isabelle melancon

Escapist fantasies are seductive in their power to take us away. Whatever mundane, excruciating chore you find yourself mired in, forget it. Imagine yourself in a fairy tale, where the fantastic and enchanting and eye-catching come to life. Or fashion yourself with some unshakable destiny, charted on a world-saving path that is only yours. In Megan Lavey-Heaton and Isabelle Melançon's Namesake, Emma Crewe gets both of those — she's plopped into a world of inter-stitched classic fairy tales (Alice in Wonderland, Wizard of Oz) to find herself expected to serve as a "Dorothy." Her fantastical escape might not be quite what she expected. ComicsAlliance spoke with Melançon and Lavey-Heaton about genre subversion, color choices, and the problem with "grimdark."

If three years of mandatory French classes in high school taught me anything, it's that learning a new language is not only incredibly hard; if you're not motivated, it's pretty much impossible. Thankfully, there might be a new way around that thanks to LingoZing, a new app that teaches readers new languages via comic books, which has launched a Kickstarter campaign today.

Words have power, and so do names. In Namesake, a fairy tale fantasy comic by Megan Lavey-Heaton and Isabelle Melancon, certain names have even more power; they can transport you to other worlds.