(courtesy Image Comics)
When you first come as a queer, in whatever fabulously diverse form that takes, one of the first questions that crosses your mind is “How on earth am I going to feel anything but alone?”
It’s an understandable question to ask after you’ve usually spent far too many years locked away in a true self-limiting closet, only emerging under a figurative cover of darkness and deathly afraid to be seen with others like you.
The feeling of elated freedom that courses through when you find your people is a joy unparalleled and it’s everywhere through the three collected volumes of Moonstruck by creators, writer Grace Ellis and artists Shae Beagle, and speaks buoyantly and exuberantly about how wonderful it is to be part of a community where everyone gets you and you don’t have to endlessly explain yourself.
The community in Moonstruck is different from the mainstream in a number of key ways, partly the sexual diversity of a lot of the characters but also the fact that the little college town of Blitheton where the graphic novel series is set, has all kinds of magically supernatural beings living check-by-jowl with ordinary human beings.
It’s a largely harmonious place, and to be honest, much of the discord and tension happens within the magical community where pixies trap people, rather illegally, in frat houses if they drink the beer and eat the food and sleazy underhanded magicians rob people of their supernatural-ness under the guide of escapist entertainment.
Thank goodness then for community and found family, right?
Well, mostly; among the three key characters of Moonstruck -shy, book-loving werewolf barista Julie, her BFF Chet, an hilarious non-binary centaur with personality to burn, and Julie’s wereworld girlfriend, Selena – harmony often reigns and it’s that supportive closeness that gives them the power and endurance to face all kinds of strange goings-on.
(courtesy Image Comics)
Or really, not so strange when Blitheton is your home and having friends like Cass, who experiences fairly intense and scarily accurate prophetic visions and frenemies like guitarist Gorgon Lindi or shapeshifter Mark, is pretty much par for the course.
While some of the adventures the gang get up to do lose narrative focus at times and feel a little shrill and underdone at times, and the relationship ups-and-downs of Julie and Selena are exhaustingly intense (just break up, already, please!), by and large Moonstruck is good for the soul and rather delightful entertainment because it stresses how much we need our friends in the queer space.
Sure, straight people need and love their friends too, but there’s an extra dimension when you’re LGBTQIA+ because the world is designed for heteronormative souls and while we’re adept at navigating it, it’s good to have a place and people who are happy if you are completely and wonderfully yourself.
What makes Moonstruck really sing in this regard is that it doesn’t pretend that the characters enjoy a perfect sense of community – they bicker and argue and lose it at each other and often forget they are, at the heart of everything, family.
But that’s good because in the real world, no matter how much you love your found family, fractures occur and misunderstandings arise; what matters, and this is all through Moonstruck is that you get back together again, hug and talk it out and celebrate your tight sense of supportive community.
With artwork that is technicolour cute and adorable with emotional heft and substance, and writing that mostly hits the mark, some of the wobbles noted above aside, Moonstruck is a sweet delight to read, a reminder that we need each other and that no matter what divides and sunders us at times, that we will always emerge okay if we remember all the good things come from being with each other.
The three volumes of Moonstruck are available from Image Comics.
(courtesy Image Comics)