This graphic novel was read at Kalimna, Yeranda Cottages, August 2026
The power of human connection is a recurrent theme in human storytelling for one very good reason.
While we are very much individuals and should always be firstly defined by who we are alone, it’s an undeniable truth that we need to be closely connected to other people to truly know who we are and what our place in the world looks like.
We are, as a wise writer once said, not an island and that becomes graphically and movingly clear in Strange Bedfellows by Australian writer and artist Ariel Slamet Ries which takes us to a slowly terraforming alien planet where humanity has settled after many of the surviving populace fled a barren though still peopled Earth.
The graphic novel’s back cover blurb describes the planet, which the human settlers share in what looks to be harmonious collaborative endeavour with the indigenous Nabopu population, as humanity’s “last-ditch effort at Utopia” and from the looks of the author’s luminously evocative and paradisiacal artwork, that is precisely what has been achieved.
The planet, destroyed during a blistering assault by an ancient military power, is being slowly transformed into a second Earth, the plants and animals of various biospheres such as desert, forest and savannah being resuscitated in forms you suspect long from their original planetary home.
There is nothing about this utopia that doesn’t look sublimely perfect but that is cold comfort to Oberon Afolayan, the protagonist of Strange Bedfellows, a young trans man from warm and loving biracial family who has recently suffered a breakdown which saw him suspend his university studies and break up with his boyfriend.
He is in a dark and sad place, and if that isn’t enough of an existential burden to bear, he has developed superhuman powers, common to the young people of this beautiful new world, which see his dreams coming to fully-formed 3D life and causing all kinds of havoc.
He dreads being reported to the Ghost Authority – these augmented humans are called “ghosts” and surveilled all through their life to ensure their gifts are a boon and not a curse to the rest of society – and so, burdened by his new powers and lost and purposeless, he has withdrawn from most forms of human connection.
(courtesy official Ariel Slamet Ries site)
His only form of contact is with a manifestation of his devastatingly good looking and annoyingly charming high school crush, Kon, who appears when Oberon’s powers flare and who commits himself to helping his old high school friend and aborted boyfriend come to peace with his new self.
What makes virtual Kon such a trip for Oberon is that the real Kon disappeared off the face of the planet some three years earlier, ostensibly moving to a remote and rural region, but honestly, no one knows what really happened and It makes his reappearance in Oberon’s head, and of course, manifested as a flesh and blood being people can see (remember Oberons’s dreams become real in his waking hours as the previous night’s mental meanderings find solid form) the weirdest part possibly of everything that’s happening to Oberon.
Funny and heartfelt and awash in art that is so beautifully colourful and alive with world-building vivacity that you could fall right into it, Strange Bedfellows is at once a deep and meaningful adventure into the “what comes next?” territory and a touching exploration of what it means to truly connect to someone even if they may not be real (and here’s hoping he is real because the romance that develops is a buoyant, chemistry-resplendent joy).
Or maybe they are; Oberon is still figuring out how real his dream manifestations are, though early indications are they have the ability to inflict real damage and make substantial impact in the real world so who’s to say that manifested Kon isn’t as real as Oberon wants and needs him to be.
It’s a mystery that Oberon needs to solve and he does in ways that will absolutely take your heart right along it and remind you of how powerful it can be when you lay your soul bare, truly connect with someone else and finally get to know yourself, not just who you are in isolation but in connection with others.
Strange Bedfellows is an immersively blissful queer-rich journey into the burdens and joys of being human and, bolstered by enthrallingly gorgeous artwork which beautifully evokes an otherworldly and yet very familiar time and place, how being known by others is not something to be shunned but embraced because in being known intimately by someone, we come to know our diverse and glorious selves far better too.
Strange Bedfellows is out from HarperAlley
(courtesy official Ariel Slamet Ries site)