Tara Marie

Curses. Ghosts. Aliens. Magic. Revenge. Spaceships. What more could you want from a story? Welcome to the world of Ava's Demon, a webcomic about life, love and secrets under an oppressive regime, from cartoonist Michelle Czajkowski.

EmCarroll.com is an oft-updated website collecting the various comics of horror storyteller Emily Carroll. Some are quick illustrations, as nasty as a bad dream, and others are longer works designed to crawl under your skin and live there, and fester. All of them will haunt you for days.

Comics and music go hand in hand, and there’s nothing quite like putting on that perfect playlist, sitting down with a good story, and getting lost for a while. We’ve tasked our best writers with crafting the ultimate mixtape to compliment their favorite comics, to hopefully introduce you to comics you might not have tried and artists you might not have heard. Magdalene Visaggio, Eryk Donovan, Claudia Aguirre and Zakk Saam's new series Quantum Teens Are Go is the story of two punks in love as they attempt to build a time machine. While making this mixtape, I wanted to capture that technopunk spirit; something that would match the world that Nat and Sumesh live in; something that would match their relationship to it, and also their relationship to each other.

The Archie comics were created to be a beautiful slice of old-school Americana, as homey as apple pie. But just like apple pie, people eventually found a dirtier way to enjoy them. The erotic comic series Cherry Poptart was created by cartoonist Larry Weitz in 1982 in a very conscious emulation of the style of Dan DeCarlo, the artist whose work set the standard for the Archie comics line. Cherry became a sort of XXX porn parody version; if you grew up lusting after Betty and Veronica, you could turn to these pages to see characters very like them having sex with each other.

Oh Joy Sex Toy began in 2013 with a simple comic reviewing one of the most popular sex toys out there -- the Magic Wand Original, a vibrator of much renown. From there, the comic has spiraled out to cover every subject related to sex in a joyful, informative, and very funny manner.

Comics are too expensive, and run for too long, and are basically evil super operas that cost a dollar for every half second we read them. You can't miss an issue, or else you're out of the loop for it all, but that also means that almost nothing happens in each comic, so you might as well wait for the graphic novel collection, but oh wait, if you do that it increases the odds of the comic being cancelled! Comics are great, but also completely broken. That's where Fell should have come in.

Quantum Teens Are Go is Magdalene Visaggio's follow-up to her breakout Black Mask Studios hit Kim & Kim, with Constantine: The Hellblazer artist Eryk Donovan. It's a teen drama, a sci-fi story, an action adventure --- just every cool genre thrown together into an entirely awesome, bright kinetic comic! With the series premiering next month, ComicsAlliance sat down with Visaggio and Donovan to discuss the past, present, and future of Quantum Teens are Go.

Up and Out is a webcomic that started in 2013, but has evolved and changed focus over the past three years. Starting as a one-off gag comic, it soon became a (still very funny) autobiographical diary of sorts, documenting the writer’s transition. In either form, it’s a great comic.

Brian K. Vaughan and Cliff Chiang's Paper Girls is a story about friendship, sisterhood, and the weirdest time traveling and logic bending experiences since Lost. Except, unlike Lost, Paper Girls actually holds up, and it manages to pass the Bechdel test!

Picture it: your sitting by the fire, flipping through an old issue of Sandman, and your mother audibly sighs. "Why do you still read that junk?" You sit and think for a second. Despite the fact that approximately all of the movies coming out are based on comics, you still can't get your mom to understand why you love these funny books. Until now. This holiday season, give your mom a gift that'll teach her the love of comics.