Spotlight: AlterXArtifact by nohua & co

COOL NEW PROJECT FROM A FRIEND OF THE TEAM™ ALERT:

ALTER X ARTIFACT is a diverse anime-influenced graphic novel series Written & Directed by Maven Boren (@nohumanza) with help from a fancy cool team they’ve put together!

You might know Maven from the in-development queer western/adventure farming RPG Freyr / Freyr Forte (link). Maven’s creative perspective has a bunch of overlap with our design pillars, & we’ve already had a big ol’ saucy discussion on Game Dev b4 which you can find here.

Alter X Artifact is an LGBTQ+ Webcomic inspired by Japanese manga.

It promises to be a character-driven project, with strong elements of magic and politics, exploring challenging themes and ideas. As per the project description, readers are reminded to recognise that just ‘cause characters may undertake questionable actions, that doesn’t necessarily reflect the creators’ views (good advice for media consumption in general).

The first several pages are up here! Go bookmark ‘em, forget it for like two months and then come back and be like “oh hey what’s this cool thing?” - I’ve been told this is proper webcomic etiquitte… but ymmv

Alter X Artifact is intended for an older audience. Covering themes of magic and political espionage, with serious as well as super-silly content.

The story starts off pretty wild and mysterious, with our POV protagonist floating around some kind of psychedelic hellscape, in the process of dealing with the ramifications of their own untimely death and subsequent phoenix-like rebirth (dying didn’t really take???)

Even just within the first few pages, the character designs are super queer and super appealing, and the use of colour, composition and surrealism within the panels is delicious! There’s also elements of old-school anime in the lineart, and colour choices that feel fresh and appealing.

While it’s technically early days, the project has been a long labour of love, so there’s a huge chunk of world-building to draw from and super fleshed-out scripts planned well in advance. If you’re into queer stories and comics, definitely give Alter X Artifact some support / kudos / bebo luv / blink-182 AMVs.