One of the greatest moments of any comic convention is turning a corner and bumping into the person who created something you love. That jaw-dropping moment where you blink and say: “It’s you! You made that awesome thing! And you’re right here!” And that’s exactly what happened at San Diego Comic-Con when I dodged a crowd of cosplayers and came face to face with Aaron Alexovich, creator of the webcomic Serenity Rose.
If you’re not reading this comic already, you absolutely should. Don’t worry, I’ve got links.
Serenity Rose tells 
the story of Sera, a young woman with magical skills so powerful she could easily take over a small country, if she wanted to. Unfortunately she’s also dealing with crippling social phobia and really just wants everyone to leave her alone.
We get to see tidbits of her past here and there, events that caused her to be viewed as both a powerful witch and something of a circus freak. She froze over most of Lake Michigan when her mother died, and after her father passed away there was an incident with a school bus that landed her in court-appointed therapy sessions.
It’s from these sessions that the comic book itself comes from: her therapist told her journals could help with “working through the negativity,” but since Sera thinks diaries are too girly, she’s making a comic instead. It starts out “Dear Diaries are Stupid…”
The first issue of Serenit
y Rose was released in print in 2003, but it had been a webcomic for a while before that. In ten years we’ve really seen Aaron’s artwork grow. Normally when I say “grow” I mean “starts out wobbly but ends up being pretty good.” In regards to Serenity Rose I mean “starts out awesome and ends up awesome in a completely different way.”
In the earliest issues, Aaron uses a stylized look for all his characters, with exaggerated features and an almost cartoonish feel. I say “almost” because it’s also very dark and sketchy. It’s disturbing in an endearing way. Reading it a decade later, I still love it just as much as when I first read it. The pages are wonderfully laid out, often times as smaller panels floating on top of a an elaborate background, with little asides scribbled in the margins by Sera. Looking at his pages has always been inspiring for me, as if the creativity of the artwork sparks off the creativity of the reader.
Ten years later and the characters have grown, and the artwork’s changed. Everything is still stylized and sketchy, but with slightly more realistic proportions. Everyone’s features have more depth to them, more shading. His art is still mostly black and white, but with more and more colored accents: Sera’s blue hair, Vicious Whisper’s hot pink ponytails, the gold in the hidden palace, or the yellow-green ectoplasm creatures in Sera’s nightmare cavern. The details are stunning; the pages that show the rock concert at the beginning of “Break Your Stupid Heart” have some of my favorite art in the entire series.
Aaron is also the writer, and the story is extremely well-plotted and interesting, with a great balance between sad, terrifying, and funny. (The “funny” usually comes from Sera’s friend Tess, who once doused a wannabe goth band member with holy water just to ruin his makeup. Sera’s pretty funny herself too, in a self-deprecating way that makes you want to give her a hug, if you didn’t already know that’d just make her more uncomfortable.)
In the most recent issues the story’s gone into some of her deepest fears and insecurities, including her struggle with her sexuality. Despite the serious tone, it somehow retains a lot of the innocence of the earlier books, possibly because Sera would be the first to tell you she doesn’t have all the answers, or even any of the answers.
There have been three major story arcs in Serenity Rose (Working Through the Negativity; Goodbye, Crestfallen!; and Break Your Stupid Heart) and while a story arc is in production Aaron updates the comic with a new page every week. I can count the times he’s missed updates on one hand.
Lately he’s switched to a half page on Tuesdays and Thursdays each, so it’s still a page a week. You’d think that might make it easier to wait, but you’d just have to read the comment section to see people jumping up and down waiting for the next page. But looking at the detail he puts into this comic, I’m amazed he can draw that fast.
Meeting A
aron at Comic-Con this year was a huge thrill. Next convention I’d recommend you track down the Slave Labor Graphics booth and say hi. All of the online Serenity Rose books are available for free at Heartshapedskull.com, but once you read them I’m fairly sure you’ll want a copy for him to sign. And despite the success of the comic and the growing number of fans, if you ask Aaron if you can take a picture with him, he’ll still act like that’s an awesome thing for you to say.