I’ve been meaning to make this recommendation for ages, but if you haven’t heard of the comic Aurora (comicaurora.com), it’s my most recent obsession and one of my most favorite webcomics of all time.

Aurora is a webcomic in progress, begun in 2019 and built up consistently for years. It’s written by Red, who’s better known for her Youtube channel, Overly Sarcastic Productions. Arc 1 just finished (Arc 1 is huge, over twenty chapters!), and it’s on a brief hiatus before Arc 2 starts in the new year, so now is an excellent time to binge read it–and to recommend it to people! It’s a fantasy adventure full of camaraderie, humor, heart, danger, and world-shaking powers.

The cast includes a protagonist born from the cast-off avatar of a kidnapped god, a cloud elf who can split literal mountains with her life magic, a magus afflicted with both hubris and a conscience, a–well, I’ll let you read for yourself, but it’s a colorful group of personalities, all with their own motivations and strengths. They balance each other out and are pretty well fleshed out, and they’ll only become more so as the comic progresses. I love how they play off each other.

The world is quite interesting as well. You can read about it on the site’s lore page, but the magic of the world is based on these six Primordials who fell in battle to imprison a star-eating force. There’s more to it. I won’t say. Go look.

And of course, the comic has an abundance of foes to challenge its gang of heroes. We’ve got at least one star-eating dragon, an ancient psychic torment slime, a storm god, more dragons, the Collector (think: mad scientist type, utterly committed to ending life as the world knows it), zombie-like creatures called cave crawlers who are both terrifying and heart-breaking, etc., etc.

The art is so pretty. Just… Go look at it. Go look at the character designs and the glowy effects. Especially in recent pages. The style carries noticeable anime influence (which I like; anime fan over here), but it’s also its own thing. It’s simple enough to be doable for a comic on a regular update schedule but complex enough to be downright stunning at key moments.

I don’t want to spoil too much, so I’ll stop here. But if you want a rich fantasy universe with a diverse set of characters, intense friendships, humor, heart, adventure, darkness, and peril? This one is probably your jam.