Are There Lesbians? Yes

What Happens?
Ally and Lisa meet through an Internet forum but it is their shared interest in BDSM which leads them into a friends-with-benefits style relationship. Things start to get complicated when each realise that they secretly harbour feelings for the other.

The Verdict:
I first started reading Sunstone on @nebezial-asheri‘s DeviantArt and fell completely in love with how super sweet and funny it is. I immediately had to talk to people about it. Unfortunately it turned out that this is a rather hard comic to get other people to read because of the kink element. And god knows good ol’ Fiddy Shades has put enough people off that for life.

It’s a bummer because this is a really good story about two people getting to know each other through a shared desire and eventually falling in love. It is also a story about the remarkably stupid things people do and believe when they are in love. Ally and Lisa are, in turns, frustrating and adorable, and always very sexy. Yet this isn’t a comic about sex so much as it is about the emotions behind it. It is noticeable that while there are many bondage scenes, the two women are never shown while they are actively having sex. For myself I found that this was the line that prevented the comic from become too well… the word male gaze comes to mind. That’s not to say that the comic doesn’t portray women in a sexy way but for goodness sake, it’s a bdsm comic. Everyone is presented as sexy.

Sunstone also has the propensity towards being absolutely hilarious and touching at times – I have teared up from both laughter and The Feels. Especially in the last two volumes, they hit really hard in that one. Despite that, my main problem with the comic is that a great deal of the will-they-wont-they aspect is removed by the very fact that Ally and Lisa are shown to be married on the third freaking page. A lot of the drama does feel immediate enough that there is cause for readerly concern as to whether they will actually get together but… there’s still that little voice in the back of your head reminding you that really, everything is ok in the end. This isn’t to say that actions don’t have consequences in the comic, quite the reverse. It is the journey of reading Sunstone and watching two people fall in love, mess it up and work it out that brings the pure joy.

The second series Mercy is also starting to be written and I’m so incredibly excited for more of my favourite characters.