened by a truck. “You did all this?” I tilt my head at a particularly offensive mural featuring a throne, a sword, and what might be testicles.

“I believe it, because you’re amazing. And this business is going to be amazing, and our life together is going to be amazing. Amazing, amazing, amazing. That’s the only word I know.” “Actually, I don’t think that’s true.” He raised an eyebrow. “Really? You don’t think it’ll be amazing?” “Our life isn’t going to just be amazing together: it’s going to be fan-fucking-tastic.” Laughing, Ash picked her up and began to twirl her around in a circle, the remaining convention-goers looking on with a mixture of confusion and envy at such obvious happiness. Thea Younger uncapped her marker and began to fill in the final panel in her graphic novel. It had taken her over a year to finish this bad boy,