There’s time for one more review before 2021 (finally) comes to a close, so this seems like the perfect opportunity to jump up and down and squeeeee about one of my Christmas presents: Stjepan Šejić’s Fine Print.
I’ll start with the artwork, since that’s what first drew me to Šejić’s work ever since he started his BDSM/friendship/true love/it’s complicated comic Sunstone. No surprise here, the artwork is sumptuous. Decadent. Sexy. Naughty. In Sunstone, Šejić was able to dazzle the reader with all kinds of beautiful people, sexy costumes, and gorgeous settings. He gets to do the same thing in Fine Print, but even more so. The beautiful people can have butterfly wings, angel wings, horns, halos, tails, the occasional tentacle, or a dazzling god-form. The settings go from beautifully-rendered seedy hotel rooms, or a star-filled cosmic backdrop, or a cavernous secret space in Hades’s underworld filled with the writhing bodies of angels of love (not really angels) and demons of desire (really not demons) indulging in some forbidden carnality and getting high on each other’s supply.
If you haven’t picked up on it yet, the mythology of this series has a lot to do with sex and is really, really complicated.
There’s a lot of exposition in this volume, since it has to do the heavy lifting of establishing the world and the rules and all the relationships. The story pulls in representatives from several pantheons and mythologies: Greek gods and succubi/incubi and a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it reference to Anubis (and there may be an appearance by a hero from the DC universe), plus something about “The Calm of Thanatos” which is apparently really bad and which still needs to be explained. For a quick TL/DR: worship and belief are in short supply in the modern world, so the pantheons have had to find other ways to survive. One of those ways is for a representative of the Cubi to offer humans a deal: mind-blowing sexual experiences provided by one of their “callers” in exchange for all the energy those experiences create. The contract can only be made with humans who have the ability or the need to see the horns and tail of the Cubi who’s making the offer.
Enter Lauren, a drop-dead gorgeous model who used to be a shy, sweet, college student with janky teeth. Several years before the story starts Lauren was offered a choice between love, or fame and desire. Lauren chose fame, and she’s since come to regret her decision. She regrets it so much that she impulsively breaks her modeling contract in France and flies back to the US to beg for forgiveness from, and win back, Matthew, her One True Love.
It goes badly. Really badly. As in everyone’s worse off for her having tried. Matt refuses to get dragged back into the life of the woman who bailed on their relationship, and now he’s too bitter and miserable about all the old feelings she dredged up to move on with his own life.
The amount of exposition we get for the lore of Fine Print almost pales in comparison to the deep dive we take into Lauren’s life, and all the ways that she’s heartbroken and regretful and making tons of bad decisions in an attempt to forget all the bad decisions she’s already made. For another TL/DR: in addition to costing Lauren her one true love, modeling has been a horrible experience for Lauren, something which has taken away most of her ability to feel any joy in her life. The one thing that gives her the best distraction is a roll in the hay, so when she’s offered a contract for the highest-ranking Cubi caller to provide the best sex of her life, of course she jumps at the chance.
Buuuut due to a previous contract that probably shouldn’t have been signed, at the moment the highest-ranking title is a tie between two Cubi, both of whom have very good reasons for wanting, no, needing, to win the title of High Caller, and both of whom fully despise each other. And we’re off!
The story is multi-layered and fascinating, taking turns at being hilarious, super-sexy, and with a lot of severe emotional peril (we don’t know yet what happened to make Lauren’s modeling career such a nightmare, but I can make a few guesses). The first graphic novel begins with the apparent death of the main character and ends with the start of the real conflict. And of course there are many, many sexy good times going on. Šejić continues to be a master at human expressions, whether during a love scene or a knock-down drag-out argument or a hungover conversation over coffee – or more booze – between friends.
(Speaking of friends, one of my favorite characters is Lauren’s new friend Meryl, the Cubi who offers up the contract and who has what Lauren describes as “big failure” energy. But I’m putting in a request now to have a happy ending for Lauren’s old friend Samantha, who needs to win the title of Best Gal Pal In The World.)
You can find samples and sketches from Fine Print (and all of Šejić’s many other titles) on DeviantArt or Twitter, and of course he makes a lot more available to his Patreons. I highly recommend getting your hands
on this graphic novel as well; it’s beautifully put together, and there’s something very satisfying about actually being able to touch something this lovely.
