Five Female-Led Comics Made Just For Your Phone

As a woman of color who loves comics, I spend a lot of time searching for works that are not only dazzling, original, and written with riveting narratives, but also intersectional; it goes without saying that this process can feel exhausting after finding so many that just miss the mark.  So when I first heard about Stela, the supposed next step in comics evolution, I was understandably skeptical. A comics app that took the internet by storm earlier this year by introducing comics created specifically to fit the format of your smartphone, I was sure Stela would be filled with the tired stories starring white cishet men and an occasional token thrown in. To my surprise, however, the app offers not only an incredible array of visual stunning and fresh ideas, but the comics star characters from all walks of life— including a majority that place women in the spotlight. Now for some this might not sound revolutionary given the abundance of digital comics available, but believe me, having downloaded it I can tell you nothing yet compares to the ease with which Stela users can simply scroll through their comic without jumping from panel to panel or awkwardly enlarging for that one illegible word balloon. If there exists a beautiful middle ground between the slow reverence of reading a comic book and the seamless fluidity of motion pictures, the Stela team surely has found it. While every single comic on the app is worth reading, here are five in the particular (including some snea…