Graphic Novel Panels Novels & Stories

Moving something to the Resting Pages felt like a solemn, hopeful act. Maris, whose bold graphic novels often pulsed with vibrant energy, was drawn to a loose cover design slipped into the green folder. It was clearly meant for a zine – rough, energetic lines depicting a mango sliced cleanly in half. But only one half was filled with a riot of warm yellows, oranges, and reds. The other half remained starkly, deliberately blank. The vibrancy of the colored half made the emptiness beside it ache. Maris didn't try to color the blank half. Instead, using a fine-nibbed marker, she meticulously added tiny, intricate patterns along the cut edge of the *colored* half – seeds bursting, juice droplets

The details were stunning, so intricate and rich. Kiema gasped as she reached out a hand to trace the figures on the page. Lions, wolves, other big cats I couldn't name, dragons, rats or rodents, bears, tigers. Each was beautifully rendered. One of the pages was broken up into cells or frames. A man stood tall in the first frame. In the second, he appeared next to a tall spirit of some kind. The spirit joined with the man in the third frame. The man fell, his face distorted in agony as something pushed from his stomach. In the fifth frame, the man was partially beast, but his expression had changed from pain to pleasure. The last frame the man was gone, except for the shape of his eyes. The

But some of the humans rode on the backs of the werewolves, weapons in hand, as though they were allies. I took in a sharp breath when I saw the second panel. The humans became violent. A man stood over one of the wolves with his spear plunged into its chest and his foot on its head, looking victorious. The other wolves scattered and fled. If I closed my eyes for a second, I felt as though I could picture it. The third panel depicted the wolves, walking solemnly through the forest. They seemed to be following some sort of faint light. But I couldn’t make out what it was, because the next panel was torn to shreds.

"Wait, I have to show you something." Me, Fulvio, Esme and Valerie stand staring at each other in an awkward silence until Luka comes back with a pile of paper in his hands. Esme and Valerie seem to agree on this at least. They spring into action, helping Luka lay out his drawings on the kitchen table. Each page is divided into four or six panels. Figures leap across panels or interact within them. There are no speech bubbles. Luka points to one and Silvia moves around the table so she is behind him looking over his shoulder. There's a beautiful woman wearing an all black, tight-fitting all-in-one. She has long, dark hair and ...

Here a battle, figures with wings and figures with the elongated forms of shifted wolves, meeting in a sky full of fire. Here something that might have been a treaty, or might have been a failed treaty, two lines of figures facing each other across a space that was clearly meant to represent distance. Here something domestic, smaller and more detailed than the rest — figures in interiors, the specific engravings of a daily life rendered in careful stone. I stopped at one panel and stood looking at it for a long time. It showed a figure that could have been male or female, their form caught mid-shift between two shapes simultaneously, wings half-emerged and a wolf's jaw visible in a face that